When it comes to IQ levels and how they affect male and female marriage, according to a study conducted by researchers at four British universities, not only is the way IQ affects the genders very different, but it is in fact opposite, with higher IQ men getting married more easily, and higher IQ women marrying at lower rates. This begs the question of why?

What I’m going to argue is that the reasons behind this are primarily a change of historical and legal context, a difference in the leverage women now hold in terms of their own resources affecting need for marriage, the doubled responsibilities higher IQ women consistently face, while also discussing hypergamy and reasons why marriage at least appears to be more beneficial for high IQ men than for women.

When looking at women’s rights historically, marriage was almost always the best choice

In the past, few women had the opportunity to capitalize on and develop themselves in a manner that would allow them to use their IQ. A simple example is the inequality for both genders in higher education level. In the U.S., it was only in 1837 women were allowed to go to college at all (Chamberlain,1991) and historically it took hundreds of years more for women to even be allowed to have higher education than men (Martin, 2023).

If we look at the married women’s property acts of the 19^th century, before this act, in many states women weren’t even allowed to own much of their own properties, enter into contracts or engage in many careers without the assistance of men. It was only in 1919 that women in the UK received the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which enabled women to join the professions and professional bodies, to sit on juries and be awarded degrees(Wikipedia,2024).           

With realities of little opportunities for women to achieve economic freedom, regardless of how smart women were or how high their IQ might have been, it seems to be a general solution for intelligent women to get married and become economically dependent and socially submit.

Furthermore, historically, women’s suicide rate decreased significantly after being allowed to get divorced (Willingham, 2023). This also implies that unhappy marriages were one of the considerable causes of suicide for women. Despite of this fact, it is likely to come out the argument that women now, especially those with high IQs, would come to a conclusion after the measurement of  the consequence of a failure marriage: “ if having a marriage I’m not satisfied with greatly reduces my life’s quality, maybe it’s best to not get married at all “.

Today however, very contrastingly, the legal circumstances of women’s rights and also benefits they might themselves reap from their own intellectual capabilities and high IQs have changed drastically.

This includes key facts such as:

• The chance for women to get higher educated has increased rapidly, even outnumbering men.
• There has been a significantly smaller gender gap, and while there are still many professional injustices faced by women, professions and social sections where women on average make more than men constantly exists. But, only before marriage and childbirth making marriage even less appealing for highly intellectually and professionally competent women.
• Women now not only being able to own property, but in cases owning a lot, even more than men.

A combination of such factors simply increases the limit of social status for women, promoting the decision of keeping solo because marriage might not seem like the optimal choice.

This also invites us to reflect upon the legal changes that have made it so that more intelligent women are less likely to get married, although this doesn’t necessarily mean relationships in themselves are less appealing for more intelligent women. Therefore, it might be interesting to carry out the same study, but to now test if the rate of women being single but not married also goes down by 58% per 15-point increase in IQ, or if the ratio might be different.

 

For women without options, marriage was the only choice

If there’s little choice for better career opportunities and financial outcomes, women would not only be more likely to be married regardless of IQ, but would also be more likely to get married quickly to avoid being without resources. In such marriages, men, with more career prospects and opportunities had more marriage. But, because as we established career and education limitations have now been reduced for women, this means high IQ women, and women competent professionally now have more leverage in relationships. This allows women to not simply settle for what might be seen as lower standards and conditions, or – simply not settle at all.

The point is, women have more options now, leading to less of a need for marriage for highly competent women who themselves are more likely to have successful careers.

As unemployment rises, the divorce rate goes down: For every 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate, the divorce rate goes down by 1 percent (Vedantam, 2011).

One case demonstrating this was Lindsay Reynolds in Waterloo, Wis, who stated:

“I got down to 90 pounds,” she says. “It wasn’t something I chose to do. It’s not like I purposely starved myself. This was, ‘I could not afford to buy food.’ ” She felt she had to get out of the marriage. There was only one problem: Filing the paperwork for even a basic divorce cost a few hundred dollars.

“I couldn’t afford to get divorced. It wasn’t an option because I didn’t have the money,” she says.

