为什么女人比男人挣得多？

    美国的女性未来有望成为养家糊口的主力军。

    如果女性的经济实力继续如期增长，这个转折点将出现在一代人之后。这个趋势十分引人瞩目，就连《时代》杂志（TIME）最新一期的封面故事也是谈的这个话题。

    “近40%的在职女性挣得比他们的丈夫还多，”《更富有的性别》（The Richer Sex）的作者莉莎•芒迪在《时代》和《财富》杂志（Fortune）共同组织的纽约早餐会上说。《更富有的性别》既是《时代》本期的封面故事，也是芒迪新近出版的一本书。

    出席早餐会的嘉宾都是《财富》杂志最具影响力的女性：她们拿着高达百万的薪水；她们的家庭实行女主外，男主内；她们是各自世界里的“主宰者”。芒迪的研究显示，女性在很多地方都挣得比男性多。比方说，在大多数的美国大都市，20多岁、无子女的单身女性收入中值高于同龄男性。而在达拉斯和亚特兰大，年轻男性每挣1美元，年轻女性平均分别可以挣到1.18美元和1.14美元。

    为什么会出现这样急剧的转变？芒迪说，五十年前，避孕药开始逐步应用，帮助推动了这一趋势：它能够延迟结婚和养育孩子的时间，因此，女性开始集中精力发展事业。美国向服务型经济的转变也有利于大学毕业生就业，而女性在大学中所占比例在日益提高。如今，女性已占到美国大学在校人数的60%，获得硕士和博士学位的人数甚至超过了男性。

    美国超过一半的家庭中，女性将赚得比男性还多。有什么能够阻止这个趋势吗？“我看不到有什么能阻止这一趋势，”为《华盛顿邮报》（Washington Post）撰写文章的芒迪在早餐会上告诉 《时代》杂志执行编辑南希•吉布斯说。她说，有些行业，像兽医，从业者中的女性太多了，以至于现在鲜有男性进入。她将这一现象称为“性别污染”。未来25年，法律、医学等行业也很可能被女性占据主导地位。

    而且还有一个事实，当今美国有41%的婴儿为单身妈妈所生。虽然芒迪没有找到可信的数据说明这些未婚妈妈中同居或独居的比例各占多少，但“我们从人口统计中获知的一个数据是，当前约25%的18岁以下孩子是同母亲、而不是父亲生活在一起。”

    这不禁要让参加早餐会的最具影响力女性们以及我要问一个问题：在一个女性不再需要别人供养的世界里，从小被教育应身担养家糊口责任的男性能开心生活吗？作为一名乐观主义者，芒迪认为，很多男性将卸下养家糊口的重任。（证据之一：虽然当今社会的整体结婚率在呈现下降的趋势，但高收入女性的结婚率却在上升。）而且，她认为，社会将适应“男子气定义的扩展”。男子气将既包括狩猎，也包括做饭，既包括打高尔夫球，也包括带孩子。

    “我们总是太急于下结论，认为男子气已经消失，”曼迪在她的《时代》封面文章中写到。如果世界按照她希望的方式演进，男性和女性都会变得更加富有，只是意义各有不同。

    译者：老榆木

    Women are poised to become America's biggest breadwinners.

    The tipping point is a generation away, assuming women's economic power keeps rising as expected. But already, the trend is stunning enough that TIME made it the subject of its current cover.

    "Almost 40% of working wives out-earn their husbands," noted Liza Mundy, author of "The Richer Sex"--both the cover story and a new book that goes by the same title--at a breakfast in New York City, hosted by TIME and Fortune.

    The audience was Fortune's Most Powerful Women: female Masters of the Universe who have seven-figure salaries and househusbands. Mundy's research shows that women are out-earning men all around. In most U.S. metro areas, for instance, single childless women in their 20s have higher median incomes than their male peers. In Dallas and Atlanta, the average young woman earns $1.18 and $1.14, respectively, for every dollar earned by a male.

    Why such rapid advancement? The Pill, Mundy said, helped spark the trend 50 years ago: Newly able to delay marriage and childbearing, women began focusing on their careers. America's shift to a service economy also favors college grads, who increasingly tend to be female. Today, women make up 60% of U.S. college classes and earn more masters and doctorate degrees than men.

    What can stop women from out-earning men in more than 50% of U.S. households? "Nothing that I can see," Mundy, who writes for the Washington Post (WPO), told TIME Executive Editor Nancy Gibbs at the breakfast. Some industries, such as veterinary medicine, are so populated with women that few men are now entering them, she said. She calls the phenomenon "gender pollution." In 25 years, law and medicine may well be female-dominated.

    And there's the fact that 41% of babies in the U.S. today are born to single mothers. While Mundy found no reliable data on how many of these unmarried moms are cohabiting vs. living alone, "what we do know from the census is that currently about 25% of children under 18 live with a mother and not a father."

    This got me and the powerful women at my breakfast table asking: Can men, bred to be providers, live happily in a world where women may not need them for support? An optimist, Mundy believes that many men will cede control as breadwinners.(One bit of evidence: Marriage rates for high-income women are rising, as overall marriage rates decline.) Moreover, society will adapt by "broadening the definition of masculinity," she contends. Masculinity will include cooking as well as hunting, and child care as well as golf.

    "We are always too quick to think masculinity is finished," Mundy writes in her TIME cover story. If the evolution plays out as she hopes, both men and women will become richer in their own ways.