Should Women Feel Ashamed For Earning More Than Their Male Partners?

The gender wage gap can be detrimental to a woman’s savings potential, and therefore how financially secure she is in retirement, and yet when some women earn more than their male counterparts, they still see it as a possible source of tension.

A 2017 Refinery29 article about women feeling awkward when they’re the breadwinners in a relationship resurfaced this week after CNBC wrote about the piece. Twitter users said the idea that women would feel that way is ridiculous, and many laughed it off. The author of the original piece, Ashley C. Ford, took to the social media platform and defended her findings: “I understand why their anxieties might seem silly or misplaced, but was I supposed to lie about the data?” she said. “They are ashamed. They are worried.”

Ford spoke with women across a variety of locations, income and education levels, and said in her tweet that their boyfriends and husbands often weren’t upset about them earning more.

See: The shocking profession with the biggest gender wage gap

The CNBC CMCSA, -1.49% article also cited a study that suggested relationships where the wives are the breadwinners led to higher rates of dissatisfaction, and could lead to divorce. It cited a University of Chicago study that found there was a greater risk of divorce when women made even $5,000 a year more than their husbands. The women in Ford’s article said they felt uncomfortable for a few reasons: for one, there was an ingrained expectation it was a man’s job to take care of his woman; for another, women didn’t want to date men who were less ambitious than they were.

Some women also said that if they knew they would always be the breadwinner in their relationships, it would seem “exhausting” and cause resentment in their relationships because they’d be stuck at jobs where they weren’t happy.

Read: What women want — and don’t want — in a financial adviser

Women earned about 80% of what men earned in 2016 in the U.S., except for New York and California, where it’s closer to 90%, and Utah and Louisiana, where it’s closer to 70%, according to advocacy group American Association of University Women.

But the wage gap can have long-term consequences. A woman at retirement could have over $1 million less than a male counterpart, according to a recent Merrill Lynch BAC, -1.10% study of more than 2,600 women and 1,000 men. Women would have to work 10 years longer than men to make up that lifetime wage gap, said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and chief executive officer of advocacy group MomsRising.

Not only does the wage gap reflect savings, checking or investment accounts, but Social Security benefit paychecks too, she said, since those are based on lifetime earnings. The average Social Security paychecks for women 65 and older amount to about $14,000 a year, compared with $18,000 for men of the same age, she said. (Social Security benefits are calculated by the highest earnings over the last 35 years). “Day to day, the compounded impact of wage discrimination hits at grocery stores and kitchen cabinets — being able to afford places to live that are safe, and having food on the table,” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. By the time women turn 65, they are two times more likely to be poor than older men, according to the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement.

Also see: Women outearn men in these 7 places in the U.S. — for a depressing reason

There has been some progress: More wives are becoming the primary earners of their families (which means more women are paying alimony). In 2013, 40% of households had a mother for breadwinner, a jump since 1960, when that figure was 11%, according to a Pew Research Center report.