Women Now Overpaid & Underlaid?

Working women: Does the size of your pay packet put men off?
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 03/10/2007

A new breed of single women are finding out that it is possible to be too rich and too successful. Bryony Gordon meets the Miranda generation

Oh, to suffer from the Miranda complex. Of all the problems in all the world, this one doesn't sound like too much of a drag: this latest lifestyle malaise refers to women who are so successful and rich that they have to hide their wage slips and designer dresses from potential boyfriends, lest they wound their fragile male egos and scare them away.

And yet the Miranda complex (named after the high-flying Sex and the City lawyer who had an on-off slacker boyfriend) is a serious issue in America, where recent census data revealed that, in many major cities, women in their twenties earn more than men.

On one dating website, a woman revealed that this had led her successful lawyer friends to pretend to be air stewardesses when they're in bars; a lawyer told the New York Times that she hid designer shopping bags from dates so as not to scare them.

The phenomenon of the Alpha female/Beta male seems to have spread across the Atlantic. A recent National Management Salary Survey reported that women generally reached the top of their profession five years before men.

According to the Office of National Statistics, in 2005 the average hourly pay for women rose by almost 4 per cent – while men only took home an extra 2.5 per cent.

Earlier this year, Barclays Wealth Management estimated that by 2020, women millionaires would outnumber their male counterparts, and that within 20 years 60 per cent of the world's wealth would be managed by women.

"This problem seems to come up more and more regularly in my line of work," says Paula Hall, a relationship psychotherapist. "There is still a stereotype that men are the providers, and if a man gets a lot of his self-worth from work and financial reward, it can be quite wounding when a partner earns more than him.

"They become insecure and anxious that she might find someone better. And anxiety occurs about the future. They think: is this women still going to be a go-getter in 10 years' time and, if so, who is going to take the kids to the dentist or go on the school run? Which one of us will make that sacrifice and what will that mean to our relationship?"

However, all those unlucky souls suffering from the Miranda complex can take heart. Remember that the original Miranda ended up having a baby with her slacker boyfriend and living happily ever after.

LOUISE PEPPER, 29, RADIO PRESENTER

I'm Johnny Vaughan's sidekick on his Capital Radio's breakfast show – but I never tell men what I do in case it sounds as if I'm boasting.

I know a lot of my peers would probably think: "Arggh, a driven, scary media woman – she'll just be wanting to have a bit of fun tonight and then to go back to concentrating on her career."

But I'm like any other woman – I'd like to settle down. So I just say that I work in the station's travel news department, which is silly, because if I am going to have a relationship with someone they will have to find out what I do for a living at some point.

Men like to say that they are attracted to intelligent, independent women but I think that is fundamentally untrue – they like the idea of a homemaker. Obviously not someone who is entirely reliant on them, but someone who displays a few maternal traits. That's just evolution, isn't it?

And let's face it, someone trying to carve out a career isn't going to be great at baking cakes – though my Victoria sponge is very good. If you're in the office all hours, it hardly says: "Choose me to start a family with." What it says is: "She's too busy breaking balls to have a relationship."

But I'm not, though. I can't remember the last time someone asked me out. In my group of friends – all of whom are high-earning professionals – the girls always do the asking. It wasn't like that five or 10 years ago. Men used to say, "I think it would be a daring turn-on if a woman asked me out," because it never happened. The tables have definitely turned on that one.

Why is this? I think it is because ours is the generation in which girls first started to outperform boys in GCSEs and A-levels. From a very early age men have grown-up with this notion that women are these all-achieving creatures. It's somehow terrifying and emasculating if we're earning £20,000 more than them.

I've noticed that my friends and I have become very good at down-playing ourselves. If a man says he likes a pair of our shoes, we will immediately say, "They were five quid from Primark", even if they were £500 from Prada. I always claim to be dressed head-to-toe in Topshop. I can't imagine a man ever having to be so modest.

