# Why Women Rule the Roost **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 26, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690 "2009-05-26T15:42:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tacoloco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tacoloco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacoloco)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/21 "2009-05-26T19:41:21Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Basically, my own observations of individuals/society is that the differences between men and women are so vast that any attempt to generalize is doomed to failure–it’s worth noting that certain underlying personality traits may tend to be expressed differently in women than in men, but I think the traits themselves–confrontational/non-confrontational, controlling/passive, anxious/relaxed, whatever, tend to be distributed fairly evenly. Generalizing by gender simply isn’t going to be useful in understanding any specific relationship. Agreed. But at the same time, I know a lot of couples where the wife “wears the pants” and the husbands have to go along with it “or else”. I really don’t understand that dynamic at all. I’ve been married for almost 27 years and my wife and I have always been true partners. There has never been this idea of “toeing the line” or having to ask permission to do things. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/22 "2009-05-26T19:48:12Z")
> [@Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](#): > > Also I’m not sure if you’re joking but since this is Great Debates you’ll also note that married men live longer than single men so that’s wrong, too. So do indoor cats ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/23 "2009-05-26T19:49:36Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > On the other hand, I get to decide what we’re having for dinner, and whether I’m going to cook it or we’re going out. He almost never cooks dinner. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he’s so bad at it. I’m not willing to suffer heartburn for three days, and I’m also not willing to babysit him while he tries to cook. He made you believe that so he could get out of cooking. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/24 "2009-05-26T19:57:14Z")
> [@tacoloco](#): > > Agreed. > > But at the same time, I know a lot of couples where the wife “wears the pants” and the husbands have to go along with it “or else”. > > I really don’t understand that dynamic at all. I’ve been married for almost 27 years and my wife and I have always been true partners. There has never been this idea of “toeing the line” or having to ask permission to do things. I wonder, though, if some of that is a matter of perspective–marriages are like icebergs–other people only see 10%. There are areas where I make the call in my marriage, and areas where my husband makes the call, and areas where we haggle it out. These aren’t divided into “big decisions” and “little decisions”, but more by topic–when we were moving for him to go to grad school, for example, he really made that choice, though I certainly had a veto. When we were buying a car (he doesn’t drive), I made that choice–but he had a veto. I can easily see how some of our friends might think one or the other of us is the dominant one, depending on the context where they know us. In the same way, if I am going to be late, I call my husband to make sure we didn’t have plans (because I am very bad at forgetting plans–“work brain” and “home brain” don’t share a calendar). I am not really asking permission, but I can see how it might look that way to someone listening. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/25 "2009-05-26T20:04:42Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I wonder, though, if some of that is a matter of perspective–marriages are like icebergs–other people only see 10%. 1. You can extrapolate from that 10% to the rest. And 2) I think people see much more than 10%, especially when it’s people they know closely. If a close friend of yours is discussing their plans to do X (go on vacation, make a major purchase, invite guests etc.), do they hesitate to say anything definite when they haven’t discussed it with their spouse yet? Or do they pretty much assume they will get to do what they want barring some unusual resistance from their spouse? (And step 2 - how often are their plans actually thwarted?) I think you get indications about this all the time, from people you know (close friends, relatives and the like). ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/26 "2009-05-26T20:56:59Z")
To quote Bill Cosby: > [@](#): > > I’m not the boss of my house. I don’t know when I lost it. I don’t know that I ever had it. But, I 've seen the Boss’s job…and I don’t _want_ it! ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/27 "2009-05-26T21:04:31Z")
> [@Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](#): > > I’ve never been married nor do I want to so I have no axe to grind about this. You might want to try sleeping with non-insects…even if they are pretty. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/28 "2009-05-26T21:07:22Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > 1. You can extrapolate from that 10% to the rest. And 2) I think people see much more than 10%, especially when it’s people they know closely. > > If a close friend of yours is discussing their plans to do X (go on vacation, make a major purchase, invite guests etc.), do they hesitate to say anything definite when they haven’t discussed it with their spouse yet? Or do they pretty much assume they will get to do what they want barring some unusual resistance from their spouse? (And step 2 - how often are their plans actually thwarted?) I think you get indications about this all the time, from people you know (close friends, relatives and the like). But again, I think it’d be easy for those extrapolations to be inaccurate: if you listened to me discussing moving when my husband wen to grad school. I’d have sounded totally passive : “Well, it’s whatever program he decides he likes, really”, but if you listened to him talk about our new car, you’d think he was whipped “Whatever car she wants. She seems to like X”. Neither is really true–we both just tend to defer to the other when we think the other cares more. Do you really think the people around you have a solid understanding of the dynamics of your relationship? If so, you must be a much more extroverted person than I am–I don’t talk about the mechanics of my relationship with anyone, really. And I don’t think that’s all that unusual. ---
