Are Gender Roles Changing Regarding Who Pays on Dates?

A new survey of more than 17,000 adults examines practices and beliefs on who should pick up the check when men and women are on dates. The results, which were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York, found that 84 percent of men said they paid for expenses on dates. While women reported that men paid date expenses 58 percent of the time. After six months of dating the same person, 74 percent of men and 83 percent of women said that there was at least some sharing of date expenses.

Rosanna Hertz

Some 57 percent of women said they offered to help pay but 44 percent stated they were bothered if men asked them to share expenses. Almost two thirds of men said that women should offer to share expenses and 44 percent said they would stop dating the woman if she never offered to pay.

The study was co-authored by David Frederick, an assistant professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, Janet Lever, a professor of sociology at California State University at Los Angeles, and Rosanna Hertz, the Classes of 1919-1950 Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.