Caroline May is almost right in the title to this article: “Stay vertical a bit longer, ladies: Study claims men are winning the game of love”.
It’s not all men who benefit, even if we just talk about men who are unmarried and not in a long-term relationship. The men who benefit from this development are the kind of men who already had high “market value” before the days of sexual equality:
“Girl power” might have brought women and girls victories in academics and sports but, as a recent book out of the University of Texas reports, an unintended consequence of women’s success has given men a leg up in the game of love.
Based on research published in their new book,“Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying,” Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, sociologists from the University of Texas at Austin, have found that with women becoming more educated and professionally successful than ever, it has become extremely difficult for them to find a committed man.
Part of the problem is that women traditionally have looked to have relationships with higher-status men (dating or marrying “up”). Now that women are achieving higher financial, academic, and professional status themselves, they’re finding a much-reduced group of men who meet their new (higher) expectations, but also facing much more competition from other women who have also achieved higher status. In economic terms, the market for high status men has more potential buyers chasing fewer sellers. Prices (in this case, willingness to offer sex earlier) must rise to compensate.
