Attack of the Killer Career Women

Many people ask me why I call myself a feminist, as if it's a paranoid overreaction to an imagined threat. This is Happy Equality Land now, where men and women work side by side, earning equal salaries for equal work and sharing equally in household chores, right? Just ask any working mother! We’re in the post-feminist age now, baby! Cue the dance music!

Um, no. Last week, an article appeared on the Forbes Magazine web site titled (I kid you not), Don’t Marry Career Women by Michael Noer. After an outcry from readers and staff, Forbes.com yanked the article and posted it days later with a rebuttal. In this article, Noer asserts that the career “girl” (whom he defines as having “a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year”) is wrecking the institution of marriage. So now homosexuals are in good company – women such as myself are also working to unravel the very fabric of civilization.

Because my attempts at summarizing this article would not do it justice, and any commentary would just be obvious, here are some excerpts (but please, read the article for yourself):

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extramarital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 times more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas). Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat. And if the cheating leads to divorce, you're really in trouble. Divorce has been positively correlated with higher rates of alcoholism, clinical depression and suicide.

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy. They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do. You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do. You will be more likely to fall ill. Even your house will be dirtier.

You heard it, fellas. Even your house will be dirtier. But I suppose the upside is that you have a scapegoat for any and all personal failures.

So why am I a feminist? With schmucks like Noer walking the streets, with an article like this in a mainstream economic magazine like Forbes, why ISN’T any self-respecting person a feminist?