Do Men Prefer Working Wives Or Housewives? Recent Data Sparks Debate On Prevalent Misogyny

There has been a lot of debate around whether a working woman is a good wife or a housewife who stays home while her husband earns. They both have different responsibilities and society has different expectations from them that they define based on their own convenience. However, how do men want their wives to be?

Working women and homemakers both have been heavily scrutinised by society. It deems working women to be unavailable wives, daughter-in-laws and mothers while homemakers are called dependent and domestic. Though it is a matter of choice and circumstances, often these decisions are forced upon them by society and also their husbands. Though men should not have a say in what choices a woman makes about her career, they heavily influence those decisions which lead us to think about what men actually want their wives to be. Do they want to be independent with a job that contributes to their income or a housewife who stays back home and looks after it?

Suggested Reading: How Do Supportive Husbands Help Working Women In The Current Changing World?

Do Men Prefer Wives Without Job?

There has been a recent survey conducted using matrimonial sites based on the amount of interest working women get from men regarding marriage. The data indicated that men chose non-working women as potential wives as compared to working women. In fact, women in job roles that are conventionally 'masculine' like IT firms, management and business, were the least chosen on matrimonial sites by men.

This data, collected in 2023, shows that men still look for wives who can look after their home and free them from handling their daily life needs like washing, cleaning and cooking. These are life skills and things that every adult and independent person needs to learn and do on a daily basis but seems like men have an option of getting a wife who can do these in their stead while they become responsible husbands who earn for them and are called helpful and great for washing their own undergarments, clean their own house and wash their own dishes on weekends. Meanwhile, women have no such choice as whether they have a job or not, they are still supposed to manage their home along with their day job because they are the wife.

An interesting thing about this is that these are the same men who complain that they too need equal treatment and are tired of sexist expectations like the pressure to earn a living, pay on dates, buy their partner gifts etc. while women are exempted from that responsibility. Men need to understand that finances are not only their responsibility, they don't need to pay for every date and neither should they be the only one to buy gifts. However, such equality can only be achieved when they seek a partner that works and is financially independent. She will contribute to the income, buy you gifts and pay her own money on dates.

It is understandable that when one partner is unavailable, the other has to make up for his absence. It is a common way of supporting each other but that is not exactly the ideal way to do it. Women might want to stay at home and look after the family but men need to understand that when they start a family, they have to make changes to accommodate their needs. For centuries they have been exempted from family responsibilities but that does not mean it's good. A relationship is based on equal compromises and if a woman decides to take a remote job to be more available for the family, a man should take up more household duties to make things work. If the wife decides to work a 9-5 job, the man should know that household duties are to be equally divided so they both have enough time to relax and manage their personal and professional life.

Views expressed by the author are their own