Women are adults with equal rights and abilities, so why are men, at least to a certain extent, still expected to provide for them?  Why would men do this? What do men get in return?  Men aren’t the parents of the women they date, so it just seems really stupid and unnatural.  Sure women provide men with emotional support, companionship, affection, and various other things depending on the individual, but men provide all those things to women too. Of course there are lots of women with successful careers who don’t expect this, but in general men are largely judged based on what kind of job they have, whereas women, with the exception of shallow men who care mostly about appearance, are evaluated more so for their personal qualities, which I think is a much more reasonable standard. This phenomenon could be explained in terms of evolutionary biology or as an after-effect of traditional gender roles, but isn’t it contrary to the values of modern liberal democracy?  Doesn’t that standard suggest that women are inherently more valuable, while men have to give the products of their labor to women in exchange for their attention?