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Marriage and Women's Earning Potential

     In order to gain support from women the wedding industry, "Recognizing that many independent women might bristle at the extravagant, irrational edicts, the wedding complex has recast the bride as fullfilling her unconscious dream as a child, one who believes in fairy tales and who needs to be told what to do" (Arend, 2016). Women are taught to aspire to their wedding day, because that will be the most important day of their lives. Yet, Research done comparing the incomes of women who marry before the age of 20, and women who marry after age 30 show that there is a mean difference of $20,000 dollars a year between the two groups.
     The article Want to Earn More Money?Get Married Later. states, “Women with college degrees who waited until after age 30 to get married earn significantly more than college-educated women who married at younger ages. Whereas those who married before age 20 report an average annual income of just over $30,000, those who married at 30 or later earn about $50,000.” Maurie Backman, a financial analyst encourages women to wait to get married and invest their money in retirement funds, or other ventures that will serve their own personal development. Teaching women to be financially literate and aware of what they are spending will enable them to make informed decisions about what they invest their money in. For example, Backman states that women are more likely than men to participate in employer offered retirement plans. Instead of investing $20,000 - $40,000
dollars in a wedding celebration, a woman might decide to invest that money into her retirement, or to instead buy a house with her fiancé and have a small wedding ceremony.
     The emphasis on women to make marriage their number one priority is pervasive, "With very few exceptions, feminists have failed to recognize the bridal business' stranglehold on the female imagination and have not acknowledged the ludicrous amounts of money with which the average middle-class woman celebrates the institution which has disenfranchised her sex" (Engstrom, 2003). Women are willingly buying into the idea that a happy marriage is the result of a large wedding, with all the trappings you see featured in a Disney film. Most couples forget that after the wedding, they are going to need to work at maintaining a healthy marriage with their spouse. In retrospect, the extravagance of the wedding day is frivolous because it doesn't come close to honoring the true commitment being made between the couple. No celebration can truly embody the desire to share your life with someone else, yet the wedding industry wants women to believe an expensive one will ensure a positive marriage outcome.


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