# Is there any empirical evidence that men are actually less interested in successful, educated women?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-evidence-that-men-are-actually-less-interested-in-successful-educated-women/536611
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 19, 2010, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-evidence-that-men-are-actually-less-interested-in-successful-educated-women/536611 "2010-04-19T06:11:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 4

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### Author: ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-evidence-that-men-are-actually-less-interested-in-successful-educated-women/536611/61 "2010-04-23T18:25:30Z")

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I’ve seen studies on this. The abstract from [here](http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/36321238/EDUCATIONAL-HOMOGAMY-OF-MARRIED-AND-UNMARRIED-COUPLES-IN-ENGLISH-AND-FRENCH-CANADA) refers to some.

> [@](#):
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> Despite this diversity, there is evidence that the levels of educational homogamy have been rising in this region for several decades (Qian and Preston 1993; Hou and Myles 2007; Schwartz and Mare 2005; Mare 1991; Kalmijn 1991a; Qian 1998; Smits, Ultee, and Lammers 1998). This trend is observable not only for the absolute number of educationally homogamous marriages but also for relative measures of homogamy that control for the educational composition of the society. Increasing educational homogamy cannot, therefore, be explained solely by educational expansion; it also indicates that increasingly selective forces of attraction are at work. It should be noted that the rising levels of educational homogamy observed among spouses and the trend towards stricter marital selection are accompanied by declining marriage rates and the increasing popularity of nonmarital cohabitation. Hence, while spouses are becoming more alike in terms of socioeconomic characteristics, a declining fraction of men and women are marrying and cohabitation is replacing marriage, at least among certain age and social groups. In spite of this development, we know relatively little about the assortative mating patterns

The articles I’ve read suggest that men are more likely to marry more educated and successful women today because there are more of them and they tend to be in the workplace unlike previous years. Consider a doctor. Before the pool of women were probably nurses, now this includes other doctors too. In _How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying_ the love interests were secretaries - there were no other single women. Today this seems odd.

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