I really appreciate this post Rose! My partner and I have noticed some of the same cross-pressures, though they stack up a little differently in our case. I’ll say a bit more about my experience, in case anyone’s interested, but mostly I wanted to say that I appreciated reading about yours.
My partner and I are still young and only just starting our careers, so there’s a lot of uncertainty, but we basically expect that my partner will have a lucrative and stable career in big tech, while I will have an erratic but potentially impactful career in EA. Currently, he has a full-time job and I don’t.
From the perspective of most of society, including our families and friends, we fall into an obvious pattern: my partner, male, has the real career, and I, rounded to female, have a supporting role—for example, I do more of the household management. As you alluded to, people have a lot of feelings about those gender roles!
Meanwhile from our perspective, which is more EA-flavored, there’s a sense in which I’m the one who’s trying to have a ‘real’, i.e. impactful, career, and my partner is the one in the supporting role of earning the money (and health insurance!) that enables me to try that. We’re expecting to move, possibly move continents, for my career, not his. From the inside it feels like we’re in danger of completely prioritizing my career over his, while from the outside people judge us for the exact opposite.
I really appreciate this post Rose! My partner and I have noticed some of the same cross-pressures, though they stack up a little differently in our case. I’ll say a bit more about my experience, in case anyone’s interested, but mostly I wanted to say that I appreciated reading about yours.
My partner and I are still young and only just starting our careers, so there’s a lot of uncertainty, but we basically expect that my partner will have a lucrative and stable career in big tech, while I will have an erratic but potentially impactful career in EA. Currently, he has a full-time job and I don’t.
From the perspective of most of society, including our families and friends, we fall into an obvious pattern: my partner, male, has the real career, and I, rounded to female, have a supporting role—for example, I do more of the household management. As you alluded to, people have a lot of feelings about those gender roles!
Meanwhile from our perspective, which is more EA-flavored, there’s a sense in which I’m the one who’s trying to have a ‘real’, i.e. impactful, career, and my partner is the one in the supporting role of earning the money (and health insurance!) that enables me to try that. We’re expecting to move, possibly move continents, for my career, not his. From the inside it feels like we’re in danger of completely prioritizing my career over his, while from the outside people judge us for the exact opposite.
Weird stuff!