This is a really interesting idea. I’ve usually thought that one of the advantages of the older man/younger woman pairing was more equality, but I was thinking of a more equal pairing in terms of emotional maturity.

During the age that a lot of coupling happens women tend to be more mature on average and dating an older guy gives them a chance to be with someone on relatively equal footing. I hadn’t considered the broader social dynamics that an older woman is more established in her career and financially successful and thus that usual gender power structure is reversed.

I think the biggest problem with the common older men/younger women pairing (besides the obvious skeevy perverts) is that it ends up really being unfair to ambitious career oriented women. I remember reading (I think it was in The Second Shift) that women are far less likely to partner with people of lower educational attainment than men are. This fact combined with the fact that men commonly pair with younger women and women with older men means that as a woman focuses on her career, all the men of comparable educational status are being taken by younger and less educated women. To me the best way around this is what is suggested in this article: for women to also start looking younger.