Study: Male Chauvinists Make More Money

A disturbing study finds that men who hold “old-fashioned” views on women’s roles actually make more money.

According to the BBC, scientists asked men and women “whether they believed a woman’s place was in the home, or whether the employment of women was likely to lead to higher rates of juvenile delinquency.” Women who answered “no” to these kinds of questions — who were what the BBC calls “modern-thinking” — earned slightly more than women who said yes. More surprising: men who answered yes earned significantly more — an average of $8,500 a year. So maybe these folks were just gunning for a raise?

Psychologist Magdalena Zawisza offered a possible explanation:

It could be that more traditionally-minded men are interested in power, both in terms of access to resources – money in this case – and also in terms of a woman who is submissive.

Another theory suggests that employers are more likely to promote men who are the sole earner in preference to those who do not – they recognise that they need more support for their families, because they are the breadwinner.

Maybe men who are “traditionally-minded” (and can we question the idea that the male breadwinner/female homemaker model was a “tradition” anywhere but midcentury, middle-class America?) have more “Machiavellian” personalities, which, as we learned yesterday, can increase earning power. But there’s also another possibility: at least according to the BBC coverage, it appears that study subjects were asked to self-report their salaries. Maybe men who think women should stay in the kitchen just say they make more — after all, they wouldn’t want to be caught pulling down less money than a woman.