> You can still fulfill the condition "be more selective" if the male populace as a whole was earning way more than the female populace before, which it very clearly was. This directly questions the notion of there being a bunch of old ladies who'd have held out: the majority would've found their "better off financially" peer.
But the original idea was that women prefer men better than their peers -- that's a direct quote from that top-level comment. You seem to be saying something distinct from that, that women prefer men who are better off financially than they are. These are very different claims.
Further, if you're right that women tended to satisfy their desire for higher-status men simply due to the fact that men used to have more money on average than women did, then where is the selection pressure supposed to come from? There's no pressure -- it wasn't hard for a woman, who had few career prospects, to find a man with a job who could bring home consistent pay.
> you only have to look for a few minutes to see the hoards of anecdotes and studies pointing towards women putting vastly higher weight on a man's finances than the other way around
Take your pick between "I don't really care about anecdotes" and "I have my own anecdotes that tell me that women don't place significantly more weight on socioeconomic status than men do". I'm curious about the studies, but I'd have to find a copy of the article you cite before I'd place too much stock in it. What I'd like to see is some proof in the data that conditioning on socioeconomic status does not significantly alter marriage rates for women but does do so for men.
But the original idea was that women prefer men better than their peers -- that's a direct quote from that top-level comment. You seem to be saying something distinct from that, that women prefer men who are better off financially than they are. These are very different claims.
Further, if you're right that women tended to satisfy their desire for higher-status men simply due to the fact that men used to have more money on average than women did, then where is the selection pressure supposed to come from? There's no pressure -- it wasn't hard for a woman, who had few career prospects, to find a man with a job who could bring home consistent pay.
> you only have to look for a few minutes to see the hoards of anecdotes and studies pointing towards women putting vastly higher weight on a man's finances than the other way around
Take your pick between "I don't really care about anecdotes" and "I have my own anecdotes that tell me that women don't place significantly more weight on socioeconomic status than men do". I'm curious about the studies, but I'd have to find a copy of the article you cite before I'd place too much stock in it. What I'd like to see is some proof in the data that conditioning on socioeconomic status does not significantly alter marriage rates for women but does do so for men.