Society has come to view both genders' preferences as shallow, but for whatever reason makes a much bigger deal about it when it comes to women, which is really not fair. They can't help being attracted to a successful guy anymore than we can to a hot girl.
My guess is that in NYC, due to the financial industry guys are more sensitive to it, and as such women respond by being a bit more circumspect.
For whatever reason, the vast majority of golddiggers are utterly dishonest about what they are really seeking. This leads men to get into bad relationships (which they would have avoided if the woman were honest), and they often lose big when their career doesn't turn out the way they hoped or when they want to downsize their job (e.g., quit the $300k/year corporate law job for an $85k/year public defender job).
I've got no problem with that rare girl who openly admits her desire to trade sex for money. I don't want a relationship with her, but I won't condemn her.
[edit: I'll similarly condemn a guy who lies to honest women to get them into bed. I'll giggle when a guy lies about money to sleep with dishonest golddiggers.]
As rational and moral beings, aren't we supposed to transcend some of our evolutionary instincts?
It's a subtle subconscious leaning. A similar example: doctors routinely prescribe things that get them paid more (for instance neurologists whose practices own their own MRI machines prescribe 4x more MRIs than ones who do not) however when examined under a polygraph, both groups say that the money is not an influencing factor. The money clearly is the difference, they just don't know it.
(FWIW, rape is not believed by most in the field of evolutionary psychology to be a behavior that has evolved into "normal". It's gotten a lot of coverage in the field due to the controversial nature of the idea of rape as an adaptation, but there is no clear evidence for it in anthropology or studies of closely related primates.)
The argument you pose about morality is dangerous. Who defines which of our genetic attributes are ok and which are not? Why is it perfectly fine to have brown hair, but immoral to want a rich husband (if only subconsciously) when you can't help either of them? If anything the latter is universal, the former occasional.
Counter-example to your thesis that women only want money: Musician's that only gets gigs in dive bars, firefighters that receive a municipal-level salary, and tons of bro's you would see at "bro-bars" with no financial prospect but a rabid enthusiasm for alcohol, local sports & Amerrrica.
I'm not saying women aren't superficial. They are just as superficial as men except that they lie about their intentions to preserve their ego for themselves and to others. But that's no reason for men to be resigned about it. There's nothing more sad than a man who accepts the superficial reality of society and proceeds to go about "nest-building" and "peacocking" to attract a superficial trophy wife, and give up his freedom and personal goals in return.
The system is easily hackable and I dare say, men are justified to hack the system as the whole mating-seeking thing is based on deception and dis-ingenuity. And there are tons of literature available online and in print about PUA for anyone who cares to explore that route.
The interesting question is why is it so? Maybe because money-making ability is a somewhat less intrinsic quality. Maybe it's the undeniability of the biological response when you see someone beautiful. Some would call it sexism and leave it at that.
If you'd condemn a man behaving the same way (e.g., making friends in order to use a playstation), it isn't sexism.
Unless appearances are some better indicator of a person's quality than wealth neither is more or less shallow than the other, but one is judged to be moreso. If that's not sexism nothing is.
One may or may not be a better indicter of long term compatibility.
This is also the difference between gold-diggers and normal women: gold-diggers are conscious of the fact that they're trying to score with rich men.
Similarly, men are statistically more likely to exhibit violent behavior (and there is an evolutionary basis for this). Therefore, condemning violence is sexism, since the condemnation has a disparate impact on men? Um, no.
Would they? Maybe I've just been hanging out with too many women (in a non-sexual context), but they complain about guys that talk to the obviously-prettier girl at the bar all the time. Meanwhile, talking to the more successful-looking of two guys is pretty normal, as long as you aren't blatant about it (eg. asking how much they make).
I think it's more that girls will judge guys for going solely for attractive girls, and guys will judge girls for going for richer guys. Both sexes are shallow, both sexes complain about shallowness in the opposite sex, and most people of both sexes will recognize that basically everyone is shallow - in private. But public discourse tends to feature more males, so we hear more about how golddiggers are evil than about how babewatchers are evil. Either that, or it's just because we're male and girls tend not to share their real opinions for fear of offending us.