“At first, I preferred to skip the salary issue with my partner,” explains Bernardita Pavani, 26, who works as a Project Manager at Glovo. The Argentine has lived in Barcelona since last year, after having accepted an opportunity from her company. “She came very well positioned at work and with a good salary. He was finishing her master’s degree and was just entering the Spanish job market. But it was never an issue. He encourages me to grow in my career. He tells me: “I already have assumed that you are the most successful of the two and nothing happens.” For the first time, I experience it as something normal”.
She preferred not to tell her partner how much she earned because in the past there were many times when she did not find the expected reaction. “It was something that affected my love life,” she says. Pavani graduated with honors and ahead of schedule, later working in the US “When she went out with someone and explained what she had done, it was like it was a flaw or something I should be ashamed of. Sometimes it made me want to lie,” she says. “I’ve dated guys whose career was always ahead of mine. I am also super ambitious and in the end this generated a lot of friction”.
“There are more and more women managers and businesswomen occupying positions of responsibility and, therefore, earning more,” says Ana Bujaldón, president of the Spanish Federation of Women Managers, Executives, Professionals, and Businesswomen (FEDEPE). The businesswoman cites a study by Kowalewska (Oxford University) and Vitali (University of Trento) from 2021, which speaks of the “penalty” suffered in their well-being by these couples, who report being less satisfied with their lives. “In a minority of couples, although increasingly numerous, the woman has a ‘superior’ economic status (…). These ‘female-breadwinner’ couples are more common in some countries (for example, Portugal and Spain) than in others (for example, Norway and Switzerland), and they represent one in every twenty couples on average in European countries.”
“This is something that can happen mainly in the middle classes or at least with higher education”, says the professor of Anthropology and History at the UB Bruna Álvarez. “In the working classes, there continues to be a more prominent sexual division of labor, with men contributing the most. Even if they don’t have studies, they can work in certain trades, such as plumber, plumber or electrician. There is a significant wage gap between these professions and those that women without studies can access, such as a supermarket cashier.”
“People mostly pair up or marry people of the same social class. An executive does not marry a worker or a taxi driver, because the ways of living and functioning end up colliding”, points out Vicent Borràs Català, tenured professor in the Department of Sociology at the UAB and researcher at the Center for Sociological Studies on Daily Life and the Work-QUIT.
Although it may be a minority phenomenon, of the middle or upper classes, the truth is that there are more and more couples where she is the breadwinner. What happens when, in a heterosexual couple, she earns more? “The masculinity of the man is questioned, because he is not fulfilling his social function. He is educated to be the main contributor and for the woman to follow him, not the other way around. The norm is that she has to be the one who accompanies him”, explains Borràs Català.
That is why, “women who earn more salary than their partners, with highly demanding positions and jobs or that require a lot of time away from home, often pay a price. For men it is usually something difficult to carry. The percentage of women with this type of work who are separated, divorced or without a partner is much higher than in men”, indicates the sociologist.
“The greater the responsibility, the greater the remuneration, but it is also usually accompanied by greater dedication”, says the president of FEDEPE Ana Bujaldón and adds: “heterosexual couples can be deteriorated when men feel a certain insecurity, when they feel that their traditional role is being questioned as the main provider of the home or see themselves as primarily responsible for issues related to the home and children”.
“If a man lives gender roles in a very rigid way and thinks that, because he is a man, he has to generate more money than his partner or support his family, he may feel incapable and have low self-esteem,” agrees the couples therapist Lua Carreira.
“I have experienced very strange situations related to money in my love life and many times I have seen myself judged for being focused on my career and earning more than my partners,” says Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Edita Lobaciute (32), who He is from Lithuania and lives in Barcelona. The memory that resonates with her the most is one of hers eight years ago, when she lived in Germany: “My boyfriend at that time worked in a clothing store and I worked in one of the main real estate and technology companies in the country. I earned twice as much as him and that made the relationship really awkward. He felt like a loser and I was almost embarrassed by my well-deserved salary. This difference in our income was undoubtedly one of the reasons why the relationship ended so soon.”
