{"id":827,"date":"2013-06-02T09:58:09","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=827"},"modified":"2013-06-02T09:58:09","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T16:58:09","slug":"breadwinners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/06\/breadwinners\/","title":{"rendered":"Breadwinners"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"on<\/a>My day job is teaching applied economics to students in the Masters program in Arts Administration at Indiana University<\/a> (including the topics I cover in this blog). Ours is a residential program, and the students are for the most part young, with only a few years in the work force, if any, and they are looking to launch a career in arts management. The class is typically over 90% female. What should I tell my students about gender in the workplace and at home?<\/p>\n

Two recent studies are relevant. The first comes from Marianne Bertrand, Emir Kamenica and Jessica Pan of the University of Chicago, “Gender Identity and \u00a0Relative Income within Households<\/a>” – it is discussed in the New York Times<\/em> today by Richard Thaler<\/a>. Here is the abstract of the paper:<\/p>\n

We examine causes and consequences of relative income within households. We establish\u00a0that gender identity – in particular, an aversion to the wife earning more than the husband –\u00a0impacts marriage formation, the wife’s labor force participation, the wife’s income conditional\u00a0on working, marriage satisfaction, likelihood of divorce, and the division of home production.\u00a0The distribution of the share of household income earned by the wife exhibits a sharp cliff\u000b at 0.5,\u00a0which suggests that a couple is less willing to match if her income exceeds his. Within marriage\u00a0markets, when a randomly chosen woman becomes more likely to earn more than a randomly\u00a0chosen man, marriage rates decline. Within couples, if the wife’s potential income (based on her\u00a0demographics) is likely to exceed the husband’s, the wife is less likely to be in the labor force\u00a0and earns less than her potential if she does work. Couples where the wife earns more than the\u00a0husband are less satisfi\fed with their marriage and are more likely to divorce. Finally, based on\u00a0time use surveys, the gender gap in non-market work is larger if the wife earns more than the husband.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a nutshell: marriages are less likely to form between a couple if the woman earns more than the man; for marriages that do exhibit the wife earning more, the marriage is less stable; and, women are less likely to earn to their full potential if that would involve earning more than the man.<\/p>\n

The second study (here<\/a> is Hanna Rosen’s take) is from Pew<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A new Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 25-28, 2013, finds that the public remains of two minds about the gains women have made in the workplace\u2013most recognize the clear economic benefits to families, but at the same time many voice concerns about the toll having a working mother may take on children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The release of the study led some men in the media to make fools of themselves<\/a> on a grand scale, but there has always been in the media a meme of what Jessica Valenti memorably called “sad white babies with mean feminist mommies<\/a>.” And as such it cannot help but be the case that women on a management track to some degree internalize the doubts about whether the ambitious pursuit of a career is a healthy thing, a doubt that is layered upon unwarranted doubts in their own abilities (Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In<\/em><\/a> aims to relieve these doubts, and although not without its critics I agree with Alyssa Rosenberg<\/a> that this is a book my young women students really ought to read).<\/p>\n

I have not raised issues of career and household in my classes before – I’ll give it a go this fall. Meanwhile, I’ll ask readers: what are you seeing in the art world in terms of career ambitions of women and men?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My day job is teaching applied economics to students in the Masters program in Arts Administration at Indiana University (including the topics I cover in this blog). Ours is a residential program, and the students are for the most part young, with only a few years in the work force, if any, and they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-issues","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-dl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4619,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2025\/11\/what-should-we-teach-future-arts-administrators-and-where-should-we-teach-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":0},"title":"What should we teach future arts administrators and where should we teach it?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"November 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"(Indiana University Bloomington, Kelley School of Business (left) and O\u2019Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs (right)). At her blog\u00a0Arts Analytics, Joanna Woronkowicz has\u00a0written a post\u00a0- reposted to a wide audience at\u00a0artsjournal.com\u00a0- trying to answer the two questions in the title of this post, with the heading (which I don\u2019t\u00a0fully\u00a0understand)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1425,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/07\/strategic-pricing-for-the-arts\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":1},"title":"Strategic pricing for the arts","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"July 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm pleased to say my book on pricing in the arts has been released - Amazon link here, and Routledge link (including for ordering e-inspection copies) here. What's it all about? As I do \u00a0on this blog, I have tried to give arts managers, and students of arts management, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"for what it's worth","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/my-book.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4662,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2026\/03\/colleges-students-and-jobs-nobody-knows-anything\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":2},"title":"Colleges, students, and jobs: nobody knows anything","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 9, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"In my past life I spent some time in university administration, and one of my jobs at this public university was to take proposals for new degree programs that the university had approved of to the state board of higher education, for\u00a0their\u00a0necessary approval. In those proposals we had to include\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2738,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2022\/05\/book-diary-may-9-how-did-i-get-here-some-biography-econ-101ism\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":3},"title":"Book Diary – May 9 – How did I get here? 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In high school I was one of the band room kids: French horn\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"just a singer in a rock and roll band","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Elygra-rotated.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2130,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2016\/10\/viewpoint-diversity\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":4},"title":"Viewpoint diversity","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"October 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In a guest blog at Scientific American, social psychologist Clay Routledge asks whether American (and presumably this applies to other countries) universities allot an excessive amount of attention to racial, gender, and cultural diversity, but insufficient attention to viewpoint diversity. 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That is all.\" So says Oscar Wilde. Is he right? A new issue of the British Journal of Aesthetics has arrived in my mailbox, and the October 2022 issue is devoted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/butterfly.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/butterfly.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/butterfly.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/butterfly.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/butterfly.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}