https://mothership.sg/2019/06/dating-apps-lady-reflection/
According to a Marriage and Parenthood Survey conducted in 2017, 83 per cent of singles in Singapore aged 21 to 35 years old intended to get married.
But out of the singles (aged 21 to 45) surveyed, 59 per cent were not dating seriously with a view to getting married.
And out of these (people who were not dating seriously), four in 10 preferred to leave dating to chance.
S is a 31-year-old Singaporean university graduate working as a fund manager. What’s interesting about her, however, is her clinical take on dating, and discipline in searching for a partner.
She explains that according to demographic data, female graduates aged 25 to 35 will find it very hard to settle down with male graduates because there are just way more females than males in that sub-group.
And so, in order to “beat the odds” and find a partner, she apparently nearly finished swiping all the Tinder profiles in her demographic.
My interest was piqued. And so, I decided to meet her to find out more.
Those who were approaching 30 and still single started panicking
Like me, S tells me she never thought much about settling down while she was studying in university. She assumed that it would all work out somehow in her late 20s — she would easily find someone, date for a bit, get married and live happily ever after.
By the time she was in her late 20s, though, she realised this wasn’t going in the way she envisioned at all. Panic ensued.
She wasn’t alone in this experience, she said. Many of her female peers, who faced the same issue of still being unmarried by the time they approached 30, were feeling anxious about being single.
So, why are these women having difficulty settling down?
There could be a wide variety of reasons. However, S had an insightful statistic to share.
Far more uni-educated women than men, aged 25-34
According to data from the Department of Statistics (SingStat), there were 76,000 graduate females aged 25 to 29 in 2018. In the same year, there were only 60,300 graduate males in the same age range.
And if we look at the university graduates in the age bracket of 30-34 in 2018, there are 79,000 females but only 70,100 males.
The SingStat data dates back to 1990, and tells us that there have been more female than male graduates, for the age bracket of 25 to 34, for at least the past 30 years.
The data does not provide further breakdowns on the proportion of those who are married or single, but the fact of the data is that there are far more female university graduates than male university graduates aged 25 to 34.
Okay, cool. So what does this mean?
Assuming that female university graduates in Singapore are looking to marry male university graduates of a similar age range to them, the prospect of dating and marriage appears to be skewed against female graduates.
According to a Marriage and Parenthood Survey conducted in 2017, 83 per cent of singles in Singapore aged 21 to 35 years old intended to get married.
But out of the singles (aged 21 to 45) surveyed, 59 per cent were not dating seriously with a view to getting married.
And out of these (people who were not dating seriously), four in 10 preferred to leave dating to chance.
S is a 31-year-old Singaporean university graduate working as a fund manager. What’s interesting about her, however, is her clinical take on dating, and discipline in searching for a partner.
She explains that according to demographic data, female graduates aged 25 to 35 will find it very hard to settle down with male graduates because there are just way more females than males in that sub-group.
And so, in order to “beat the odds” and find a partner, she apparently nearly finished swiping all the Tinder profiles in her demographic.
My interest was piqued. And so, I decided to meet her to find out more.
Those who were approaching 30 and still single started panicking
Like me, S tells me she never thought much about settling down while she was studying in university. She assumed that it would all work out somehow in her late 20s — she would easily find someone, date for a bit, get married and live happily ever after.
By the time she was in her late 20s, though, she realised this wasn’t going in the way she envisioned at all. Panic ensued.
She wasn’t alone in this experience, she said. Many of her female peers, who faced the same issue of still being unmarried by the time they approached 30, were feeling anxious about being single.
So, why are these women having difficulty settling down?
There could be a wide variety of reasons. However, S had an insightful statistic to share.
Far more uni-educated women than men, aged 25-34
According to data from the Department of Statistics (SingStat), there were 76,000 graduate females aged 25 to 29 in 2018. In the same year, there were only 60,300 graduate males in the same age range.
And if we look at the university graduates in the age bracket of 30-34 in 2018, there are 79,000 females but only 70,100 males.
The SingStat data dates back to 1990, and tells us that there have been more female than male graduates, for the age bracket of 25 to 34, for at least the past 30 years.
The data does not provide further breakdowns on the proportion of those who are married or single, but the fact of the data is that there are far more female university graduates than male university graduates aged 25 to 34.
Okay, cool. So what does this mean?
Assuming that female university graduates in Singapore are looking to marry male university graduates of a similar age range to them, the prospect of dating and marriage appears to be skewed against female graduates.