For Clara (this is not her real name), 25, this was also a source of conflict with her ex-partner, with whom she had a two-year relationship, which ended in early 2022. She worked as a Product Manager in a company technology and he as a freelance in marketing. “She earned twice as much as him but we never talked about it openly. I was trying to hide it. I don’t think it suited his manhood particularly well,” Clara explains, adding: “In my family, my mother has always been the one who earned the most and the one who paid the most, and it was also always a bit of a taboo subject.”
The difference in income generated constant tension between her and her ex-partner. “It was a sticking point because I love to do things, but we were at my house all day. He never invited me anything, not even a dinner. He said that I should pay more things because he earned more. I was always the one who invited”, says Clara and adds: “Although he did earn more, he also had expenses that he did not have. I lived alone and he lived with his parents.
“The person who earns more money or brings home more money may feel it a bit unfair and the other person may feel that it doesn’t come. It is important to clarify that the economic part is not the only way to contribute, there are also others”, indicates the couples therapist Lua Carreira, who adds that when “we talk about the future, what will happen when we want to move, or buy a floor or have children, sometimes there is that concern and the complaint that the other is not very ambitious and does not move to earn more”.
“At the level of ambition, I did think that he could be doing something else with his life. He was doing something that he said he liked, which is fine, but at some point he was going to need something more from him, only that point never came, ”explains Clara. “The guy he was dating was two years older than me and he was from Berlin. Instead, I was an expat with limited knowledge of the local language. It always seemed to me that he did not work hard enough to earn a higher salary”, says Edita Lobaciute.
Although for some couples financial disparity is not a reason for discomfort between them, it does arouse comments in their environment. Alma (this is a pseudonym), 28, is a marketing specialist and, after receiving a government scholarship to do a master’s degree, in 2022 she agreed to a one-year work experience at the Spanish embassy in New York.
“My boyfriend left his job in Spain to come with me. Since I earned quite well, he took care of most of the day-to-day expenses and the trips we made. My friends would tell me: ‘you are their sugar mommy’ or ‘you don’t have to’. Why not? I had gotten this opportunity and he had accompanied me. If he had been the other way around, probably no one would have noticed it, ”he says.
For them, it was never an inconvenience. “On the contrary, he is super proud of everything he achieves,” says Alma, adding: “He knows that I have more ambition and he doesn’t see it as a problem. He doesn’t mind saying: ‘I’ll accompany you’. He accompanied me when I did the master’s degree in Madrid and then when I got the job in the US. He always says that he has lived many experiences in his life thanks to me.
“People assume that he earns more because his work is more prestigious, when in reality it is the other way around,” says Laura, a 34-year-old UX writer, who also asks that her real name not be published, adding : “He is a doctor and my work is very specialized and little known. No one quite understands what I do. The truth is that he is not paid well at all and right now I have a salary that is not very normal. I don’t share it much, not because he’s ashamed, but I don’t want to go around saying it either.
For her partner, “this was never a problem and, in fact, she supports me and celebrates it,” says Laura. She is proud “to have a partner who breaks stereotypes.” In addition to being the one who earns the most money of the two, she is five years older than him. “This is something about which they have made comments to me. They have told me cougars or ‘it’s a baby’, for example, while when I was in a relationship with someone much older than me, nobody ever said anything.
Some women not only earn more than their partner, but also support the family economy. This is the case of Zalihata Ahamada Lafeuille, 44, Design Operations Manager at Glovo who also works independently offering UX design mentoring. She and her husband are French and live in Barcelona, ??along with four of her five children, between the ages of 8 and 19.
When they finished high school some 26 years ago, they both decided to dedicate themselves exclusively to work, so they could move in together. “We started with the same type of work in services, with little responsibility and with similar salaries. I decided to resume my studies and started working at the Orange company, where I did a lot of internal training and had the opportunity to change jobs more times than him, with better salaries and more responsibility”, explains Lafeuille.
Having children was what made the biggest difference between their career paths. “When my second child arrived, my salary was higher and that is why we decided that my husband would reduce his working hours to 50% to take care of the children the rest of the time. It was cheaper than paying a babysitter”, explains the executive and adds: “This continued for about seven years, where I changed jobs many times while for him it was quite linear, because he was working part-time and his company did not I recognized his abilities.”