**Author:** ![Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleeps_With_Butterflies)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/29 "2009-05-26T21:59:21Z")
> [@BlinkingDuck](#): > > You might want to try sleeping with non-insects…even if they are pretty. You might have missed that part you quoted where I mentioned that I don’t want to be married. 😉 > [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > So do indoor cats Indoor cats are comforting, so they’re worth having around. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/30 "2009-05-26T22:45:38Z")
> [@Sleeps\_With\_Butterflies](#): > > Also I’m not sure if you’re joking but since this is Great Debates you’ll also note that married men live longer than single men so that’s wrong, too. I have always questioned what this statistic is really saying. It may be that marriage lengthens a man’s life. Or it may be that men in poor health are less able to attract and keep mates. I agree with **MandaJo** that it is difficult to make generalizations across large populations and cultures. But I do think there is a greater desire for psychological control of their partners evolutionarily programmed into women. The theory of how men and women differ in what concerns them regarding infidelity (i.e., men fear their wife having been physically touched by another man; women fear their husband’s interest straying to another woman, which is grounded in the desire to maximize the propagation of one’s DNA into future generations) would seem to support this. If you accept this theory, a woman won’t be happy if husband is faithful. He must not even be _thinking_ about other women. The ‘Laura Petrie’ syndrome. I also believe that the fact of men’s physical control of women in pre-civilization was likely countered by women developing greater skills to control men psychologically. And that many societies have coded this control by women into their culture, even though its original Stone-Age need has passed. I read an aphorism in Reader’s Digest once: _“Have you ever noticed that you never hear about a man marrying a woman to reform her?”_ ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/31 "2009-05-26T23:24:33Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I also believe that the fact of men’s physical control of women in pre-civilization was likely countered by women developing greater skills to control men psychologically. And that many societies have coded this control by women into their culture, even though its original Stone-Age need has passed. I have a similar theory, which I explained in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8969222&#post8969222): [QUOTE=Polerius] My theory is that over the centuries, or even millenia, when men had the upper hand physically (i.e. they could hit the woman, and society was OK with that), women had to develop some “psychological tools” to be able to bring about some balance of power (to be able to get what they wanted at least some of the time) The behaviors described in this thread are part of the psychological repertoire that women have developed. Now that society does not condone men hitting their wives, we are left with an imbalance of power, and, with their psychological tools intact, it is women who have the upper hand in “modern relationships”, i.e. where the man is too civilized to hit his wife, and in general tries to be more sensitive than the men of yore. To bring about a balance of power again, either society has to condemn the psychological methods used by women as much as it condemns the hitting of women, or men will slowly, over centuries, have to develop a set of psychological tools of their own. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/32 "2009-05-26T23:27:58Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > My explanation is that women rule because they’re smarter. Their superior intelligence lets them outmaneuver men and get what they want. I call bullshit on this. [And a pet peeve of mine is that it is, in this day and age, OK for someone to matter-of-factly state that women are smarter, while if someone states that men are smarter than women, he will never hear the end of it] ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/33 "2009-05-26T23:47:22Z")
BTW, the study linked to in the OP states > [@](#): > > The researchers concluded in their paper that wives behaviorally exhibited more domineering attempts and were more dominant – i.e., more likely to have their partner give in – than husbands during discussions of either spouse’s topic. > … > “There’s been research that suggests that’s a marker of a healthy marriage – that men accept influence from their wives,” You know, given the above statements, there is a far less charitable, for women, explanation of why they “rule the roost” in many marriages. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/34 "2009-05-27T00:22:17Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I read an aphorism in Reader’s Digest once: _“Have you ever noticed that you never hear about a man marrying a woman to reform her?”_ If women didn’t have to reform men, no one would ever marry. