Question 13 - Why girls' choices have changed in 21st century

Reasons for girls’ choice this century

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2022#:~:text=At%20mid%2D2022%2C%20there%20were,of%20males%20since%20mid%2D2011.

Question Thirteen – Why do you think that there seem to be more single women in the world today than in the past?

Donna:

I think it’s due to the media telling everyone: you can be who you want to be no matter what gender you were born into. I think women want men to be men. Women also have a lot more freedom and can be so career-oriented that they don’t want to settle down. And again I blame the media for creating less reasons to get married by saying you can have 1 night stands, they are quick and easy and no responsibility is needed.

Alyss:

After watching an Insta post by Jordan Petersen, I thought his explanation was excellent. He said that men and women exist by living in two parallel lanes of running life’s race when they are single. When they start to date and then look for a spouse, they look across at the line next to theirs’. Men look across and down the hierarchy for a woman who is of equal or less standing in social structures. Women, on the other hand, he explained, look across and up, for a man they can look up to and respect. Then the two join. He noted that the problem in society today is that women have been empowering themselves at a faster rate than men. Women have been achieving more and becoming more, where less men have been doing the same. This then means that, for the educated, self-sufficient women, there are less men who they can look up to.

I also feel that with the “Me Too” Movement, and with the increased open Gender-Based violence stories, it’s harder for a woman to feel safe in male company. I think the easier exposure to screens and their contents has created also a larger distortion of what love is, and a distortion of realistic partnership expectations.

Personally, both socially and in a work environment, men act and speak like they know and have a right to believe that they are superior to me. When I believe it’s partnership between the incredible things that both genders can bring to the party that can make amazing things happen… yet, the glass ceiling is still there… I think that in this respect, less women are prepared to put up with chauvinism and being treated like less.

Of course, there are some great men out there, but I have found that it’s often after marriage and when the women have sorted the gents into shape and that is when the guys become better men. I guess less women are willing to make the effort and give all the time and energy required to get the guys in line, so to type…

Those are perspectives I have come across and experienced in my life.

CJ:

Women are more financially independent and focusing on what they want and what makes them happy and then going after marriage.

Alexa:

Women have realized that they are far more capable than they were allowed to think they were before the 21^st century. Women want to have careers and do something constructive with their lives, not just be incubators and stay-at-home wives.  A lot of men are not able to handle a strong woman and a lot of women won’t put up with being treated as inferior anymore and thus remain single.   

KA:

Personally, I think it’s because the sanctity of marriage has been lost. There is a distinct lack of trust in others and lack of faith in the concept of marriage. I think that the traditional concept of marriage is almost seen as a bit ‘outdated’ – why go through all the hassle when you can just live together and be ‘life partners’? There has also been an ongoing trend of Women’s Independence and many women think that marriage takes away their independence. I also think there are fewer decent [heterosexual] men in the world!!

NH:

I suppose that women in these times are fortunate to have greater financial independence through education and advances in the workplace.  No-one should seek a partner because they can’t afford to live on their own.  So perhaps more women now wait until later in life to commit to a life partner, and perhaps circumstances then mean they never find anyone. I think there would still have been single older women in decades past, although structures in society would have insisted that most were married off at a young age.  Those left single into their later years, either through circumstance or being widowed, would have been less visible, I feel, than single women today.  They would have required housing by organisations for the needy, or by family, and to a large extent would have been invisible in everyday society.

Lizanne:

Higher expectations with fewer moral values.

C.B.:

Perhaps it is because women are no longer the stay-at-home-and-look- after-the-kids-and-home women to whom that used to apply.Women are professionals and thus have had to adapt to be independent.