“There are very few cases in which they act as a housewife,” says the sociologist Vicent Borràs Català, explaining that: “It costs a lot for them to take this step because, for a man, not being in the job market means a deconstruction of his masculinity. While for women it is considered a valid option, in the case of men there are usually external conditioning factors that push them to make that decision. Generally, they have been directly or indirectly expelled from the labor market, either because their work was precarious, it was not well paid, they did not quite like it or because there was an incompatibility between having children and working, and she was the one who contributed the most money”.
When Zalihata Lafeuille and her husband decided to move to Barcelona last year, he took a sabbatical to deal with logistics and “do flexible, one-off jobs from home, which allow him to be present when I’m not around,” explains Lafeuille. “I am very ambitious. I like to work. I do a lot of things and travel a lot”, says the businesswoman and adds: “My husband has always supported me. He never tells me ‘You shouldn’t do this’ or ‘It’s too much’. If he does it, it’s only because he sees me surpassed ”.
She also takes part in housework and taking care of her children. “I was always involved. We both go to school meetings”, says Lafeuille and explains: “When my children were younger, they wrote to me from school to ask me for things. It is assumed that the mother is the one who takes care of this type of thing, in the same way that in the bank or in different situations related to finances my husband is addressed as if he were the one who pays the bills. We have always had to clarify that in our house it works differently ”.
“It is very difficult for parents to be assumed as the main caregivers. Even though it has been agreed that they take care of these tasks while they work, they are still the ones in the WhatsApp group of mothers”, points out anthropologist Bruna Álvarez.
“The traditional model is not replicated, in which the man contributed financially and she was almost exclusively in charge of housework and children. Although he may be the one who runs the day-to-day running of the house, she also takes care of it”, points out the sociologist Vicent Borràs Català. The woman in this type of relationship “does not want to give up having a role within the home, because there is socialization by gender and social pressure. She cannot be an absent mother, because she would penalize her”.
“The managers and businesswomen explain to us that the greatest discrimination they feel has to do with social expectations about their role as mothers or for having decided not to be one,” says the president of FEDEPE Ana Bujaldón and adds: “They feel judged for being absent or little involved in their children’s school activities, family events or medical appointments, either due to work trips or complicated schedules, even though their partner assumes all the domestic responsibilities and the needs of the minors are covered. Women who prioritize professional responsibilities are socially penalized, because they break with gender stereotypes rooted in society. That feeling of guilt regarding time management does not occur in parents.
“Since I became a mother, I have experienced several times the judgment of my family, for the fact of continuing to work several hours during my maternity leave and returning to work full time after a year, with the help of a nanny,” she explains. Edit Lobaciute.
“Women spend less time on housework than their mothers. But this has not been replaced by men, rather the standards of domestic well-being have changed”, says Borràs Català and adds: “We have messier and dirtier houses and we spend less time cooking, or we outsource part of this work ”.
In addition -says the sociologist-, “the fact that women contribute more money does not have to influence the distribution of domestic work”. “Women have a more collective conception of the family. If she contributes more to the house, she considers that this is family money, not her own money. It does not work as a bargaining chip to deal with fewer tasks.”
“My money is the family’s money. I don’t see it any other way. For me, any other way doesn’t make sense”, says Zalihata Ahamada Lafeuille. “From the beginning we divided everything, but now that I earn a lot more, I pay for more things. I like that my relationship is not centered on money and that we don’t have to worry about it,” says Laura.
In the cases where both work -explains Bruna Álvarez-, “we observe that, while men can put work obligations before household chores, and stop cooking, for example, because they have to do some work, women – even if they also have a work obligation- they still find the time to do it”. In this sense, she points out that “although the trend is for men to participate more and more, there is still a gap between the ground gained by women in the labor market and what they have assumed in domestic tasks.”
“Even if they work more hours or contribute more in financial terms, they are still the ones in charge of thinking about the purchases that have to be made, the paperwork, if the children go on excursions, all these types of details, which in the end make us feel a extra overload”, points out the couples therapist Lua Carreira and adds: “Women can have positions of responsibility, even earn more money, but it seems that within the home the roles have not changed so much”.
