– Daniela Drake, M.D., attended Wellesley College and received an MBA from Stanford University. She, along with Elizabeth Ford, authored the book “Smart Girls Marry Money.” A former McKinsey consultant, she is now a full-time primary care physician. Drake married (for love) and has reaped the consequences. The views expressed are her own. –
I had to pause when I came across a blog out of South Africa that read, “I think a way forward, or backwards some of you might say, is to encourage our smart, savvy and capable daughters to marry for money.” Since I co-authored a book with a similar premise, this sassy assertion definitely grabbed my attention.
The blog’s author Jackie May, an editor for The Times world pages in South Africa, penned these seemingly heretical comments after learning of alarming research by Dr. Caroline Gatrell at Lancaster University in England. Dr. Gatrell found, “women who explicitly choose career over kids are often vilified at work.”
Huh?
Conventional wisdom says just the opposite: Sacrificing baby-making is often necessary in the calculus of getting ahead at work. Many mid-career women have forsaken motherhood to obtain career goals. Indeed, economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett made news a few years ago when she presented the statistic that 49% of mid-career women who made $100,000 a year or more were childless, compared to only 10% of men.
Yet, despite the sacrifices many women make in order to climb the corporate ladder, women are still woefully under represented in top executive ranks. Eight of the CEO’s on the Fortune 500 were women a couple of years ago. Now, two years later, we’ve got 12. At this rate it will take a little over 100 years for us to represent half of the CEO’s in the Fortune 500, in the year 2128.
Although the number of CEO’s is a lofty benchmark, in general even at the lower reaches, workplace parity is coming at a glacial pace. The reasons are complicated, and it isn’t just sexism. Many have suggested that it has to do with the choices women make to fulfill personal life ambitions.
Even today, many young women don’t foresee that these choices will affect their career success. Hewlett’s more recent national survey found that the typical young woman graduate plans to have a high paying job, take two to three years off to have children and benefit from career flexibility that lets her pop back in to the workplace when the mood strikes.
While Hewlett found the women’s optimism charming, she also noted that this generation follows hot on the high-heels of a generation of women who had similar ideas. By following non-linear career paths, that generation “lost 18…to 37% of their earning power,” and suffered a complete “downsizing of their ambitions.”
But the new graduates aren’t heeding the warning signs of the slightly more senior women’s failures.
These young women are counting on their talents to grant them repeated entrée into a marketplace they were brought up to believe is a meritocracy. The bad old days are behind us, as one co-ed commented to Hewlett, “Back then—when there were dinosaurs—people just did bad stuff to women.”
But is this true, or are people still doing bad stuff to women? If Dr. Caroline Gatrell’s study is right, women who have sacrificed important personal goals are penalized at work. As Gatrell’s study indicates: Childless women are viewed as lacking an “essential humanity” and viewed as unfit to manage others.
Yet at the same time Gatrell assures us that mothers don’t fare much better. Gatrell avers, “Women with children are blamed for combining motherhood with paid work and women with no children are sidelined and discounted because they are not mothers.”
The problem of women in the workplace is so complicated that the answers themselves sound like Orwellian double-speak. Or, have we at long last entered an age when double-speak simply means that both things can be true, that workplace discrimination can take on many forms and that there are no easy answers? But one thing is certain: achieving success in the workplace is like winning a competition. If half the entering team shows up thinking it’s something less than that, then men will still have the home field advantage—and achieving parity may take more than the 100 years estimated by my back-of-the-envelope calculation.
So what will I say if my daughter asks me, “How can I make sure my life is financially secure?”
I would have to pause before I answer. I would have to consider that in all likelihood she won’t live to see true workplace equality. But her life matters now. So I will have my own Orwellian answer for her and offer it with a hefty dose of irony, “Apply yourself at school and at work. And to cover all your bases, marry a man with money.”
If being "financially secure" is someone's highest goal in life, why shouldn't they marry for money? The trick is that since they pinned their hopes of being a complete human on an arbitrary, fickle, and narrow quality, they should not be surprised when they must sacrifice other goals to achieve it.
It's not neccessary to be rich to have a good life, though it helps.
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Dr. Drake I didn’t notice is a doctor till after wasting my time misleadingly reading the article called “Should women marry for money”. As far as this man can tell, you even so much as type a word of an answer to this question. You have however rambled on and on about another problem greatly worth correcting. But why totally mislead readers to get attention for another problem???? I see you did however answer the question in a completely unmeaningful way. Your answer means you are advising young women to be greedy to solve another problem, which i would guess is s sure way to increase an already abysmal divorce rate. Shame on you doctor.
Become a happy person. Then marry. Marriage is not the source of happiness, it is merely the playground where it is demonstrated. Female CEO, with or without children, will always find a critic, and will be able to demonstrate her exceptional management skills by successfully ignoring them.
Money can help add value to life, but in substance money is a tool rather than a final goal. A person should know how to use a tool (well) rather than becoming a slave of tool.
Marry for love. Marry for happiness.
Time, health, peace, family…many valualbe elements of life are easily undervalued when a person pursues more money than necessary.
I am by no means rich, but I prefer to marry a girl from a background less wealthy then myself. I wouldn’t want to be with a woman who makes a lot of money; let alone more money then me.
Here’s an idea, girls: marry a woman with money.
Whoah, Melissa! Your interpretation of what is being said on here is frightening. You said: “Many of these comments seem to imply that “marrying for money” somehow means that some girl is trying to get in to a class of society where she doesn’t belong.”
