Reports Have Greatly Exaggerated The Death of One Gender Stereotype

We’ve heard it so often that we assume it must be true: The influx of women into the workplace has transformed the balance of gender power on the home front. Clearly, there’s some truth to this, but not as much as one might suppose. The difficulty lies in the premise—i.e., that women often account for a major share of the modern household’s income. In the majority of married-couple homes where at least one person works full-time, that turns out not to be the case.

Gallup polling finds that 54 percent of working married people live in households in which the husband brings in all or most of the family income.