Many researchers, and many more pop psychologists, have questioned whether a woman’s professional success has to come at the expense of her personal happiness.
Now, a new study shows that may be true in the case of at least one profession: acting.
The study from University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and Carnegie Mellon University found that female actors who win a Best Actress Oscar have a 63 percent chance of their marriages ending sooner than those women who don’t take home the prize.
The researchers evaluated 751 nominees for best actor and actress going back to 1936. They found that the median duration of a marriage for a Best Actress Oscar winner was 4.3 years, versus 9.51 years for the losers.
In other words, it’s not a coincidence that Sandra Bullock, Halle Berry, Kate Winslet and Hilary Swank all dumped – or got dumped by – their hubbies so soon after those emotional acceptance speeches.
There was no such difference for Best Actor winners. Both had a median marriage duration of about 12 years.
Do you think it strains a marriage when a wife is more successful than her husband?