<p>Not only women in banking but all women in demanding careers lawyers, doctors, accountants, publicists, etc spend the first five/ten years of their careers concentrating on getting ahead, just as men do. Why would they have gone through all these years of training,and a huge bill, starting with middle school, moving through all sorts of tests/prep/etc to get into a good college, and then to a good post grad program? If a man in one of those careers decided to step back for a relationship, would you think less of him? Of course you would. There is a huge number of former women bankers in their early thirties, married to male bankers in NYC. Those women no longer work b/c their husbands easily support them on seven figure plus comp packages. There are a few that are truly passionate about banking that remain working. There is a large number that are married to other bankers, both sides didnt make it big enough for the woman to stop working, and there are even more of those that stop working and move to the suburbs. And then there are some unfortunate few who are making more than their husbands. The point is that a large proportion of women in banking are married to men in banking. I would bet that the majority of the low level ibankers referred to earlier in the thread, with NYU day circled in their calendars, etc, dont make the cut above analyst. And actually tons of the top guys in ibanks/hedge funds are married to their college girlfriends, who also had early careers in banking.
To whomever said that a banking wife would be emasculating – true, if you dont swing same $ as she does.</p>