Women MBAs Should Consider Hiring a Cook. Or a Maid. Maybe Even a Nanny.

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So everyone I know is going to read the article about higher divorce rates for female MBA’s (Hat Tip: Brazen Careerist) sometime this week and I feel obligated to write about it, even though the numbers in the article will bother me until the study itself is published. Here’s an overview of the study’s claims:

Education Level for Females – Divorced or Separated
- 12% MBAs (business)
- 10% JDs (law)
- 9% medical degrees
- 11% only bachelor’s degrees
Education Level for Males – Divorced or Separated
- 5% MBAs
- 7% JDs
- 5.1% medical degrees
- only bachelor’s degrees not given

The first question I have is the statistical significance between women MBA divorcees (12%) and women w/only undergrad divorcees (11%). The article doesn’t list the details of the study, but there is a range of error for both these percentages due to the sample population. If that value is 1% or more for either (say women MBA divorcees are actually in the range of 10-12%), then comparing the two is moot. What makes these statistics more suspect is that both law and med. female graduates have a lower divorce rate than women with only undergrad degrees.

My second issue is that the author doesn’t compare these stats to all women, and studies show that women with any higher ed. degree are less likely to get divorced than those without.

So if there isn’t much of a difference between undergrad vs. grad degrees, and there is still a huge difference between no degree and any higher ed. degree, then getting a graduate degree is still a fine idea for a woman. Between these two issues, it’s doubtful that getting an MBA as a woman is an automatic marriage death sentence. My gut tells me it has little statistical significance actually; but I guess we’ll see when the study is published.

And yes, I have a third issue. For MBAs, the author fails to mention that the actual number of women and men getting divorced is about the same. With roughly 30% of MBA candidates as women, the number of MBA divorcees is about 7% total, with half men and half women. What’s interesting is in law and med programs, women make up roughly 45-50% of the population, so the disparity is much clearer there; though the gap between women and men is much smaller than with MBA graduates.

Despite disliking the way the study is portrayed, I do think there is some truth to the conclusions the author presented; namely that highly successful women are attracted to similarly successful men but might be better matched with men who have less stressful careers and thus more time to support a high-earning spouse.

This is not representative of all professional “high-earning” women, but every female MBA I know falls into one of two categories: “single” or “serious relationship with highly successful man.” My friends date dentists, lawyers, their fellow MBA candidates, or PhD candidates from other fields. My own husband is going to be an eye doctor.

But this partnership is difficult when trying to run a household, even without kids. My husband and I know we’re being pulled in different directions trying to balance two careers and the possibility of a family in the distant future; so we recently decided we each need to compromise on one thing until we finally meet somewhere in the middle. The first thing I asked of him was that he support my career decisions and trust me to make good financial choices while still following my entrepreneur dreams.

He asked that I cook at least once a week. I’m not joking. Way to waste your three wishes Aladdin.

So that’s the (impossible?) challenge for a woman who wants her dream career: conquer the world, but be home in time to start dinner. Because most men still just want wives who will take care of them the same way their mothers did (Hat Tip: Art of Manliness). And really, I can’t completely blame them, because I sometimes get irritated that I’m the sole breadwinner. It goes both ways.

Will this compromise work for us, or other couples who both want high-powered careers? I have no idea. But when posed the question: do you need an extremely supportive spouse to have a high-powered career as a woman? My answer is a resounding hell yes. I guess the article got something right in the end.

Tagged as: Challenges, Commitment, Couples, Graduate School, MBA Programs, Newlyweds, Relationships, Women

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

John Middleton April 3, 2008 at 12:03 pm: I’m surprised that there aren’t more comments on this. I came here from my RSS reader expecting to see at least a few.

First off, I love your site Monica. As a 23-year old (male) MBA, it’s right up my alley.

I grew up in an entrepreneurial household where my Dad was always out running the business and my Mom was always home running the books. They have made a great team. I generally have no qualms with my (future) wife working towards her career goals, but at the same time I grew up with my Mom always being at home. So I can understand why your husband made that request.

Monica O'Brien April 3, 2008 at 12:50 pm: John, I think the reason there aren’t more comments is because guys don’t want to be offensive or sexist. The AofM recently wrote about a study on this, and it’s linked above in the “men want wives to take care of them” sentence.

But two guys have sent me chat messages saying basically the same thing as you. And before I wrote this I surveyed some guys at work who have girlfriends/fiances/wives in med school/dental school, who commented they really wanted their wives to eventually learn how to cook well.

Furthermore, the guys said they were the ones who cook more often, and they learned it from their mothers. So while they enjoyed cooking, they still wanted the cooking to be split at least evenly, and move more onto the woman when the couple has kids. I drew my own conclusion that men have mothers who took care of them this way, and want the same of their wives and for their children. And there is actually research on mother/son father/daughter relationships and how they affect who you marry, so I think it’s a pretty good conclusion.

I understand why my husband picked cooking. But it just seems weird that he thinks it’s the most important thing that will help hold our marriage together. I mean, he could have picked more sex too, but he didn’t? Threw me off.