Having it all

Single career women can breathe a little easier.

A new study says that the so-called "success gap" -- the gulf between a woman's educational achievement and her chance of marriage -- has narrowed significantly and rebuts the idea that women pay a heavy price for devoting time to developing their careers.

"What the research shows is that there is no need for women to hold back their career aspirations so they can have a family," said Elaina Rose, a University of Washington associate professor of economics and the study's author.

Rose, who presented her findings at a Population Association of America conference in Boston this month, said that in 1980 a woman 40 to 44 years old who completed three years of graduate school was about 14 percentage points less likely to have been married at some point than a woman with a high school diploma. By 2000, that 14-point gap had shrunk to 5 points, suggesting that changing social mores and women's pursuit of education have affected the marriage market.

"The perception that women face a stark choice between career and family is becoming less accurate with each successive decade," said Rose.

To document the shrinkage of the "success gap," she analyzed US census records that tracked the education and marital status of 1.3 million Americans over the past 20 years.

Rose's work stands in contrast to a highly publicized and much debated 2002 study by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Hewlett reported that many professional women were winding up alone and childless because they had devoted their prime childbearing and marriage years to educational and career pursuits. Only in rare cases were they able to succeed on both fronts, she said.

"I looked at a snapshot of what was happening in 2001, not longitudinal data," Hewlett said in a telephone interview. "I wanted to know what was happening to 28- to 40-year-olds and 40- to 50-year-olds. I found that young women were having an even harder problem balancing career and family than their older sisters had at the same age. If you look at the older women, in some sectors -- for instance large corporations -- 42 percent of the older women had not had children" and they regretted it, she said.

In her study, Rose indicates that there was, in fact, a gap between the likelihood of motherhood and marriage for women 40 to 44 with advanced degrees. However, as with marriage, that gap shrank in each of the subsequent two decades, dropping to 5 percentage points by 2000, down from 18.2 points in 1980.

Rose also argues that highly educated career-minded women are getting married in rising numbers. In 1980, for example, only 66.4 percent of women age 40 to 44 who held advanced degrees were married. By 2000, that number had risen to 72.6 percent. At the same time, the percentage of married women age 40 to 44 with just a high school diploma was 72 percent in 2000, down from 83.2 percent in 1980.

"In a world where you need two paychecks, men are looking for women who can be economic providers as well as women with whom they can share ideas," said Rosalind Barnett, research director of the Community, Families & Work Program at Brandeis University.

Barnett said the findings suggest that educated women can now "afford to marry men who earn less." They no longer have to marry older, highly successful men to improve their financial status, a key finding in Rose's study.

"The woman doctor who falls in love with an artist doesn't have to worry whether he can afford to support her," said Barnett in a telephone interview. "She can just follow her heart. That gives women a greater pool of men to choose from."

Historian Stephanie Coontz, author of "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap," agreed.

"I have a higher degree, and I make more than my husband," said Coontz. "Do I disrespect him? Not at all. Does he feel emasculated? Not at all. So, what we are seeing today is a lot more egalitarianism between men and women."

Take Brenda and Kevin Jarrell of Lincoln. At 36, Brenda Jarrell is a partner in the intellectual property division of the Boston law firm, Choate, Hall & Stewart. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry from Harvard University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. She earned a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California at San Francisco. Her income is also higher than her husband's, who left academia to launch a biotech start-up in Woburn.

"I flat out make more than he does," said Brenda Jarrell. "It is not uncommon to have the situation that I have, where the woman is a partner in a law firm and the husband has a different, more flexible job."

She believes these situations give men and women greater flexibility at home and work. She and her husband have four children. "My job gave my husband the freedom he needed to do what he wanted to do," she said. "I was proud of that in the same way men used to be proud of it. Women are now in a position of being able to say, 'You know what? I can cover the baseline and nobody has to be trapped.' "

Kevin Jarrell, 44, is president and chief executive of Modular Genetics. He holds a doctorate in molecular genetics from Ohio State University. When his wife was in law school, he earned more. Today, he's home with the children three nights a week so that his wife can work late. She does the same for him twice a week. Oftentimes, however, it is Kevin Jarrell who leaves work to attend to a sick child, she said.

Juliana Suminsby was awarded an MBA from Babson College in 1991. She bought a home in Marblehead two years later, and got married in 1997 for the first time. She was 38, her husband, 40. Today, she does marketing for a local firm, and he works as a contract software engineer. They have a 5-year-old son. Suminsby said balancing a family and a career isn't easy but added, "If you are willing to compromise and make sacrifices, it can be done."

Claudia Diaz, 30, of Billerica, has been married for two years and has a six-month-old girl. Diaz, who majored in psychology and minored in biology at Boston University, monitors clinical trials for a research firm. Her husband works as a legal assistant. Diaz said she earns more, but her husband "doesn't care."

"You really cannot get anywhere in life now without an education," she said. "But you still want the whole kit and kaboodle -- marriage and children. It's hard to do in your 20s because you're trying to get your education and establish your career, but I think after you hit 30 and you've achieved some of your goals it's easier to obtain."

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.