Some friends and I have been exchanging e-mails today about last week's infamous Forbes.com story entitled "Don't Marry A Career Woman." I didn't particularly want to give it any more attention (I originally stopped reading by paragraph 2), but I need to get this out of my head before I can start reviewing for exam 2 tomorrow.
The gist of the story, which appeared last week and sparked a firestorm (firestorm, I tells ya) of controversy in the blogiverse is that marrying a career woman (defined as someone with college education who works more than 35 hours a week and makes more than 30K USD a year) is more likely to lead to cheating, divorce, less children (though not everyone would see this as a bad thing) and (insult of insults) an untidy home.
I haven't bothered to Google this story to see all the responses online, but of particular note is this response in Slate and a response incorporting Jane Austen in 3 Quarks Daily (and yes, the Mary of Comment #6 is me). The 3QD response contains several errors regarding Austen's marriage prospects (the Cambridge reverend is pure speculation, and no one knows exactly the extent of Austen's relationship with Tom Lefroy), I'm willing to overlook them for the general quality of the argument.
As for the original article, I congratulate the Forbes.com writer on his excellent use of rhetoric to provoke a reaction. He puts the most inflammatory statements first and then "supports" them with vague references to studies even though no specific statistics are provided (it's always "more likely" or "less likely") or scientists quoted. I agree with Shafer that the Forbes author deliberately misinterprets many of the studies as pertaining to career women when they are actually about career parents of both sexes.
The story itself, I believe, is a ploy to get more people to check out the site (it worked) and therefore increase web traffic and ad revenues. Peter Edmunston's article from the New York Times places this latest article in the context of a series of provocatively headlined articles that would never have been published in the print version of Forbes. This makes the article no better than the postings by "trolls" in forums and message boards, postings that deliberately express a strongly contrary opinion merely to stir up trouble (thus the web term "don't feed the troll").
If indeed this was a ploy to generate controversy and web traffic, it lamentably did so by exploiting centuries-old anxieties about powerful women, implying that societies will suffer and men will be punished if we let women have educations, careers, and control over their reproductive capabilities. Everyone (men and women) suffer when such a purposely inflammatory article gains credence. The fact that the reiteration of gender stereotypes seems to have been used to increase profit is just shameful.
And now, everyone, let's make like that Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode where all the giant advertising icons came to life and Paul Anka has to write a jingle to stop the destruction: Just Don't Look.
