They all received at least one Oscar. And they all divorced or separated subsequently.

These anecdotes fuel the superstition that female Oscar wins and nominations lead to divorce. However, if you look at a broader sample, it may look like male Oscar winners and nominees increase their divorce risk while women don’t. – In truth, the jury is still out, because establishing a causal effect is tricky here: Oscars are not random, and then who exactly is the comparison group formed by non-nominee screen actors? It must be large indeed.

There is a true root in the superstition

The suspicion behind the anecdotes has a true core unfortunately. Professional success can cause women much pain. Good evidence, from otherwise quite equal Sweden of all places, and cited here, shows that some promotions nearly double the divorce rate of women, but not men.

For example, winning a local or parliamentary election, or becoming CEO can call the curse. In the US, a wife earning more than the husband is associated with a higher divorce probability.

This is not the case however, when couples agreed or expected from the beginning that earnings would be equal or in favor of the wife. It is the change, within the same couple, from a traditional gender norm to its opposite, that spells fragility.

Women know and try to preempt the ‘curse’

Women change their behavior in anticipation of what might happen. Within marriage, if the woman starts doing well in her job and at some point, reaches her man’s salary level or even exceeds it, she adopts traditional attributes. She tries to compensate the violation of the (gender) norm by putting in more housework, and sometimes, withdrawing from wage work altogether. The literature says, the woman is ‘doing gender’. Before marriage, women significantly downplay their ambitions in terms of career and salary when they believe to be watched by men.

A remedy has been found…

But this does not happen everywhere. The above has been documented with US and West German data for example. But it does not show up in East German data. No matter what angle you look from, and what factors you control for: the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall mark the boundary for the male breadwinner norm. Eastern German couples have no problem with women working and earning more than their husbands. And the more women earn, the less housework they put in. Which is kind of logical. And marriages are similarly stable independent of who the breadwinner is.

In other words: the male breadwinner norm, and with it, the ‘Oscar Curse’, are entirely cultural. They can be undone by institutions that actively promote another norm.

A crisis at work brought the change. Carla was working with a bully who started ‘supervising’ her without ever having received that mandate. Her once loved job descended into drudgery. When I met her one day on the bus, she broke down. She vented, was comforted and gathered enough strength to file a complaint. She also switched perspectives and decided to give notice and move back to her home country. Which happened to be a cool place with mountains in perpetual fog.

Nothing else was foggy though. She started over in all areas: bought a flat, power-organized her things, and began an exciting and influential job that offered good work-life balance. She found enough time for a vigorous exercise regime and meeting friends. She dated online and offline, and in a city that had a natural gender balance. Before long, she started seeing George, an intellectual entrepreneur who shared her passion for travel and the outdoors and who is her partner to this day. Her professional and personal lives are gleaming from all angles. Only the actual weather is permanently autumnal, but that doesn’t keep Carla and George from climbing yet more mountains.

What happened here? It matters where you are. Not because of the weather, but because of who is there, of how people work, and how much control you can take over your life.

Who is there: if your own gender is over-represented, good luck. Unless you are willing to switch sexual orientation, which is rare after all, you will compete and have to line up for the acceptable candidates. Empirically, if you are a woman competing for men, that does not exactly improve men’s behavior. On average, when faced with too much freedom to choose, men tend to be somewhat sloppier in their work and career efforts, less committed and possibly polyamorous. – In other words: find yourself a place, a location, where your own gender is outnumbered. Especially if you are a woman.

How people work: you need spare time to date and have a good relationship. Sometimes a few miles of distance can mean a world of difference. There is comparative sociological evidence comparing the love lives of Eastern and Western Germans in the year of reunification, and as a Wessi I am sad to report that Easterners had more fun. Much more, and better fun. – If you interview women who personally experienced the before and after of communism, they point to shorter work hours, job security and free universal childcare. As a related article in the NYT resumes: “It was state socialism’s answer to work-life balance.”

To be fair, there are other differences in Western and Eastern love lives, and they are still measurable in the 2009 Parship study. One could say that East German relationships are, on average, more companionate and emancipated. Men tend to seek a confident woman that shares their interests, and women care less about their man’s salary than in the West. Eastern couples also talk with much more ease about intimacy. (Not only out of regional patriotism, I would like to point out that these statistics reflect percentages only, and that convergence is already happening. Before long, the twain shall meet.)

It is not just the time factor, it is about taking control of your work and life. That is compatible with working long hours out of choice, and on topics of choice. You may have heard of the Whitehall Studies, which have variously shown that in the same activity (in this case, British public administration), higher ranking officials were healthier than lower ranking officials. The difference was maintained when controlling for observable data that may correlate with rank, such as education and nutrition choices. Especially, stress measured as cortisol, and coronary heart disease showed a rank gradient. While the reasons have not yet been fully explained (and the Whitehall studies continue for a further generation), control over tasks and priorities, as well as predictability of work seem to play a role.

