The Great Recession of 2008 was a watershed moment in American society for many reasons — but one of the underappreciated effects may be how the recession changed gender relations in America. While the unemployment rates for men and women normally move together fairly tightly, between December 2008 and March 2010, the unemployment rate for men aged 20 and above was, on average, more than two points higher than the unemployment rate among women. Even using the more forgiving seasonally adjusted rates, in January, 2010, unemployment among men was 2.3 points higher than among women (10.2 percent versus 7.9 percent). In the aggregate, this translates to millions of households in which wives earned more than their husbands, and while the number of households in which women are the chief breadwinners has been rising slowly in the US since the 1980s, the number of households in which women earned more than men underwent a sudden and unprecedented spike. By following how the social views of individual men changed over that time, we can see how important breadwinner status is for men — and how they adapt when it’s threatened.
Earning Less Than Their Wives Makes U.S. Men More Partisan
The Great Recession of 2008 changed gender relations in the United States. While the unemployment rates for men and women normally move together fairly tightly, between December 2008 and March 2010, the unemployment rate for men aged 20 and above was, on average, more than two points higher than the unemployment rate among women. While the number of households in which women are the chief breadwinners has been rising slowly in the US since the 1980s, the number of households in which women earned more than men underwent a sudden and unprecedented spike. By following how the social views of individual men changed over that time, we can see how important breadwinner status is for men – and how they adapt when it’s threatened. It turns out that both conservative and liberal men double down on their partisan views when their income gap grows: Republicans become more socially conservative, and Democrats become more liberal.
HBR Learning