Check out this remarkable article from the Daily Mail by Anna Pasternak.
The premise of the article is not that women cannot balance both job and family. Nope, Pasternak doesn’t stop at that old chestnut. Going above and beyond the call of ordinary sexism, Pasternak claims that intelligent women are intrinsically flawed:
…the intrinsic emotional make-up of women with an over-developed intellect is flawed, and as a result their ability to choose compatible partners or sustain lasting relationships is impeded…
Pasternak cites the following supporting research:
Last year, American writer Michael Noer created outrage when he wrote a piece in Forbes Magazine warning men off marrying career girls. He claimed that recent studies had found that clever, professional women were more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children.
Simultaneously, the American Journal Of Marriage And Family cited studies that claim the divorce risk rises when women out-earn their husbands. Evidence, everywhere, seems to point to the fact that thousands of bright women can’t sustain meaningful relationships for a plethora of reasons: they are too controlling, they can’t tolerate less successful men and equally, men resent higher-earning partners.
One of Pasternak’s sources, Sarah Harris, rounds off the avalanche of evidence damning intelligent women as follows:
Let’s face it, none of us clever girls are very happy, are we?
Beware, girls. Academics and leadership may seem tempting, but in the end they will only leave you lonely and undesirable. Instead, “learn to have emotional strength which is about yielding, surrender, openness and a willingness to be vulnerable”. That will help you cover up your intrinsic flaws. Your husbands will never know.
N.B. Jender informs me that Kant also had things to say about a woman destroying ‘merits proper to her sex’ with too much studying. Be warned, ladies.
Feminist Philosophers 
“the divorce risk rises when women out-earn their husbands”. So I guess the recent supreme court decision grandfathering pay discrimination will bring marital bliss to the land. Funny how the game is always about blaming the women.
I fail to see why any of the stated “causes” should apply only to women. If there was any truth to these, intelligent men should be just as flawed. Otherwise, I’ll blame the beholder for flawed expectations.
Yes, actually I noticed that one expert cited throughout kept saying sensible (if banal) gender-neutral things along the lines of “being smart doesn’t mean you’re great at relationships”, and they kept being used only to support claims about women.
I suppose I should be relieved that I find this all hard to understand. There’s Pasternak, well published, regular contributor, her amazing great uncle continually referenced in comments about her. And she’s telling us ambition is dangerous for women. So it’s alright if you have a famous relative smoothing the way?
Meow, sorry, couldn’t resist it.
I especially love this: “Evidence, everywhere, seems to point to the fact that thousands of bright women can’t sustain meaningful relationships for a plethora of reasons: they are too controlling, they can’t tolerate less successful men and equally, men resent higher-earning partners.” Right, not being able to sustain a meaningful relationship with a partner who resents you clearly indicates that there’s something wrong with *you*. We all know that it’s the sole responsibility of the woman to keep the relationship good, regardless of the man’s actions or attitude.
Seriously, has it never occurred to this woman that the real problem could be that women of lesser means are staying in bad relationships for lack of alternative choices? Why does she conflate education level, IQ, and financial means? Are there numbers to back up that the divorce rate is higher for well-educated women or is she just basing this on her perceptions? Presumably, those perceptions are of the well-educated women in her acquaintance and the famous people we read about in the papers…I’m sensing a lack of examples of happily married low-income women here. The questions are endless.
Recently, I read an article on the subject but with an opposite conclusion. It was claimed there that men prefer career-women and that they do not mind when they earn less than their wife.
V. interesting– somehow that didn’t get reported so much! Do you happen to remember what and where the article was?
I do remember it was published in De Standaard – a Belgian newspaper – but I don’t remember when this article was published.