Or, even more tragic situations like in Afghanistan where economic desperation has led to girls getting married off even as children (Sinclair, 2024).

Here the point is, that when economic opportunities are limited, when women, even girls, feel they have no choice, marriage becomes more likely. This would in many circumstances happen regardless of IQ, such as the case of Afghan families, and therefore is largely dependent on if there exist social and legal structures to support women to avoid having marriage be the only choice for life, even survival.

It can therefore be argued much of higher IQ women in modern societies not getting married is because they have more choices, and if marriage is simply not a good one they are not forced to choose it.

Historical and legal context cannot be separated from the essay’s main question.

High IQ – double the work for you!

Just because a woman makes a lot of money and has a high power career, or high social status, does not mean gender expectations and stereotypes simply disappear. In egalitarian marriages where both wife and husband work, wives on average still do twice as much housework as husbands (Hsu, 2023). Not only that, even in cases where wives are the breadwinners and make more money than husbands, they still on average end up doing more unpaid housework (Picchi,2023).

What this means is that for a woman that might have lower IQ and fewer professional responsibilities and aspirations ( although we must be careful to not produce stereotypes, as any person can have career ambitions regardless of IQ ), and are in arrangements such as being stay at home wives, marriage might seem like a more attractive proposition where “ I do the housework and familial responsibilities for you, and you go make the money and we have a fair division of responsibilities “.

There are more college-educated women in the workforce (Elsesser, 2019), and while university education and IQ are not the same, they are usually correlated, therefore I am making the assumption, albeit broad, that women with higher IQs are more likely to have professional careers. For such women, the deal becomes:

“ I go make money, and also do the housework and familial responsibilities for you “.

This deal simply inherently comes with inequality, and therefore high IQ women, seeing such a deal might reject it and not choose marriage at all, offering another explanation for why the higher IQ a woman has, the less likely she is to get married.

Hypogamy and hypergamy

When pursuing marriage partners, men tend to seek partners with equivalent or lower social status, and women tend to seek partners with equivalent or higher social status. While higher social status and IQ are not always correlated, and as previously mentioned if there are not the right social and legal frameworks present having higher IQ will not easily lead to women having higher social status (Philosophical Therapist, 2017).

But, if we look at the and believe the words of Antonakis, a professor of organizational behavior at Switzerland’s University of Lausanne who focuses on leadership and management research, ″IQ is the single most important predictor of work success,” (Huddleston, 2022) and look at other studies (Kell, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2013) indicating IQ is a massive predictor of career success and rising up the social ladder, we can then at least with confidence state there is a correlation between high IQ and high social status.

This factor alone combined with men’s tendency towards hypogamy and women’s tendency towards hypergamy offers an explanation for why when men’s IQ rises they are more likely to get married, and for women they become less likely to do so.

This is not the sole factor that influences this phenomena, but is certainly an important part of it, reflected by how in the U.S. only 12% of marriages involve women marrying down in terms of educational achievement.

Marriage more beneficial for men

In contemporary times:

•  53% of women and 58% of men, believe marriage increases happiness for men.
• Only 49% of men, and 32% of women think this is the case for women.
• Only 24% of women between 18 and 19 think marriage make women happier
• Men tend to receive more health benefits from marriages
• Over 65% of divorces are initiated by women, indicating more women feel it’s not worth it

(Cox,2023)

Whether or not these statistics are true, or just perception, the conclusion is arguably the same, where a smart man is likely to think “ marriage seems like a good idea for me overall, I should get married “ but a smarter woman is more likely to think the opposite.

This offers yet another explanation for the difference in marriage rates between men and women with higher IQ levels.

Conclusion

In this essay I’ve gone through what I believe to be the key reasons why women with higher IQs are less likely to get married, whereas it’s the opposite case for men, but would like underline that marriage and human relationships are complex and ever evolving, and that it is no way possible one essay will capture all the factors behind something so complicated with absolute certainty.

What is certain however is that society, laws, and human relationships are changing, and that hopefully with a better understanding of changing dynamics and reasons behind them, we can better adapt to them and make relationships, marriage and as an extension society work better for all of its participants regardless of gender.

Reference list

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