Now, what if you are stuck where you are? Stuck with a gender ratio and labor market that are less than lucky?  The internet is your friend. Online dating can bridge some of the divide to a better location. The gender ratio, for sure, is then no longer limited to the one of your physical dwelling place. Also, you can connect quickly, during your leisure or even your lunch break. It is no silver bullet, but it can un-stick a few constraints to start with.

Carla, of course, is well connected online. Which is while I can keep up with her latest. All I see these days are broad smiling faces, a super tidy creatively furbished flat, high mountains, adventurous trails, shining oceans and fog only in the background.

I confess that the scale of the problem did not surprise me. My default assumption is that every woman I meet has, at some point in her life, received unwelcome advances. I am actually a bit worried that signaling the number of women affected also signals the number of men guilty, which may make committing harassment look like a majority phenomenon, and thereby more acceptable to some. This effect has been proven for unconscious bias: upon learning that their bias affects the majority, not few people feel vindicated in having it.

From the economist’s point of view, harassment is a violation of property right, the property right to one’s own body. Harassment and abuse are theft; theft of bodily integrity. They are still not persecuted with the same rigor as theft. Have you ever heard that a car owner has been suspected of consenting to the theft of his car because it had an attractive shiny metallic color? Do judges routinely ask what color the car was wearing? Have car owners lost any rights of denouncing theft because of how the cars were parked, where they were parked or when? Is car theft less of a theft even when a car owner has previously lied on the tax declaration?

But when a woman denounces sexual assault, all logic gets lost. Who, in his or her right mind, can assume that a hotel cleaning lady going about her job would welcome a butt naked guest jumping right at her mouth? Or that her right to denounce this changes with what she did or didn’t truthfully state in her immigration papers. Women’s property right to their own bodies is still bizarrely conditional in the twenty-first century.

Some women report the events, which is painful enough. It is when the institutions that are supposed to help do not have enough bite to protect them that I get really depressed. I would like to know how many of Weinstein’s victims reported the incidents, just to have the case go nowhere. In the end, Weinstein was convicted by the media, not public prosecution.

I feel safe where I work and live but not everybody can say the same. I have listened to too many credible accounts of affected women speaking up appropriately just to hear that they should not be trouble makers, or that theirs is a lost cause either way. Meanwhile more than one perpetrator perpetrates his rise across the ranks.

Because in many cases, power structures are stronger than the institutions meant to control their abuse. Modern corporations are not democratic. And some of them contain more feudalism than a medieval manor. It is hard to imagine the contrary, as a smooth running of business needs a focus on executive powers and sometimes single decision makers. But when power differences across levels are too big, along with disparate salary scales, we should be careful about the side effects. You can preach against retaliation as much as you want; if the hierarchy is steep enough, and networks entrenched, it will happen. Damage will be done and traces effaced well before you can look under the carpet.

What can be done? Power and salary distance should be and often are a function of ability, but marginal productivity is hard to measure.  CEOs are not 300 times more productive than their average employee, but they earn on average this much more (in the US). Maybe because they are 300 times more powerful, and that is a situation worth looking at.

Top management often face external accountability through media and the public, but what about the upper middle? There is a lot to say for open doors and transparency requirements on files and decisions. Further, powerful staff associations can be productive for the firm and protective for corporate citizens.

But maybe we need more than this, because still things are falling through the cracks and due diligence sometimes strangely vanes. It could make sense to bring the powerful force of automation to some corporate policies, when for example a certain threshold number of independent accusations triggers automatic sanctions. Diversity can help disentangle the gender-power nexus. More women and gay men in more powerful positions would reassure us.

As for whether change is needed at all, the jury is not out any more. It has voted. #metoo.

First of all, this is quite wonderfully hilarious. Guy thinks the world about his own efficiency (and attractiveness?) and finds himself outmaneuvered before you can say ‘think..’. I guess, in future, Justin will only be able to date people who are either masochists or don’t read (the media) and he may or may not enjoy that situation.

What was going on here?

