Mine’s Bigger than Yours: The Challenges of Being a Female Breadwinner

Contributed by Dr. Suzanne Doyle-Morris

Shhhh… there’s a secret that no one is talking about. The woman sitting at the next desk, your high-flying cousin, perhaps even you… is likely to earn more than your male partner. The trend for women to earn more than the men with whom they share their lives is increasingly prevalent, yet it’s a secret we don’t discuss. The statistics are similar in the US and UK with 20-25% of women outearning their male partners. This is not even including households that are headed by single mothers or professional women who live alone – who by default are the primary breadwinners. With the number of women leaving university now outpacing men, female breadwinning is a trend that is only going to grow.

Before writing Female Breadwinners: How They Make Relationships Work and Why They are the Future of the Modern Workforce, I began to notice how many of my coaching clients, like myself, were main earners for their families. Yet it’s a taboo topic many women avoid for fear of appearing disloyal to husbands or to salve his ego. Did this secrecy mean it wasn’t an issue for these women and the men in their lives? Far from it. As Annie, a documentary filmmaker said: ‘It’s the biggest discussion we don’t have. If we have a row about anything, money’s the one area we avoid. It’s just too problematic.’

Explaining why they avoid talking about her earnings compared to her husband’s, who is investing his time and savings in a start-up company, Annie says: ‘If you open up that can of worms, you can never go back. My way of dealing with it is to avoid bringing it up. I know if that if I forced the issue, about him contributing more with the children, for example, it could get ugly. If I looked at it like his or my money, we’d have a lot more trouble.” So as the number of female breadwinner rise, what are the challenges they face entering uncharted territory between the genders?

A Competitive Challenge?

Certainly, playing ‘second fiddle’ to a woman who is the main earner can be a real competitive challenge for some men who think they will love being with a high-earning woman. This was particularly true if his lower earnings is not by choice – but through job loss, illness or redundancy. Josephine, an executive who worked in telecommunications told her husband about yet another industry award she had been nominated for. His response? “Pretty soon you’ll be able to piss standing up!” Using gendered language belies some of his true feelings of how her career has outpaced his.

In my research, I found Carly and Luke typified this struggle. Luke resigned from two different local government jobs; roles in which he was able to bring in a third of the family income without first talking with his wife. She explains: “I knew he wasn’t completely happy in those roles, but knowing I’m there to pay the mortgage makes it easier for him to be impulsive.” Carly’s secure salary means she can’t take the kind of career risks Luke does. She laments: “He compares every job to the first great job he ever had. I have brought it up subtly with him, but I don’t feel I can be completely honest.”

Domestic Workload

Obviously, having a partner whose employment is stable and well-paying means the other partner can take more career risk. Problems only arise if the main earner isn’t getting the support they need. Tensions arose because of Luke’s reluctance to increase his domestic workload, particularly during his spells of unemployment. Carly sighs: “I would get the children up, feed them, take them to school and pick them up. When we’d get home no laundry had been done or food prepared and he’d just say he’d been busy. It got to be very frustrating because he loved to also remind me he was ‘wearing the knickers in the house’ since I was the one earning.”

Interestingly, many of the other female breadwinners also did a disproportionate amount of the domestic chores, even when they worked longer hours and were the main earners. Carly explains: “I think he found it difficult to do the cleaning and cooking because it was ‘women’s work’.”

Other research corroborates what Carly noticed, in that recently unemployed men actually do less housework than men in full time employment. Doing the washing and other ‘women’s work’ adds insult to injury when he may already be questioning his sense of identity and contribution to the family. This economic crisis and the increased likelihood of job competition from extremely competent women has forced many men to ask: “If your value to a family has always been defined as largely financial, what’s left when that disappears?”

However, its certainly not all bad news and being the female breadwinner can be a real advantage for many families, as wIll be discussed in an upcoming column. Stay tuned!

Female Breadwinners: How they Make Relationships Work and Why They are the Future of the Modern Workplace is available now on Amazon. For more career resources for professional women or more information on the book or about Dr. Doyle-Morris, visit www.femalebreadwinners.com.