The proportion of couples where the woman earns more than the man has increased in most modern societies. In the U.S., according to the Pew Research Institute, the share of marriages where the woman is the sole or primary breadwinner increased from only 5% of marriages in 1972 to 16% of marriages in 2022, a three-fold rise. In France, the trend is similar. In 2017, women earned more than their partners in 25% of French couples, up from 20% in 2002.
In many countries, there is evidence that when the woman is the primary or sole breadwinner, the couple is more likely to break up, although there is some evidence that the link between female breadwinning and divorce has weakened among recent marriage cohorts in the U.S. (but see evidence for the opposite published in these pages). The argument has been made that this represents a weakening of the “male breadwinner norm” in the U.S., and the rise of more egalitarian and gender-neutral norms concerning breadwinning.
If the rise of egalitarian gender norms means a decrease in the likelihood of the dissolution of female-breadwinning couples, then this should be happening in France, particularly among younger generations, given the current high social acceptance of dual-earning couples there and the strong government support for dual-earning couples with children. France is an interesting case in that there has been a huge increase in non-marital cohabitation in recent years, and more than half of all children are born outside of marriage. In addition to marriage, French couples can choose to form a “civil partnership.” These civil partnerships offer some, but not all, of the legal and tax advantages of marriage. The type of partnership may influence the probability of union dissolution, given that marriages represent the most committed partnerships and are more expensive and difficult to dissolve. That is, any tendency of couples to break up when the woman is the primary breadwinner may be greater for unmarried couples. At the same time, marriage is a more traditional arrangement where normative expectations for a traditional male breadwinner may be higher, so deviation from the male breadwinner role may be more likely to promote couple dissolution when the couple is married.
To examine the effect of female breadwinning on the likelihood of union dissolution among married and cohabitating couples in France, as well as couples in civil partnerships, Giulia Ferrari, Anne Solaz, and Agnese Vitali used the French Permanent Demographic Sample, which links censuses, vital event registrations, housing, and income declarations for a representative sample of the French population (about 4% of the entire population). They examined couples who were aged 18 and over and married, in a registered partnership, or in a cohabitating union in January 2011 and followed them until January 2017, a sample total of 992,217 couples. The researchers examined the woman’s share of the couple’s total income from all sources for a given year and how this affected the couple’s chance of dissolution in the following year.
They found that in about half of the couples, the man was the primary earner, while the man and woman were equal earners in about 20% percent of the couples, and the woman was the primary breadwinners (meaning the woman contributed between 55% and 95% of the couple’s total income) in 14% of the couples. When the woman earned 55% or more of the couple’s total income, the partnership was more likely to dissolve the following year. This was true irrespective of the man’s employment situation.
The greater likelihood of union dissolution for female breadwinner couples was also found across the three different types of unions—marriages, civil partnerships, and cohabitation. However, overall cohabitating partnerships were the most likely to dissolve, as might be expected, while marriages were the least likely to dissolve. There was no evidence that cohabiting couples faced a lower likelihood of break up when the woman earned more, as might be expected if cohabiting couples are more gender egalitarian than married couples, although there was evidence of a stabilizing effect on the couple when the man and woman earned about the same.
The researchers also examined whether the likelihood of union dissolution was different across different income groups, but they found that the likelihood of partnership dissolution rose with increasing female breadwinning across all income groups and was strongest in the lowest income group. Only in the highest income group did the relationship between woman’s relative income share and probability of dissolution become u-shaped.
Ferrari and coauthors also examined whether the female breadwinning “penalty” was decreasing across age groups, as may be expected if traditional norms of male breadwinning were weakening among younger generations. They found no decrease in the positive relationship between female breadwinning and the probability of couple dissolution among younger couples.
These results suggest that regardless of increases in women’s employment and gender egalitarianism in recent years in France, when the woman earns more than the man, the couple is more likely to split up, and the risk of breakup increases the more money the woman earns compared to the man. This is consistent with recent findings for the U.S. previously published on this page.
It would seem that who earns more in a couple remains important even in a society, like France, where gender norms have become more egalitarian, and cohabiting and civil partnerships are acceptable alternatives to marriage. Regardless of the cultural context, the data on couple dissolution indicate that women still prefer a partner who can credibly support, or assist in supporting, a family. The reasons for this are likely due to sex differences in long term mate preferences that are deeply rooted in human nature, as research in evolutionary psychology has argued, and somewhat impervious to changing societal contexts and gender role expectations.
Rosemary L. Hopcroft is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of Evolution and Gender: Why it matters for contemporary life (Routledge 2016), editor of The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, & Society (Oxford, 2018), and author (with Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber) of Not So Weird After All: The Changing Relationship Between Status and Fertility (Routledge, 2024).