2 to 1 Income Ratio Ensures Most Stable Marriage?

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, July 18, 2002

2 to 1 Income Ratio Ensures Most Stable Marriage?

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A survey that looks into "the relationship between the income difference of spouses and marital quality" by two professors of psychology from Beijing Normal University has been spotlighted by newspaper editors recently.

"The latest research has found that the 2 to 1 income ratio between husbands and wives ensures the most stable marriage," stated the headline in Beijing Morning News.

A few other newspapers that covered the same survey also emphasized the fact that spouses feel most satisfied in a marriage when the husband earns two times the salary of the wife.

But the newspaper reports of the survey appear flawed and disturbing for two main reasons.

Firstly, they mislead the general public by reducing a whole gamut of factors determining marital quality to one single variable: income or income disparities between husbands and wives.

Moreover, they continue to propagate the traditional stereotypes of male superiority and women's dependence on men in spite of the fact that Chinese of both sexes have pushed for gender equality for more than a century.

Variable factors to effect marriage, but not money

What is marital quality and how does it determine a stable marriage?

Despite the subjective nature of the question, many people - and sociologists and psychologists in particular - have tried to find a suitable definition without success. There are just too many factors.

Searching on the Internet for the phrase "quality marriage" using the Google search engine in English, we get as many as 277 webpages that contain the phrase. For the whole phrase "quality and stability of marriage," we get as many as 36 results.

Dr Neil Chadwick from the United States offers his own advice on the web on what he calls a "total quality marriage." For him, the essential components are "companionship, communication, commitment, combat and compassion."

In their research paper, the two professors from Beijing Normal University cited more than a dozen factors that scholars in the West have found to affect marriage. These include families' life cycles, marriage age, children, women's employment, spouses' social roles, religion, personal characters, disparities in social status or division of household chores.

Even a spouse's humour that enlivens the family atmosphere, for instance, is invaluable to a marriage.

Interestingly, income or money is mentioned sparingly on those websites.

Jan D. Andersen from California State University did look into the "financial problems as predictors of divorce," but found that money issues continue to be "the weak predictors of subsequent divorce."

Enhancing out-of-date values, media's role questioned

The media's higlight of the marriage stability based on the 2 to 1 income disparity between the husband and wife bears the message that women shouldn't go far beyond their economic independence, Chen Benjian, a columnist with the China Women's News, comments.

"The superiority of men over women exists in the society today, but the reality shouldn't justify the notion that this would result the harmony between men and women," she said.

It is common for researchers to examine only one single aspect of things or events, such as marriage. But news media, which are expected to provide the public with full information, should not err by ignoring the many factors that affect complex matters such as marriage.

One newspaper even quoted a woman railway worker as saying her husband's income superiority gives him "the right feeling." "If I earned more than my husband, I would probably hurt his ego," the woman said.

Showing ignorance is one thing, but advertising and enhancing the stereotypical social order is disturbing.

For more than a century, many women and men have been working together to achieve gender equality to push for further social, political and economic development.

The media have a responsibility to help change traditional stereotypes, advocate gender equality and promote progress.

"Media have the power to set the agenda," writes Maria Victoria Cabrera-Balleza, programme manager of media, information and communication services of Isis International-Manila.

"People tend to think that what they see in print and what gets to be broadcast, are the more significant opinions of the day. Media practitioners should take advantage of this agenda setting power (or potential) to give space to challenge the status quo."

Feng Yuan, one of the founding members of the national media watch network, points out, that the media, in their search for things "newsy," involuntarily become the spokespersons of the old and outdated values.

In fact, the media worldwide have been criticized time and again, in a number of United Nations' documents for instance, for their portrayal of women from the perspective of traditional male-chauvinist culture.

Media's shame to shirk from challenging accepted values

But the media reports of this current survey attempt to "put a 'status quo' spin on their interpretation of the statistics," according to Sylvia Spring, a TV producer from Canada.

Even the researchers concede in their study that their findings indicate society as well as many women themselves are not ready to challenge the privileged status of men.

But the 2 to 1 income disparity, which is regarded as the "balance point" that the researchers refer to in their research, "is evidence of an imbalance between the roles of women and men and their contributions to society," as Cabrera-Balleza points out.

"Couples who are changing the status quo will experience some stresses on their traditional roles and expectations," said Spring. "That's what comes with the struggle for equity in patriarchal societies."

It is understandable that some people do not want to rock the boat by challenging the accepted values.

But the media and journalists are duty-bound to promote social changes and equality.

And the media were actually asked by the Platform of Action passed during the UN Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 to provide portrayals of women who "exist as independent individuals and with independent values, rather than dependents of men."

The media should trumpet those women who "should and actually can develop into diversified social roles, rather than stick to the traditional role of good wives and mothers" and who are "becoming locomotives, creators and important operators of the process of advancement."

"But for the journalist to not see that or comment on it I think is a shame," Spring said.

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