ep. 191: She’s the Breadwinner
when it comes to breadwinning, it’s not a monolith loaf!
What happens when women are the primary or sole earners? Is it only stigmatized if they're coupled up with men? Journalist and host of Other People's Pockets, Maya Lau, helps unpack the gender baggage around breadwinning, household finances and divorcing unsupportive husbands. Plus, Cristen tracks down the origins of the male breadwinner ideal and how it got so baked into domestic life.
guest:
Maya Lau: Other People’s Pockets | IG | Twitter | website
sources:
Cresswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Oxford University Press. 2010.
Cusick, Julia. Breadwinning Mothers Continue to Be the US Norm. Center for American Progress. May 10, 2019.
Fry, Richard; Aragao, Carolina; Hurst, Kiley; Parker, Kim. In a Growing Share of U.S. Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same. Pew Research Center. Apr 13, 2023.
Griffin, Emma. Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. Yale University Press. 2020.
Pignataro, Lauren. How a Secondary Earner Deduction Will Reduce the Gender Bias in the US Tax Code. NYU Review of Law & Social Change. 2015.
Ruggles, Steven. Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015. Demography. Dec 2015.
Sahadi, Jeanne. Even when women make as much as their husbands, they still do more at home. CNN. Apr 16, 2023.
Sear, Rebecca. The male breadwinner nuclear family is not the ‘traditional’ human family, and promotion of this myth may have adverse health consequences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 2021.
Tax Notes. Feminism and the Tax Code. Forbes. Sep 28, 2021.
Weisshaar, K. Earnings Equality and Relationship Stability for Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples. Social Forces. Sep 2014.
Wong, Venessa. Women Who Earn More Than Their Husbands Share What Their Marriages Are Really Like. Buzzfeed News. Apr 17, 2023.
