Better educated, but not better paid

In November 2017, American wives were better educated than their husbands for the first time in history, according to the US Institute for Family Studies.

But despite the higher educational attainment of married women, they were still earning less than their husbands, or, as the Institute’s Wendy Wang said: “Even when women ‘marry down’ educationally, they continue to ‘marry up’ in income.”

Recent figures show that for every dollar earned by men, women earn just 80 cents. This is due in part to women tending to work in lower-paid industries, as well as a number of other factors including discrimination and bias in hiring and pay decisions. This is often compounded when women take time out of the workforce to raise children.