but I actually interact a lot, in a volunteer capacity, with the black community where I live. I'm just realizing that I've never noticed that the whole "men are worth something because of their career" thing there. I'm not passing relative value judgements or anything, but I do wonder if there is something sociologically about black american subculture that makes women look past all that???

I am not a woman. So I can only say what I see, (and there seems to be a lower tendency towards marriage in their community anyway). But from what I see... there are black female doctors with laid off garbagemen for instance. I see self employed business women with unemployed guys. (Generally laid off laborers.) I see a lot of really high ranking corporate vp or law firm type women with teachers/community organizer types. (That one happens a lot.) Couples like these constitute a sizable portion of what I would call the "black middle class" where I am. And of course, you have the regular couples that look like what we would call more traditional, with both parties working at the same level. But that doesn't happen NEARLY as often as you'd think, and the egalitarian pairings also don't seem to last as long as the high ranking female-low ranking male pairings. (Divorce-wise I mean.)

Here's the thing though... I can't actually recall ever coming across a couple where the man was "higher ranking" than the woman??? There are probably a few out there, but I don't come across them in my interactions.

I never thought about that until I read through this thread.

It would be interesting to look through some of these smaller communities to find out how they deal with what seems to be slowly happening in the larger society. Just throwing that out there because they seem to be further down the road towards this "jobless" economic system. The reasons may be really simple. ie - maybe they just have a different culture??? And that's fine. Or maybe it's that the pressures on women in certain american subcultures are different??? Or whatever??? Who knows??? As I said... I'm not a woman... but I think it would be worth looking at.

The more I think about it... the more differences there are popping into my mind right now. It really is fascinating. I never stopped to think about it before.