« Gender Equality and Economic Inequality: Impact on Marriage » dans Gender and couple relationships

Changes in aggregate marriage rates and in the internal dynamics of individual marriages should be understood as the outcome of two powerful but very different trends in gender and class relations. One trend is the uneven but undeniably dramatic progress toward equality in personal life and cultural values, which has led to widespread repudiation of centuries-old gender hierarchies. The other trend is an equally powerful movement toward growing inequality, insecurity, and unpredictability in economic life, which has resulted in substantial losses for the most historically vulnerable and least-educated sections of the workforce. The ongoing gender revolution interacts with widening economic inequality in complex ways, increasing the benefits of marriage for individuals with higher earning power while increasing the risks of marriage for low-income individuals, especially women.