Ever since women have come out of the age-old boundaries of home and family into the arena of professionals and business, there has been a never-ending controversy on its impact on marriage.

Many economists have insisted the specialization of roles in a traditional marriage with the husband as the breadwinner and the wife as the homemaker was more efficient. With both the spouses opting for a career outside home, the balance is destroyed causing instability in marriage.

Social conservatives too have maintained that the higher the income of the women, the greater the divorce rate.

In fact, last year, an article called ‘Don’t marry career woman’ by Michael Noer was published in Forbes and was flamed universally by feminists across the Internet world. This forced Forbes to remove it and repackage it is as an opinion with a counter opinion.

Things have changed over time as more and more women are earning and marriages are working ‘in spite of’ this.

Recently, Nancy Burstein, a senior consultant at Apt Associates, reviewed years of research on marriage and divorce for an article in the latest Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. She found that marriages of working women are more stable than marriages of their non-working counterparts. In fact, there seems to be a more equal participation in decision-making, parenting and household chores by both partners. This trend would help in promoting the argument for more paid maternal and paternal leave as well as for better child care.

These studies have forced the social conservatives such as David Popenoe, founder and co-director of Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project in New Brunswick, N.J., to admit that marriages are more stable with working women.