Mach sent me this article from the New York Times, "Keeping the Romance Alive in the Age of Female Empowerment." It's about the perils of female empowerment and how romance is dying as a result.
Essentially, men say they feel emasculated and some couples feel the need to engage in "behavioral contortions" to keep traditional gender roles alive. So high-earning women pay the mortgage, but their partners will whip out the credit card to pay for the morning lattes. The women in this article come off sound slightly patronizing: they "let" their partners pay for the coffee because it makes them feel better.
(Some criticism about the title/article: It presupposes that romance and female empowerment as it is now are mutually exclusive and women need to adhere to traditional gender norms for romance to remain. In addition, by referencing to "the age of female empowerment," it implies that female empowerment/gender equality/equity is a trend that will inevitably end. Bad news bears on both points.)
