Professional success, marriage in danger? This is the conclusion of several studies, including one conducted by a Swedish institute.
Title "Job promotion and the durability of marriage" (professional promotions and the duration of the marriage), she highlighted that women who, at the start of their marriage, earned less than their husband or did not work at all, are more likely to divorce if their career suddenly takes off.
This applies both in the private sector and in politics. According to the authors, Johanna Rickne, professor of economics in Stockholm and Olle Folke political scientist at the University of Uppsala, women appointed to important functions or who engage in politics would see their love life directly turned upside down.
In detail, a woman named CEO, for example, would be twice as likely as a man to divorce in the two years following the promotion.
It is the same in politics, where successful women see the risk of divorce increase by 7% when it has relatively little impact on the marriage of a man engaged in the field.
How to explain these numbers? Partly by a fairly traditional vision of the couple and genders which persists and which claims that the man should bring in the bulk of the salary while the woman manages the household.
Although mentalities are changing, statistics tend to show that women encounter even more obstacles than men to succeed in the professional world.
According to the study, half of women (50%) think that being a woman "is a brake on their professional development", against only 21% of men.
When asked what are the main obstacles to this ascent, women answer family constraints and responsibilities (21%) before age (21%) and hierarchy (19%) while this factor does not even appear in the results on the men's side, the latter not seeing it as a brake on their professional development.
Ten years ago, an American study by the National Bureau of Economic Research had already pointed out that when the share earned by the woman exceeds 50% of the overall household income, the compatibility with the longevity of the couple is reduced, evoking in fact a "glass ceiling" not to be exceeded.
The fact remains, according to the figures, that it is most often the women who ask for the divorce the most, whether the latter earn more or not.
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