Stefanie O'Connell

So if they earn more than half of the household income.

And what's really interesting to me is that it doesn't matter what that number actually is.

It's not the income itself.

It's only how much more it is relative to men.

And so in this paper studying emotional abuse and physical abuse, for example, in heterosexual relationships,

women were 35% more likely to experience physical violence from male partners when they were financial breadwinners and 20% more likely to experience emotional abuse.

And that pattern held up and down the income level.

So among high earners,

and low earners.

When I talk about these things, there's often this very misogynistic assumption that, well, if a woman earns a lot of money, there's something fundamentally wrong with her.

She must be incredibly selfish.

She must be a bad partner.

She must be ignoring her man in ways that kind of justify this mistreatment.

And what the data show is that the only thing

That is the problem here is the way, at least statistically, is the way men are responding to women earning more.

It's not their incomes in and of themselves.

that are creating the problem.

It's the response when men believe they should always have more of it.

And so I just think that's such an interesting disconnect when we see women's incomes going up, everybody's really benefit, everyone's benefiting.

It's just when it gets like, okay, well, if you're suddenly making more than me, that's when we're getting the problem.