1. That gender ratio. Why was he able to do that – one man, six women. Aren’t the women too busy, including with other dates? Or does that reflect the actual gender ratio in DC? – Well, 1:6 is a bit strong, but single women do outnumber single men in most neighborhoods in DC, as Holly Thomas blogs here. This situation is still current, and typical for the metropolitan areas of the East Coast. (For an eloquent analysis of gender ratios in the modern American dating world, see Jon Birger.)
2. The ladies cracked the code. Contrary to much coverage on the event, I fail to find Justin Schweiger especially shocking. Most thinking ladies over 18 have encountered creepy behavior in the dating world at some point; sadly, it’s hardly news. What is new is that this one got public coverage – and that the women outdid the effect in solidarity. That is, by the way, the code to crack in skewed gender ratios: solidarity. Standing together as women and refusing to compete on standards. The principle has been well-known to economists for a long time, it is the good old-fashioned….trade union. It outdoes unequal (power) ratios by bundling individual demands.
3. What now? While spontaneous and elegant, the ladies’ get together and agreement were indeed a budding trade union, from an economics point of view. (Not that trade unions can’t be spontaneous and elegant.) I would much encourage to continue on that principle and draw up a charter of standards in dating that DC women are not willing to do without. The more women subscribe, the less the gender ratio will be felt. Being the only date during one evening could be one standard, for example; or the only one, at all, before things get cozy. The bar will be as high as you set it, and firmer if many agree on it.

That’s enough of a dark side you may think. But trust me, it gets darker.

Admittedly, the current discussion of That Pay Gap in the media is taking place largely among fairly powerful women; women who earn well enough to sustain themselves and more. The headline grabbing lawsuits on that matter usually concern women in, or just one step away from, executive leadership in profitable corporations.

What does the situation look like at the margin of empowerment, and, at the margin of poverty? To start, let’s think about a fundamental difference between men and women that is a bit uncomfortable to consider: women, also very poor women, always have a currency to pay in. There is always one thing they can offer and it’s usually worth money. Do you see where I am going? There is a huge market out there for female straight sex, and such a market does not exist for male straight sex. I am not saying this is an advantage – right now in the world it does not play out as one.

This paper by Damien de Walque and others shows that conditional cash transfers can get men and women to lead healthier sex lives and reduce their risk of contracting HIV substantially. Once the cash transfer is taken away, the behavior change persists among men but not among women.

Ouch.

Here is what happens: when the money is lacking, women need to pay with sex. Riskier sex pays better. This is not a lifestyle choice; it is a survival necessity. Men cannot do this, on the one hand; and do not need to do it on the other: they likely earn more than women anyway.

At the margin of empowerment, the gender pay gap forces women to be more available for sex.

There are several situations where we find a high gender ratio: some countries (last week we discussed China), some immigrant communities, social groups and others.  Economists have studied several of these and have found 5 outcomes in the relationship world when women have the upper hand.

1. There are more marriages. Groups where men outnumber women see their marriage rates go up, compared to groups with even gender ratios.
2. Men earn more. As men have to make an effort to gain an edge over potential competitors for women, one area they excel in is income.
3. Women tend to work less. Overall, fewer women choose to work outside the home. This suggests that, at least in the communities studied, many women had the latent wish to be homemakers.
4. Couples earn more. Women, who choose to work, earn more on average than working women in gender-even societies. Combined with point 3, this means that women won’t get up for less than a certain salary any more.
5. Children born in this environment are better off. After all the above, it’s an empirical fact that in societies where men compete for women, parents of young children earn more. Children grow up in wealthier households than in societies where women have less bargaining power.

In other words, based on robust evidence: bargaining power for women is a pretty good thing, for about everyone.

What’s happening? Three things are at play here (and were missed by The Economist.)

#1 Marriage is no longer an economic necessity for women. With women earning their own living, marriage becomes a nice-to-have, from formerly a must-have.  In this situation, not only is the urgency gone, but different factors govern women’s choices. This is the situation of the young women. While the older generation may still perceive a world of must-have marriages.

#2 Professional women have other things to do. As I pointed out here, many professional, attractive, intelligent women are single at a marry-able age, and those who marry, marry later than the population average. Science says they also have better things to do than the population average. If a date competes with work that is fulfilling, bodes success and a higher income – then the date better be at least as fulfilling, easy-to-present-to-others, and liquid. Of course work and relationships fulfill different needs – but they also compete for the same, scarce resource: time. Professional women have less time and higher demands for relationships, given their alternative options. Both together are likely to keep them single.

#3 In China in particular, women wait because they can. Already in the 1990s, scientists reported skewed sex ratios at birth in China. Now, the gap between the genders is a sizeable ‘gulf’.  In this situation, with more men competing for fewer women, the gentle gender determines the rule of the game. And that likely involves waiting for their best bet. On their terms.

If Clara looks around her workplace and friends she will see that there is indeed a surplus of single women in her age range. (She works in a prestigious NGO.) This of course puts her at a disadvantage: if she has to compete with women for fewer available men, she will have to trade below par, or, in plain terms, lower her expectations below what she could get in a more gender balanced environment.

