Women's pages: Next time you read about 'what women want,' check the research - it's likely to be

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/4/6 | Reyhan Harmanci

[SmithL]

What exactly do women want out of life? Regardless of the complexity of the question, the answers are readily available by the hundreds. All you have to do is pick up a magazine, newspaper or "self-help" book and all will be revealed, neatly simplified, packaged and made readily digestible for a readership with an apparently insatiable curiosity about the desires and needs of women.

But how accurate are those answers? And more to the point, how reliable is the research upon which they are based?

In her new book "Are Men Necessary?" (Putman; $25.95; 352 pages), New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes that there is "an epidemic of professional women missing out on husbands and kids." But a University of Michigan study shows that the percentage of married women with advanced degrees has grown, not shrunk, over time.

Time Magazine, in a March 2004 cover piece, found that more and more women were leaving high-powered jobs to raise children, but the Center for Economic Policy has debunked the "opt-out" trend, stating that the number of highly paid women in the labor market has remained steady over the past few years.

Women's trend stories are among the media's favored form of social science reporting. But for every splashy, scary trend story, there's another one hiding in the shadows. One is simple, the other is complicated. One is built on sketchy anecdotal musings, the other on larger, longitudinal studies.

[SmithL]

...there is "an epidemic of over-educated, under-intelligent, bitter, drunk, professional women missing out on a personality, husbands and kids.

There!

OBTW, if someone else would post the picture IAW "the Rules", I would appreciate it.

[MadCharity]

Gotta hate those femi-natzi's that created the "Womans World" of today....IMHO it's all a bunch of bs

[Fenris6]

You left out insane. When I was single, it was so bad that I had to move "sanity" into my top three reqs for a wife. Hard to find an attractive, intelligent, sane woman these days.

[scrabblehack]

Wouldn't the more relevant statistic be the percentage of women with advanced degrees that are married, rather than the percentage of married women with advanced degrees?

[Rocky]

There is an epidemic of bitter liberal women columnists at the NY Times who are missing out on married life with a famous movie star. But let's not get personal.

[bannie]

This bitchy woman has to say:

The pronoun for people is never "that."

IE: It's never "The lady THAT was hit by the car..."
It's, "The lady WHO was hit by a car..."

Now y'all ken talk real bad about me wheres I kent hear ya.