Men Are Intimidated by Women With Careers

When Lauren Turley lost her job, there was one benefit that she wasn’t expecting: her dating life improved dramatically.

“Men love that I’m not working,” Turley said in a now viral video on TikTok. “The way their face lights up as I tell them I got laid off and am looking for my next gig? Wild! I’m getting more second dates than I ever have. I can’t be the only one who’s experienced this am I going crazy or is this a thing? Are men seriously that intimidated by girls with careers?”

Turley’s question isn’t just rhetorical, either. It taps into a long-standing societal issue that has been a matter of conversation for decades. In the early 2000s, a Sex and the City plot line explored men being intimidated by women’s careers when Carrie dated Jack Berger, who couldn’t stand her success.

“When the conversation starts about work, they seem neutral. When I tell them I recently got laid off and am looking for my next gig, they’re much more interested and enthusiastic about the conversation,” Turley told Newsweek. “When I started dating without a job, I often felt a level of shame telling my dates that I was temporarily unemployed, but was shocked when I was receiving the opposite reaction.”

A 2017 study published in the Harvard Business Review by Leonardo Bursztyn, Thomas Fujiwara, and Amanda Pallais revealed that men really do prefer female partners who are less professionally ambitions.

In the study of more than 300 MBA [Masters in Business Administration] students, single women, believing their answers would be seen by male classmates, significantly lowered their desired salaries, travel willingness, and work hours. This adjustment wasn’t seen in married women or in men, indicating a unique pressure faced by single women in the dating market.

Sofie Roos, a licensed sexologist and couples therapist told Newsweek: “Many men still are very traditional, and feel that their masculinity is challenged if they are not the one providing the most income for the family, something that can lead to them feeling threatened if they enter a relationship with a woman having a great career.”

“As more women have started to pursue successful careers and in turn gain financial independence, those traditional roles are being redefined. It seems like some men might feel intimidated or uncertain about how to navigate relationships where women are equally or more professionally accomplished,” Turley said. “Women are owning property, running companies, and becoming more educated at higher rates than we ever have. We don’t need men like we used to, and it’s starting to show in relational power dynamics.”

Online, women have long reported issues in relationships because of their careers, with some finding their relationships irreparably broken because of their male partner’s issue with earning less. Others have recalled how partners have even asked them to quit their job to become a full-time housewife.

Not even celebrities are safe from criticism over their careers—earlier this year Taylor Swift was dubbed a bad role model because she is “unmarried and childless” at 34, overlooking her career achievements in favor of her place in a family unit or relationship.

Dating coach Nash Wright weighed in too. “In certain circles—where classic ideas of masculinity and femininity are common—they might say that much of the business world is inherently masculine. So when women are hard at work, doing ‘task oriented’ work, they take on more masculine traits and behavior. If men are not as attracted to masculine traits, they could be less interested in women that are in ‘work mode,'” he told Newsweek. “As these women take time off, they may have more opportunity to exhibit classically attractive feminine traits, and then they find men are more attracted to them, and they have better, more ‘polarized’ experiences in dating.”

The landscape of work is still ever evolving as women continue to be the minority in the workplace. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are more than 74 million women in the civilian labor force with around 47 percent of U.S. workers being female. This can be compared with the numbers from 1950 when women made up just 30 percent of the workforce. This represents a 17 percentage point increase in the last 74 years.

Today, working mothers are the norm, too, as 70 percent of mothers with children under 18 participate in the labor force, with 75 percent employed full-time. More and more women in high-power positions. In 2016, more than 1 in 3 lawyers were women compared with 1 in 10 in 1974.

But Turley said she didn’t think that most men had intentional bias against women with careers. “I don’t think that most of these men are even acting this way purposefully. A lot of the men I’m meeting are self-proclaimed feminists, not understanding that their deeply rooted subconscious biases towards gender roles is causing them to feel insecure,” she said. “I hope it will change soon, but it feels like we still have a long way to go based on the casual interactions I’m currently having.”

The TikTok video has resonated widely—perhaps because it gives a voice to an experience many women silently navigate.

In the comments, people reacted to Turley sharing her experience.

“This is solely because they think they will have the control over you; you will depend on them and never gonna leave them,” said viewer Angie.

While TikToker Lexi wrote: “I have been through 2 breakups after getting promotions or them finding out how much I make.”

TikToker Kenzie revealed she even started omitting facts about her job when meeting men. “When I was dating I stopped telling men I was a scientist (I am) and started just saying I worked from home. [I] got so many second dates,” she said.