Lana Turner once said: “A successful man is the one who wins more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is the one who can find a man like this”. This seems to be the idea that inspires Jenny’s parents in the movie “An Education” (2009).

In this plot, based on Lynn Barber’s memoires, sixteen year old Jenny meets David Goldman, a mature man who dazzles her with fancy dinners, fun and trips. Before the promise of a life full of luxury Jenny will have to decide what is better for her: marrying David—like her parents encourage her to—or keep with her studies to get into Oxford—like her parents wished before meeting David—What would you do? What would you expect your daughter to decide?

I talked about the film with several people, men and women, and the majority told me that it reflects a reality: women prefer to marry rich men. This is what the US calls “Marrying Up”, or like a friend of mine put it : “marrying well”. Is it human nature? Is it a cultural phenomenon?

Nanell and David Barash (him, a professor at the University of Washington), in their book “Madame Bovary’s Ovaries” sustain that women give more value, than men, to socio-economic status as a quality to choose a mate. Evolutionary psychologists call this phenomenon hypergamy. There are several psycho-bio-social theories that try to explain it; one of them is the hypothesis of structural impotence. This explains that if men control the resources in a society, the only way that women can access these resources, power and status lifting is by marrying men that already have them. The aforementioned is documented in traditional societies such as the Inuit (eskimos), in Alaska.

In “The anatomy of love” Helen Fisher affirms that it is no surprise that harems exist where cultural patterns allow it. Men desire polygamy because it allows them to have a greater lineage. To have many wives, however, it is necessary to have enough resources to guarantee a certain quality of life to their wives and offspring. According to Fisher “women enter harems to obtain resources and guarantee their children’s survival”.

But if this is the case, what happens to hypergamy in societies where women can ascend socially by their own academic merits and work efforts? A study made by David Buss out of the University of Texas showed that, even among successful women, the more resource access a man has, he is valued better as a potential mate. Buss identified financially successful women, measuring their income, and contrasted their mate preferences with women with lower income. When interpreting Buss’s study, Barash points out: “financially successful women had a good education, had the tendency of having professional degrees, and greater self-esteem. The study showed that Successful women value mates with a professional degree, high social status, greater intelligence, tall independent and with a high self esteem more than those of lesser professional success”.

The hypothesis of structural impotence anticipated that in the measure that women have access to resources, their preferences for men of greater status and income would reduce. But this was not the case.

From another perspective—from evolutionary psychology—hypergamy makes sense since it was an evolutionary strategy for millions of years that allowed our ancestors to ensure the reproduction and sustenance of their lineage. Scientists explain it thusly: since a man is capable of getting several women pregnant in a short period of time, women would need to find men with the greatest status possible that would grant them access to resources even if they have to share their mate, with or without knowledge of cause. This could explain why dominant, rich, high status men marry women from a lower status and not the other way around.

Understanding our nature, instead of suppressing it, is indispensable to make better personal and public policy choices. After all, if the subjacent objective in the evolutionary strategy of “marrying up” is counting on the access to resources, stability and greater survival opportunities to the coming generation, today there are other ways to achieve it.

Education brings the opportunity of being independent, successful and stable to both genders equally. Why expect something from someone what one can do by him/herself? As many studies point out, education is the main factor that allows socioeconomic ascension. That’s what I told my daughter, I said:

Dear, never forget that a good education, is the only husband that—for sure—will never leave you.

Published in Opinión y Análisis
El Universal
March 6th, 2010