This is the kind of thinking that needs to stop. Who says a poor girl from the wrong side of the track doesn’t belong at the country club? She may have more tact and heart than any of the people already there. Great people come from all over and from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds just the same as the duds and the jerks do. Segregating classes of people in society needs to stop! The mix and the variety of all educations and income levels keep people in check, humbled and humane. The intermixing and mingling of all creates vibrant culturally rich healthy communities.
We are all humans and we all belong here together on this planet.
As for marrying for money, I never ever considered it, it is not something that ever occurred to me as an option. My mother raised me to take care of myself and to be happy in being true to myself. That is what truly matters not whether or not I have a man with financial security.
“Yet, despite the sacrifices many women make in order to climb the corporate ladder, women are still woefully under represented in top executive ranks.”
As if the proportion of career minded women is the same as men.
The reason men make more is because they do more and make more sacrifices for their careers. And half of the reason they do is to attract a woman… so………..
I hope your advice has factored in the current divorce rate plus the propensity of men with money to require prenuptial agreements.
There are many different paths people aspire to in life, both men and women. Not everyone wants to be wealthy. Instead, some women and men want to pursue a life of the intellect, to be writers, to be creative, to be artists, to be dancers, or to be scientists studying the cosmos, or biologists studying plants and animals, or techno-geeks working with computers. The opportunities today in our wide world are so incredible that I cannot imagine someone settling simply for seeking wealth…and purchasing things. Life is to be lived, to think, to do, to communicate, and perhaps to be lucky enough to find someone who shares your values, and perhaps to work together to raise a family too.
The real problem is that women are not encouraged to pursue careers where they can make $. If they are lucky enough to make $, they are resented by the guys. I would be happy to make lots of money and lots of guys call these women who marry for money “golddiggers.” It is also true that women do not support each other at work, while men do. Women do not need kids to have happiness.
Most women in most cultures “marry up”. Isn’t this a form of marrying for money?
What, you mean “smart” girls marry for anything else but money? Where do you think the phenomenon of nagging comes from. Dissatisfaction of not having the kind of money she deserves and suspicion that it might’ve been better if she’d only married [insert name].
20,000 years of conditioning the female to select a mate with the highest earning potential, biggest muscles, most chest hair, etc. to find a secure station in life through an alfa-type male.
How does that compare with the pathetic, in historical terms, 40 or so years of women’s “emancipation”?
Let’s see how many young women today know of or aspire to be more like Gloria Steinem than Lindsey Lohan. I suspect not many. There you have it, the sum total of feminist accomplishment.
Well, girls if you sell yourself to the highest bidder be prepare to be eventually discarded like a no-longer beloved new toy. But, of course, you don’t mind. After all, it’s the divorce settlement and the generous alimony you’re ultimately after, right?.
Meanwhile the authoress of this B.S. is laughing all the way to the bank.
The first thing this author needs to do is redefine the concept of “success”.
I wonder who is doing the criticizing of women. Unfortunately, I suspect it’s other women. Women are really mean to other women at work — not all, but those who were raised to have low self esteem — and those who like to gossip for fun. I think if/when women are raised to believe in themselves more, a lot of the discrimination against women will stop. I hope, anyway.
How about marry for happiness, which many studies by the way prove that money has little or nothing to do with. When did our culture become this more is the answer. I am a man and a minority in the work place in terms of sex and both of my bosses are successful females with children who married for love as I see it and they are extremely respected. I personally believe women will take more and more of a lead in the future and I sure hope the women of the future will ignore older women clinging to archaic ideas that they need to depend on a man for their money or their happiness. I think our society needs to stop focusing on money and start focusing on reconnecting with out humanity, which we are quickly losing in this chaotic world.
The problem is so simple it gets missed in our “politically correct” world. working women with kids are looked down on as not being a good mom while childless women are seen as not fulfilling their primary God-given function in life.
The answer is equally simple: The vast majority of women would be happiest as non-working mothers of children. Most moms will tell you that raising kids is/was the best part of their life.
As a society, we’d have more happy women, more happy well-adjusted kids, more happy husbands and more jobs for the men who support all those wives and kids.
And don’t tell me it can’t be done. My stay-at-home wife and I are raising four kids on one paycheck and have been doing so for almost sixteen years. And in the beginning it was a very modest paycheck.
Granted, there are some women who would be miserable with kids, or a husband, and who thrive in a challenging work environment. But they represent a very small percentage of the women who are working today.
The old ways are best. And the tide can be changed, one family at a time. Drive one car, live modestly, eat at home, take reasonable vacations, etc. It’s not that hard to do. If a couple agree on this, they will find a way to make it work.
I am particularly curious about the “childless women are viewed as lacking an ‘essential humanity’ and viewed as unfit to manage others” comment. Can someone clue me in – seriously – as a childless woman who has had my share of career challenges, I’ve never heard this stated so exactly, so poignantly. I would like to hear from others on the reality of this statement…am I the last to know that this is the perception of childless women?
It seems to me that the writer of this article is just bitter by complaining that she can’t have everything she wants from life. Life is a always a series of compromises and a question of balance.
Starbug is correct-a healthy individual understands their self worth can not be measured by the amount of wealth they have or don’t have-a mature, but difficult perspective to have in an American society driven by consumerist values.
Men,
stay away from women with such “simplistic” goals…
“Eight of the CEO’s on the Fortune 500 were women a couple of years ago. Now, two years later, we’ve got 12. At this rate it will take a little over 100 years for us to represent half of the CEO’s in the Fortune 500, in the year 2128.”
Poor worst case math scenario here, yes 4 times 50 is 200 (50 is half of 100 since its every 2 years to continue to alleged 100 year trend)….but my math says 4 is 33% of 12. So the biannual increase would exponentially increase and get there much sooner than 100 years.