"Marriage has huge payoffs for women. It provides them with social confirmation that they have assumed the feminine role our culture endorses.

The woman who never marries, like the woman who never has children lives with a penumbra of unanswered questions hovering around her: What happened? Can she still be happy? Does she feel cheated? Is there something wrong with her?

No woman wants to go through life trailing this dismal shadow.

All too frequently the first casualty of a marriage with children is the woman's ambitions. If she does not take this role she risks incurring not only social disapproval but the anger of a husband who has frequently assumed that his career would take precedence. For a woman to place her own interests on par with those of her husband is still considered aggresive, unusual, unfeminine and risky behaviour. " There is a "martial glass ceiling"

Extract from a book on white middle class women. Nice to know that women everywhere are equal - even if their equality is in the bad treatment meted out to them.