Features
Cougars on the prowl
by Ruth Laugesen
Older women pursuing younger men have been rare in New Zealand but new research finds this is starting to change.
Poor old Mrs Robinson. Didn’t she know that by taking a 19-year-old lover she was breaking a whole sack of taboos? Let us count the ways: cheating on her husband, being breathtakingly hypocritical over her political platform of family values and pulling strings to get her toyboy funding for his cafe venture.
But most of all, and driving much of the excitable media coverage of this affair, was that glamorous Irish MP Iris Robinson had gone after a much younger man. At the time of the affair two years ago, Robinson was 58, almost old enough to be Kirk McCambley’s grandmother.
The revelation of Robinson’s affair is the latest manifestation of a rampant new media term, the so-called “cougar”: an older woman who sexually pursues younger men.
The term isn’t all bad. It may have overtones of creepiness and predatory behaviour, but it also carries connotations of strength, which makes it a step up from most of the other terms the English language has come up with to describe sexually active women.
Now the marketers are piling in. Air New Zealand recently ran a calculatedly provocative marketing campaign seeking “cougar” packs for the rugby sevens tournament. Sixty women would get free tickets and take part in a “pride of cougar” cheerleading squad. An accompanying wildlife documentary spoof starred a red-dressed older woman dragging a young man home from a bar, before subjecting him to Enya, the Eurythmics and other indignities in her inner-city pad.
They’re even bandying the term about in Parliament. Labour’s Trevor Mallard called boyishly handsome Tauranga MP Simon Bridges, 33, “cougar bait” after Bridges mentioned on breakfast TV he found 55-year-old Christine Rankin attractive. Other Labour MPs joined in, calling Tauranga “cougar territory”. (Never mind that Mallard was himself involved with a younger woman, former champion rower Brenda Lawson, after separating from his wife in 2007 – making him a “manther”.)
Now, researchers at Victoria University have decided to look at whether behind all this cultural smoke a fire is smouldering. Are more older women taking significantly younger partners, or is the cougar phenomenon a diverting but thinly based media beat-up? And if there are more cougars, why?
To track down the answers, Institute of Policy Studies associate professor Paul Callister and research assistant Zoe Lawton scanned census data and a plethora of anthropological, sociological, economic and psychological research on partnering. The census data was for couples living together, which had its limitations, as many older woman/younger man pairings are thought to be of short duration.
Callister and Lawton’s verdict: such partnerships are a small but growing phenomenon. “Our initial analysis of census data suggests that this media interest may be exaggerating the extent of this phenomenon,” they say in their research paper. “Nevertheless, the official data indicate it is an important group and its size does seem to have been growing marginally since the 1980s, at least for those living together in the same households.”
Census data from 1986 and the most recent one in 2006 showed that although women tend to have older partners, they have made a slight shift away from this pattern. In 2006, a smaller proportion of men had younger partners than in 1986, whereas a higher proportion of women had younger partners.
Looking at a snapshot of women aged 40, 50 and 60 in the 2006 Census, the researchers found that in some cases not much had changed since the 1986 Census. But for 40-year-old women, they found a more than 50% rise in the proportion who had a partner aged 35 or younger. And for 50-year-old women, they found a more than 70% rise in the proportion who had a partner aged 45 or younger. (See table.)
So why have live-in relationships between older women and younger men become more common? Lawton and Callister say it is likely to be a symptom of the growing economic and social independence of women. In the West, the rise of women’s economic status and sexual freedom has meant they no longer have to be financially dependent on men, giving them more freedom to choose partners. Some theorists point to a “marriage squeeze” for older women, claiming a shortage of available partners in their age group means they have to search more widely.
Another explanation is the social exchange theory, in which individuals seek the “best value” they can in a partner, with market value dependent on factors such as beauty, intelligence, charm, wealth and social status. On this basis, older women’s “market value” may be higher today than it ever has been,
allowing them more choice in mates.
“On average, women are now more educated than ever, earn higher incomes, have a higher status in society, can have recreational sex and are more likely and able to look younger due to diet, exercise and through cosmetic procedures.
“Compare this with the ‘market value’ of a woman of the same age in the 1950s. She would have had a lower education level, little or no income because her husband would have supported her financially, not been able to have recreational sex because of the lack of contraception, already would have had a number of children and not been able to look as young as women can today. Single, or even currently partnered, women in their forties and fifties are now able to get into the dating market to find a new partner.”
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