HEATHER CULSHAW, 30, LAWYER

The only men who ever approach me for dates are in their fifties. Maybe it is because they have more confidence and security in themselves and so don't feel threatened by a woman who has made a success of herself.

Men my age never talk to me once they've found out what I do. Sometimes, they physically take a step back. I think they assume I am focused purely on my career.

You can be talking about television – The X Factor, or something – and then they find out you're a lawyer and suddenly start trying to talk about business or the situation in Burma. I think they'd be very different if I were a teacher.

Men in my profession can be very flash with their cash to impress women. It's a bit of a jokey given: order a bottle of champagne in a posh bar. But I could never do that, despite the fact that, in the future, I could be earning a six-figure salary. It would be seen as unpalatable and brash. Instead, I spend my money on holidays and nice things for my home.

I'm in Berlin at the moment with my brother, which is great, but I can't help thinking that I'm at an age when it would be nice to be spending my cash on a holiday with a boyfriend.

I have all this money, but fundamentally I feel that there's very little worth spending it on. My mother has always said that I'll end up married to a Big Issue seller, because I go for men who are what you might call "lost causes". I think that's partly a way of proving that I am not completely career-obsessed. The problem is that men like that tend to be intimidated by women like me.

That's why I am contemplating having kids on my own – I'd hate to get to 40 and be childless. When I was a teenager, my mind boggled at women who had children on their own. I thought it was selfish.

Now I am seriously considering it.

The biggest disappointment would not be failing to make it as a senior partner; it would be failing to have children. I sometimes wonder if I would be happier if I had chosen a simpler path, but the only thing I have wanted to do is practise law.

It can be quite tough, though. I am different in the office to how I am at home. At work, I am the only woman on my team, so I have to be hard-nosed and quite harsh.

At weekends, I over-compensate by being really girly, because I don't want any friends – or potential boyfriends – to think I'm an iron-knickered harridan.

And again:

For the first time, women in their 20s who work full time in several American cities — New York, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis — are earning higher wages than men in the same age range, according to a recent analysis of 2005 census data by Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York.

For instance, the median income of women age 21 to 30 in New York who are employed full time was 17 percent higher than that of comparable men.

Professor Beveridge said the gap is largely driven by a gulf in education: 53 percent of women employed full time in their 20s were college graduates, compared with 38 percent of men. Women are also more likely to have graduate degrees. “They have more of everything,” Professor Beveridge said.

On a first date at a lounge in Hell’s Kitchen, Thrupthi Reddy, 28, a brand strategist in Manhattan, watched her date down several cocktails to her one, then not even flinch when she handed the waitress her credit card. Initially miffed, she recognized her own contradictions.

“You wonder if you’re being a hypocrite,” she recalled, “because all date long I’m telling him how independent I was, and how annoying it was that men wouldn’t date strong independent women.” (The relationship ended after six months.)

So there you have it - despite all the BS feminist propaganda - women now make more than men due to female favoritism in the workplace.

Bu-f'n-hu...overpaid & underlaid now?

Wahhh, cry me a f'n river ladies...and please quit blaming men for all your personal dysfunctions and life choices. First you whined about getting "underpaid," and now you whine about getting OVERPAID. Krist, are you spoiled-rotten harpies ever happy???

LOOK, fact is, men like women who are in touch with their natural femininity. And most type-A careeraholics are simply NOT. Men aren't "scared." We're simply not ATTRACTED.

I mean, what a f'n ego-saving joke! That's like saying women are "scared" of short, fat, ugly, feminine, poor men. No, they're not SCARED, they're simply REPULSED and not interested. So, SAME THING with men and unfeminine women! Get real, fools!

But, heyyyy, don't worry...the "real" Miranda got knocked up by a slacker bum and "lived happily ever after." Uhhhm...hm. Ok...does anyone else have a problem with "taking heart" from what a fictional character on a completely fictional TV show did? LMAO - man, have women ever been this out-of-touch with reality or WHAT???