"Being Married Helps Professors Get Ahead, but Only If They're Male."

Headline at The Atlantic. The writer, Alexis Coe, begins with something the Princeton professor James McPherson wrote in the acknowledgements section of one of this books:

"The person most instrumental in helping me produce this volume has also been the most important person in my life for the past forty years, my wife Patricia. In addition to enriching my life every day, she has been a superb research assistant, having read almost as many soldiers' letters and diaries as I have."

Well, you see where this is going, but can I yell stop? It's not that he's male. It's that he is outward manifestation of a 2-person partnership. There is one name on the commercial side of the life they share, which has private arrangements that you don't get to scrutinize.

Ladies, if you are jealous of this lifestyle, ally with a man who would like to live like that, sharing a private life with you while you hold down the income-producing job.
Coe tells us about faculty wives who "explain they, too, once pursued a higher degree."

Without fail, they look at you a little sadly and say, "best of luck" or, far worse, "stick with it."

As if grad schools aren't full of males who aren't going to make it in serious academic careers! Ladies, if you really are at the top — McPherson-like in every respect but sex — and you think your disadvantage is the lack of a helpmeet spouse, why don't you marry one of those grad school males who aren't so likely to make it — someone who'd really love to take the backup role in your career and to take care of the home and the children?

"I have a theory about this," said Tara Nummedal, an associate professor of history at Brown University. "It seems pretty clear that smart women are going to find men who are engaged, but I just don't see that it works the other way." She added that a female professor with a stay-at-home spouse is quite rare, but often sees men with stay-at-home wives, allowing them to fully commit themselves to their professions.

Well, that's my theory too, except that I reject the sexism of smart women are going to find men who are engaged. Smart men want engaged women too. Engaged is a funny word here, but I take it to mean that individuals who are intellectually alive and working hard would like a partner with similar qualities. Why do women want that more than men? Is it merely the social convention that the man needs to bring in money? Is it some sexual need that corresponds to the man's desire for beauty?