Code word: Leader.
It's 50,000 generations of preference for the alpha male over the beta male.
Over the course of human history, stable civilization has been a fragile and transient thing.
In a tame civilization, the high earning accountant is intellectually a preferable mate. When TSHTF, though, the woman will want the baddest of bad boys looking out for she, and she may not know ahead of time when TSHTF.
There are tons of attractive women who date bums that were never even “leader” of a lemonade stand.
There is an attractive nurse that lives near me. She owns her own place and I haven't seen her date anyone but complete garbage. These guys are usually very tattooed, either unemployed or on ‘disability’, stay at her place all day and just hang out with their buddies getting drunk in the yard. Then when they inevitably hurt her, she gets upset for a few weeks and then finds a new one.