One side effect about women in the workforce is how it has doubled the workforce. This was nice for GDP growth perhaps, but it has also allowed the negotiation of salaries to stagnant or even downward trends due to the near doubling of the workforce. When women first entered the workforce in large numbers (in USA at least - second wave feminism), they entered in the lower level hourly and salaried jobs, which actually decreased income inequality to low points in American history (http://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Figure-3-e1455723924591.png) . Sounds like feminism helped if that’s the case.

But as feminism grew, the next logical step was to increase the desires for more women in high positions of power. CEOs, Presidents (for the record, I supported Hillary over Trump but wanted Sanders by far over the two) seem to be the two things always mentioned, also STEM fields in general (especially programming), and just senior executives in business, etc. This sounds fine on paper (yay 50% of CEOs are women type feelings), but my concern has to do with the following.

It is fairly well established that men do not care about employment status in the opposite sex nearly as much as women do. In fact, some recent studies display men get fearful (or even resentful) and not excited when their wife or girlfriend gets promoted (http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/09/03/when-a-wifepartner-succeeds-men-lose-self-esteem/). So as women have approached economic equality, and perhaps even surpassed men (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-earn-more-men-same-age-study-finds this is the first time a decade large group of women have outearned men, well see if the “by 30 men will be back on top” remains…..I question it), this will cause problems in the dating market.

It seems women are less likely to be romantically and sexually interested in a man who is lesser than her financially. Some of the problem could be how men might change their confidence and behavior with women who are more successful than them. But the data does kind of seem to show that women don’t give much time of day to underemployed/unemployed men. All throughout a man’s life this seems to be in effect (high school senior girls don’t date sophomore guys, 25 year old women a year or two in their post college career don’t date 20 year old men who are maybe 2 years into college, Sheryl Sandberg types don’t date a man making 5 figures working a 9-5, etc).

So if women are being more represented at the top (more going to college, making upper 5 fig salaries, 6 figure salaries, executives, CEOs, senators, one day President perhaps?), are they only sharing their lifestyle with men who have similar ones, or not sharing their lifestyle with a partner at all? Has this contributed to income inequality? I will be the first to say I don’t think it’s the only factor to income inequality. I also think it probably isn’t even the biggest contributor to income inequality. But my question is that if it’s a contributing factor to income inequality.