Why you shouldn't feel ashamed of being a female breadwinner

Mo' money, no mo' problems?

Relationships are a minefield, and the latest mine to go off concerns women feeling ashamed of earning more than their boyfriends and husbands.

A 2017 study, external from lifestyle site Refinery 29 is doing the rounds again, reigniting the debate. In the original article, writer Ashley C Ford spoke to 130 millennial women in heterosexual relationships, who are the breadwinners in their homes.

The results, she said, showed that women were still likely to be embarrassed or “worried” about making more money than their male partners. This might sound bizarre; after all, aren't most millennials worried about not making money? 

But some of those women surveyed were surprised by how un-2018 their feelings were about it. One anonymous participant told Ashley that when she realised she earned more than her husband, she “felt shocked, and a little ashamed, and then I felt embarrassed that I was ashamed”.

Another said she felt “a lot of internalised misogyny about how attractive or sexy women should be with ‘successful’ men. I worried about what other people would say".

Although it's a very small sample, these women’s worries may not be totally out there. One past study found that a woman earning more than her male partner could increase the risk of divorce, external by 50%, while another claimed that earning less money made partners - both men and women - more likely to cheat, external.

So while we should be like this...

We're actually like this.

But judging from the fresh online backlash to the story, women are having none of it.

Some even call the claims "laughable".

And others say it isn't as big an issue as people are making out.

Men have been quick to weigh-in as well, telling women that men who can't deal with them earning more aren't worth their time.

The tweets were all a bit one-sided, but that may be down to a reluctance to publicly admit to not feeling great about earning more.

And experts say that putting the problem down to “red flags” may be over-simplifying a very complex issue.

Psychotherapist Jo Nicholl tells BBC Three that she’s encountered this problem in her work counselling young couples – and says rather forebodingly that “it rarely ends well”.

“I’m noticing a lot of men struggling with this shift in self-worth,” she says. “Men traditionally were taught to get their sense of self-worth from how much money they could earn, and how much power they had. They’d have grown up seeing their fathers getting their self-esteem from earning money.

“When the woman earns more, she comes home and is faced with a man who is struggling – and she ends up taking on and carrying around this shame and humiliation that is being felt by the men.”

Diana Parkinson, a couples' therapist, agrees that the dynamic can be difficult for couples to get used to – but times are changing.

“At the end of the day this is the way the world is now – and what men are going through now is no different to what women have been experiencing for aeons,” she tells BBC Three.

So come on ladies - you've got nothing to be ashamed of. Your men will just have to get used to it.