Forbes is pissing me off

[judith_s]

When I first saw this I thought it might be fake, but no, it's real & it's on Forbes' web site. Why you shouldn't marry a career woman, brought to you by the lovely folks at Forbes.

I haven't yet looked at the underlying studies, but the entire attitude & tone of this article is pissing me off. Once I get past that, I will look at the underlying studies & figure out if they actually have something real here, or if it his is just a swipe at those women taking away jobs from the rich white males who are Forbes' target audience.

Comments

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Merciful G*ddess above! Each iteration in the slide show was honing my rage ever sharper. If you take a look at the underlying data, let me know if you see something more than justification for millenia of patriarchy, but right now I'm really really annoyed enough not to be able to process the data.

(I had to decide betweeen my "whatte the swyve?" icon and the one I ended up using).

[sichling.livejournal.com]

Wow! That was totally egregious.

Let's see - the basic attitude is that any changes are the woman's fault, whether that be not taking full responsibility for house-cleaning, having the ability to pick a spouse based on something other than financial ability, having the ability to leave a bad relationship, etc. Men, of course, clearly can't be responsible for anything - like taking care of their own health, kids, cleaning - much less their own assumptions.

slimy and over the top patriachal

The claim that women are unhappy if they make more money than their husbands b/c it limits their ability to take care of the house/kids & do volunteer (sorry "less renumerative") work is particularly egregious.

[lusty.livejournal.com]

The one that got me was the "you're more likely to get sick" thanks to HAVING TO LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN DAMN SELF.

[(Anonymous)]

Terrible, but I believe some of it.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Thus they comment anonymously.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

No doubt, women with careers marry later, and marry less often than women who don't. But the presentation of this as a "reason not to be with career women" is ridiculous. Ditto for the part about having children. It's true that women with careers often decide not to have children, but this is a decision made jointly with their partner. Again, not a reason to advocate against career women.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Well, it's Forbes, so I'm not surprised.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

I used to read Forbes pretty regularly, although admitted that was before Steve Forbes ran for President and dumbed down the magazine. But their magazine has had quite a few articles like "negotiating salaries for executive women" encouraging women to be more aggressive in their career.

My guess is that the author's career woman wife just left and this is a strike back. Otherwise, it just makes no sense. Even the tone is inappropriate to Forbes.

[mrscake.livejournal.com]

It looks like something resurrected from the 50s or something.

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

So, if I understand correctly, the basic gist of the article really is: "if you want a woman who will stay home and take care of the house and the kids and who will not do anything to put your self-esteem at risk, you should probably not marry a career woman, especially one who is particularly successful. On the other hand, if you are a man who is secure in his identity and is willing to share previously gender-assigned societal roles, then you will have a lot of women to choose from because folks at Forbes magazine are scaring away any competition you might have."

Also interesting to me is how results based along ethnic lines were only mentioned once.

[shaix.livejournal.com]

I need a shower. Ick.

[xeger.livejournal.com]

I agree. I gave up after the first slide, so I wouldn't start ranting at the screen.

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

The article and the slides appear to have been removed from forbes.com.