A lot of people claim that women are “hypergamous.” That is, that we prefer to “marry up” and are very reluctant to “marry down.” But in reality, I suspect that most women—like most men—want to marry someone of equal status, someone who they expect will contribute equally to their marriage. The evidence for hypergamy is that women typically prefer to marry men who earn as much or more than they do. But a paycheck isn’t the only way to contribute to a marriage. What the hypergamy discourse fails to take into account is that gestation is also a valuable contribution.
Given that women can make a contribution that men cannot, it’s worth asking what real gender equality would look like. Since the ’60s, our attempts at gender equality have involved trying to ensure that women contribute and achieve as much as men do in every field, or at least every high-status field. But what is the end game here? If we perfectly achieved this kind of equality, it would require either that we treat gestation as having no value, or that we treat one sex (in this case, the male sex) as having less value than the other.