Jane Austen seems much more pertinent to this data than Michael Foucault

It is pathetic how hard they seek to superimpose a pre-existing ideological causal affect on an otherwise interesting empirical finding. From Women scarce in the one percent by Jill Yavorsky, et al.

The study, "Women in the One Percent: Gender Dynamics in Top Income Positions," is featured in the February issue of American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association. Yavorsky is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department and Organizational Science doctoral program at UNC Charlotte. Her co-authors are Lisa Keister of Duke University, Yue Qian of University of British Columbia and Michael Nau of The Ohio State University.

The new study uses the 1995 to 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to analyze gender income patterns in the one percent. To qualify for top one percent household status, the authors calculate that a household must bring in $845,000 in total income in 2016 dollars. The researchers' calculations from the 2016 SCF also indicate that top one percent households receive nearly one-fourth of all U.S. income, further highlighting the importance of studying this group.

While the top one percent has garnered increased scholarly and media attention in recent years, little research has considered whether men's or women's income is primarily responsible for moving households into the one percent. Research also has been sparse on whether women have access to their own pathways to earning one percent status based on their income alone.

This new study shows that women's income alone is sufficient for one percent status in only 5 percent of all elite households. Moreover, women's income is necessary in pushing a household over the one percent threshold in only 15 percent of all one percent households. In other words, women's income is largely inconsequential in most of these households for obtaining one percent status.

So we are still in the Jane Austen world where

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

The researchers then go on to the standard social justice jag of power structures, discrimination, etc. despite all the evidence to the contrary which has emerged over the past three decades.

It is worth noting that we are talking about income here where the patterns are somewhat different from household wealth where women tend to be much better represented but through inheritance rather than marriage per se. It also highlights the differences when you look at a system as a collection of individuals versus as a collection of households. Both are valid but there are distinct differences between the two.

Regardless, Jane Austen seems much more pertinent to this data than Michael Foucault.