I disagree with this premise. My boss calls her colleague her “work husband.” In this case it means they work very well together.

I certainly don’t condone treating women like assistants but many men (like myself) hold their wives in very high regard and to be called a “work wife” does not necessarily mean they are seen as less than equals.

I have already provided my thoughts on equal pay, so I won’t even go there.

Litigators— lawyers who work to help clients win, or survive lawsuits—can have high-stakes careers. One female litigator’s job, however, came with a less thrilling description. “She had always been the self-appointed ‘detail-oriented task manager on the team, scheduling meetings, keeping the calendar and taking notes,’” wrote the author of a broad study on workplace inequality in law, released by American Lawyer magazine last week, about one of the lawyers who journalists interviewed. The lawyer’s male colleagues called her their “work wife.”

The “work wife” badge is a symbol of a culture in which women are seen as supporters of, rather than equal to, their male peers.

Source: Top Female Lawyers Say They Are Treated Like Assistants at Work – Bloomberg Business