Comments on: single. academic. female.

By: Mo

Mo — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:06:03 +0000

What I can say is that as a single male PhD student (who study 6 hours per day in the library), I prefer to marry with a so called smart, educated and academic woman. To put it in another way, I can’t tolerate girls with the normal boring codes of behaviour. I think you need to change that stereotype that “men” like this or that. “Men” is not a single, homogeneous category!

By: Doctor M

Doctor M — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:02:21 +0000

Lisa
I came across this googling ‘Do women make better academics’. I am surely not the best (though I love to learn… deadlines are not my friend).
I’ve date up and down. The only reason men might be less attracted to women who we perceive as smarter than ourselves would be that they perceive that as unattractive quality, i.e. it hampers their self confidence.
Someone needs to write a brief, trite sitcom whereby a single academic/intelligent female has a dangerous liason or two with a less academic/intelligent guy. It’ll be utter trash. He’ll work on cars, and be all greasy and have no sense of taste and stare intently at things, and that’s the way she’ll like it because it reminds her that she’s a woman and helps her get away from her work stress. That way you guys can know it’s possible for these things to work.
Ok I’m being cruel… but I’m actually quite serious. I think we can both admit to a belief (with sexist implications in itself) that women are more easily persuaded into assuming these negative stereotypes.
Now I see you’ve only got one useful option here…. write the script. If it flops you’ve undone a logic neither of us wants to be party to, if it wins you’ve made yourself some money and learnt a sad truth.

By: Simone Grant

Simone Grant — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:18:02 +0000

Lisa,
A very interesting and timely post, indeed. There have always been men who like to date (and marry) smart women. But the Pew data shows us that in the majority of cases, men are still better educated than their partners.

We seem to be at an odd place in history, now. Women are pursuing education, especially advanced education, at greater rates than men. And we’re aggressively pursuing our careers and personal fulfillment. In most cases, men who’ve achieved “less” (in terms of career/education) are not interested in dating UP. Whereas many men are perfectly comfortable dating women with significantly less career/educational achievement.

By: Lauri

Lauri — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:27:33 +0000

Lisa, very interesting post.

I would share your impression that being “smart” is often not “sexy” on a woman. Moreso, I would say being *educated* isn’t sexy. A woman who pursues a PhD (or other higher degrees for that matter), as you said, is going to be an independent thinker. She’s going to care about important things. She may even realize that there are higher priorities than getting pregnant and pumping out a few namesakes.

Less educated men also tend to get very defensive about the issue. I only have a 2-year professional masters, but almost everyone I’ve ever dated has been less educated. I’ve noticed some trends- one, they downplay education. I guess women could do this too, but the men I’ve dated who didn’t have very high quality educations would claim that college is useless; that hey, if you want to shell out for grad school that’s your problem, but it’s stupid; that you can’t make money while in school or with a liberal arts and science degree, etc. This to me is very sour-grapesy, as well as insulting because I worked very hard at my education and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

But also, there is more simple reason why single female grad students would be less likely to marry than males: there are WAY more female grad students in- I think- every field except business. My professional school class of about 120 was something like 75% female (the year before me was 85%!). Men don’t go to graduate school. They don’t like the idea of foregoing paychecks, they think women won’t date them if they don’t have money. The ones that do go get their pick of all those single women!

There’s also the correlation/causation issue. If you really want to settle down and get married, you’re not going to be focusing on graduate school in the first place, you’re going to be out looking for a husband. The kind of people who go to grad school, whether they realize it at the time or not- may be less likely to even care about all that marriage stuff in the first place.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:54:22 +0000

Pew Research recently published a report touting that women are now more educated than their husbands. They failed to mention that in 3/4th of the marriages men are still more educated than women… So, while there’s been progress, it’s minor.

BUT, I do whole-heartedly agree with you: We need to question the assumption that men don’t like to date smart women… Because this assumption might be reinforcing the behavior…