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/35 "2009-05-27T00:50:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Polerius > > To bring about a balance of power again, either society has to condemn the psychological methods used by women as much as it condemns the hitting of women, or men will slowly, over centuries, have to develop a set of psychological tools of their own. If you haven’t, you really ought to read Wollstonecraft: she presents a very similar argument–that women are taught to be cunning and sly because they really have no other options. That said, I don’t think that the tools of psychological manipulation are something that take hundreds of years to develop–I think that they can be mastered easily, and usually by the age of 3. It’s frankly insulting to men to suggest that if you take away the option to pop a woman, they are left defenseless against the cunning wit of the sly female–psychological warfare (and psychological abuse) are the common fare of both men and women in equal measure, IMHO. To me, the much more substantial shift in gender relationships has been from interdependence to dependence to independence. Pre-industrial revolution, marriages were vitally important economic units–the work men did on the farm and women did in the house and that children provided in both were all absolutely essential to survival–there is a reason people married young and remarried quickly. Then, we moved to a period of time when women and marriage were a luxury that filled social and emotional roles–the “domestic sphere” was born. This, if anything, was the most out of whack period because men were contributing much more substantially to the household and women had to find new ways to define themselves/give meaning to their lives (so you get the reform movements of the 19th C and the cult of motherhood/angel of the house). Now, things are moving back into balance, but instead of economic interdependence, we have economic independence–couples are having to learn how to hold a relationship together when the whole thing is a luxury, when both partners realistically have the option to walk away tomorrow. This is uncharted territory and none of the old patterns really apply. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/36 "2009-05-27T01:05:53Z")
What we’re dealing with is a double-standard in how society views psychosocial tactics by gender. If a man puts his foot down and stands up for his positions, he’s considered controlling and borderline abusive. If a woman does the same thing, she’s essentially celebrated. Framed another way, if a woman complains that her husband makes a disproportionate number of decisions, her friends and family (at least those below the age of 80) flock to her side, encouraging her to dump the fellow because he’s controlling her life. If a man has the same complaint, he’s (at best) consoled with “join the club”. Cite? Pretty much any family comedy. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/37 "2009-05-27T01:10:23Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > [And a pet peeve of mine is that it is, in this day and age, OK for someone to matter-of-factly state that women are smarter, while if someone states that men are smarter than women, he will never hear the end of it] Very true, Polerius. Put more empirically, it’s considered a crisis of sorts when boys perform better than girls on standardized tests - it’s assumed that there’s a bias there someplace. When girls do better in school, however, the general response is a shrug of the shoulders - that’s the way things are. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/38 "2009-05-27T01:13:25Z")
> [@stuthehistoryguy](#): > > What we’re dealing with is a double-standard in how society views psychosocial tactics by gender. If a man puts his foot down and stands up for his positions, he’s considered controlling and borderline abusive. If a woman does the same thing, she’s essentially celebrated. > > Framed another way, if a woman complains that her husband makes a disproportionate number of decisions, her friends and family (at least those below the age of 80) flock to her side, encouraging her to dump the fellow because he’s controlling her life. If a man has the same complaint, he’s (at best) consoled with “join the club”. > > Cite? Pretty much any family comedy. by gender _by context_. We still have left over ideas from the domestic model that said that the woman had control over the immediate household and the soft, squishy stuff like maintaining a relationship (because she was the one that was economically dependent on that relationship). The flip side to that, however, is that she didn’t have control over the outside world and was supposed to defer to men. So within a marriage, that double standard may exist, but it’s reversed in the work world where an assertive man is celebrated and an assertive woman is a cast-iron bitch. I really think that both those double-standards are eroding as the social structures that created them go away. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/39 "2009-05-27T01:14:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > If women didn’t have to reform men, no one would ever marry. You may well have meant that as a joke, but it’s not far off. It’s considered quite acceptable for women to “clean up” men - pick out their clothes, get them to use hair products, and so on. If a man suggests that a woman may be more attractive if she changes the way she dresses or otherwise presents herself, he’s a pig. Man, I’m not bitter at all, am I? ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690/40 "2009-05-27T01:15:28Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > by gender _by context_. We still have left over ideas from the domestic model that said that the woman had control over the immediate household and the soft, squishy stuff like maintaining a relationship (because she was the one that was economically dependent on that relationship). The flip side to that, however, is that she didn’t have control over the outside world and was supposed to defer to men. So within a marriage, that double standard may exist, but it’s reversed in the work world where an assertive man is celebrated and an assertive woman is a cast-iron bitch. I really think that both those double-standards are eroding as the social structures that created them go away. The work standard may be eroding, but I’m not seeing it in the domestic sphere. JMHO. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-women-rule-the-roost/497690.md?page=3)