A recent study presented at the American Sociological Association 2013 meeting shows that men are still paying for the majority of dating expenses, but want women to contribute. The only thing holding them back is the fear of asking their date to pony up.
The study takes into account how gender roles are changing in other social sectors, like the workforce (where the number of men and women are roughly equal), to see how dating culture is changing (or not so changing) in comparison, according to TIME.
What they found when they surveyed over 17,000 heterosexual single men and women was very divisive. On one hand, 40% of men and women said that in their experience, dating expenses were shared in the first month of relationships and over 70% of men and 80% of women said expenses were shared by the six month mark.
But that’s not the whole story. Almost 40% of women hoped that the man wouldn’t ask them to chip in and 44% were annoyed when they were asked. On the flip side, 64% of men thought women should pay sometimes, and over 80% said they pay for most dating expenses. Interestingly enough, almost half of men responded to the survey stated they would stop seeing a woman if she never opened her purse when the cheque came around.
But there’s hope for all the dating equal rights activists out there. The younger the respondent was (regardless of gender), the higher chance that they they wanted men and women to share dating expenses. So this whole issue may fade away in the next couple of decades.