Therefore recommendation number 1 for Clara:

1. Meet more people. Widen your circle of friends: you can re-discover a forgotten hobby, learn a sport you always wanted to – or start any new activity you are interested in to meet new people who are likely to become friends. More precisely:
2. Seek out activities where the opposite gender is numerous. So, as a woman check out sports, outdoors, computer related hobbies and about everything that involves speed: car racing, speed boats and space tourism. (Examples courtesy of my husband.) As a man, seek out literature, the arts, yoga, zumba, prancercise and philanthropy. For example. Biking and running groups should work for both genders. And if you are really serious about settling down in the near future:
3. Mind your values. In addition to the activities that just widen your circle, make sure to include some that foster values that are dear to you. Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples should have activities for singles. Causes like the environment, fair trade, mentoring of at risk youth can also help find and bond with kindred spirits.
4. Focus on the essential. Arm yourself with a checklist of values and characteristics your partner would need to embody. I recommend between 3 and 8 – neither too few nor too many. You need to keep a mental note of these criteria with you at all times. People that don’t meet the list are out and have no claim on your (dating-) attention and time.
5. Your dating objective first. If you are past 35 and unmatched, odds are that you gave generously of your time and attention to others, based on their need; maybe your family of origin, your work, or friends you felt needed you. These are all worthy claimants, but it’s time to re-focus on your own objectives. Your time and attention are first of all your own and you can employ them where you feel they best help you. (In other words: the earlier you learn to say No, the earlier you will say Yes to the right person.)

Well, I am not talking money as in bucks or accounts. I am talking about assets much closer to a relationship: sexual capital. With the cold, indifferent mind of the economist, we need to acknowledge that the woman has it. Always had.

Here is why. There are markets for sexuality. Let’s leave values and emotions to one side just for a minute and imagine that sex is a commodity that can be sold and bought. Well, it can. There is prostitution, there is pornography, and both can be lucrative trades. Some economists even argue that marriage is a lifelong contract about selling sex. In the vast majority of cases, it is the man that is buying and paying a price, and the woman that is selling and receiving the money. Occasionally a man is selling, too, but usually to a man, and the market for that is pretty small. The big market for sex is women selling to men; visual material, audio material and physical actions. (And the marriage bed. There is evidence of monetary returns to marriage for women, but not men.) In short, the sexuality of a woman is an asset. It can be hired out and sold. The sexuality of a man – cannot.

Let this sink in for a while, ladies. YOU have got the capital. And you largely have control over the price: your offer is in short supply and men’s demand is, hm, high. Higher than you think. Higher than they want you to think, possibly. And you can regulate your supply. Here is a secret: any signal of scarcity increases the price. This is the whole secret behind guys wanting a woman that hasn’t had many men: a signal that her capital is in scarce supply. True, it matters if you are surrounded by willing or less willing sisters, but you are much less substitutable than you think. And, paradoxically, scarcity signals make you less substitutable.

In countries where women don’t have much power they still hold sexual capital – and treasure it all the more. Hence the high regard for virginity in these places: a scarcity signal so strong it suggests a monopoly. Non-virgins don’t need to worry though; sexual capital is a renewable resource. As far as signaling goes, virgin is as virgin does (not did).

my husband and I are planning to have a baby. Of course we already hear more advice than we want to. But what do you think: will a baby change our relationship? How? Will it make us happier?

Thank you, Veronica

Dear Veronica,

Let’s compare the pre-baby and post-baby worlds from an economist’s perspective. One basic economic choice to make is how much to work vs how much leisure to enjoy. More work means more money and more things you can consume; and it also means less leisure. In the pre-baby world, you and hubby have already made this choice. You chose a job, and with it a certain salary and a certain amount of work hours. If you and hubby care a lot about each other and about the same things, you likely arranged your work in a way that allows you to enjoy leisure together. This usually entails some sharing of chores, for example. (Compare this Daily Comment.)

As you already made this choice when entering post-baby world, your leisure hours are pretty fixed. Now, with a baby, a large chunk of one person’s leisure hours will be committed to baby care. There are different ways you can go about this, and some will likely make you happier than others. If you are not very interested in baby care, and assume the load alone, it will feel like a proportional reduction in your leisure time. Leisure gone and nothing in return – and you will likely be less happy than before. If you like baby care (as I assume you do, because you want a baby), then you will enjoy the hours of baby care, like nothing you ever experienced before. If your husband is of the same view, joint caring will be like leisure spent jointly and much fun. And it will strengthen your relationship.

One caveat, even for the sunny scenario. Baby care, like any fun activity, has diminishing returns. A further hour spent on it is less fun than the first hour. What is more, in this particular case, the returns are very non-linear. I.e. after pretty much a plateau of reasonably high returns, they diminish markedly and care can become very tiring. It is a good idea to find out (and be honest about) this inflection point for yourself and husband. Make sure to involve help for the hours beyond this point, from a baby sitter, grandparents or others. You, hubby and also your kids will be the happier for it..

Your Economist