Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954) initially ghost wrote for her husband and when they split she ended up dirt poor because he owned all the copyrights in his name and she had no claim to any of it.
I agree with your first 2 examples. But in my opinion, the fact that back then sexism caused strong income differences only makes it even more likely that this was a rationally coordinated team effort by the Einstein's.
As for that destroying their marriage, it seems that she got pregnant from another man, while he had multiple affairs, so I wonder if they were ever strongly physically attracted to each other. To me, it seems more likely that they were mentally best friends, but physically craved others.
I kind of dislike your Jezebel link because in my opinion, their goal is mostly to spread hate as opposed to improving the situation. So I'd wager that their experiment was skewed to produce the intended result.
But in my opinion, the fact that back then sexism caused strong income differences only makes it even more likely that this was a rationally coordinated team effort by the Einstein's.
That doesn't contradict anything I've said. If anything, it supports my position.
As for that destroying their marriage, it seems that she got pregnant from another man,
He married her after she had that child. To my mind that seems to be fairly strong evidence that they had a powerful bond that overcame many obstacles that would have prevented most people from ever even getting married.
I don't typically read Jezebel, largely due to the criticisms you cite. But the piece I posted is backed up by data and strikes me as reasonable and even-handed.
I don't think it was engineered by the publication. It seems to have been some one off thing by some random female author who got frustrated with her efforts to get published.
I agree that they overcame many obstacles that would have prevented most people from ever even getting married. I also agree that they had a powerful bond. But I would argue that their bond was mostly mental, like friendship.
There's usually an age disparity in sexual relationships [1] and I would argue that this is because men in general prefer slightly younger women. The fact that Mileva was born 4 years before Albert already makes their relationship highly uncommon (around 1 out of 30 couples).
So maybe Albert married her because she was reliably, intelligent, and had a great character. But that doesn't mean that she had to be in line with his sexual preferences, which then would make it likely that they'll eventually get bored of each other.
I would argue that this is because men in general prefer slightly younger women.
It takes two to tango. Your assumption de facto dismisses the choice of the woman in the relationship, as if her opinion is irrelevant.
I think there are multiple factors involved in that trend, one of which is that women tend to be more socially savvy than men. I think women tend to prefer men who are a little older because, on average, a man needs to be a little older to have a similar level of social savvy and this is a critical detail for a personal relationship.
There are other things in your comment that I don't agree with. But I don't care to elaborate, so this is where we get to "agree to disagree" I guess.
Thank you for actually discussing the details of the article with me.
As someone who's interested in writing, I have noticed things changing over the last few decades so I was interested in the how the situation has evolved over time based on data. I dug this up:
There seems to have been an inflection point in the 1990s, which the author posits is due to the rise of MFA degrees (2/3rds granted to women). Commercially, the gender ratio seems to have approached parity overall, even if in specific categories the large imbalances exists (owing to various factors, some self-selection effect exists). Even though commercial success seems to be at parity, the author posits that the publishing industry lags behind in reflecting this and that there remains a funnel bias in the industry (from critics to publishers).
Note that Karen Blixen published the Danish version of the book under her own name. And apparently she used the pen name Tania Blixen in the German versions. I don't know what this says though. She kept using different pen names even after getting famous under her own name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Blixen
Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954) initially ghost wrote for her husband and when they split she ended up dirt poor because he owned all the copyrights in his name and she had no claim to any of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette
These are people from around the same time frame. Sexism was a much bigger problem at that time than it is today and it remains alive and well.
Edit: See, for example:
Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name
https://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-what-i-learned-sending-my...