Over the past few decades, Mongolian families have been investing in their daughters by sending them to school and university in the capital. Some parents believe daughters will take better care of them in their old age. Others think women need to learn other skills as herding livestock is work reserved for men – the boys are kept at home to tend the animals. This trend has given rise to what is known as Mongolia’s “reverse gender gap”. Now women are more educated than men. They are less likely to be unemployed. They also live longer – by a decade on average.
But by outpacing men, Mongolian women in the city, many of whom stayed on after university to work, struggle to find partners the way their parents did. The marriage rate in Ulaanbaatar has fallen to 8.9 per 1,000 people in 2016, from 22.9 in 2007, according to the country’s statistics office.
Women in the city complain that there is a shortage of eligible men. In a way they are right. Home to half of the country’s three million people, the city has about 60,000 more women then men. At universities and in the workplace there are often far more women than men. These men are more likely to be taken: almost 40% of men in urban areas over the age of 15 are married, compared with only 32% of women. [...]
They also face a relatively conservative dating culture. Rather than meet in bars or clubs, single Mongolians often find each other on Facebook or Instagram, chatting over private message, away from the public eye. “For flirting Instagram is effective, but for talking Facebook is better,” says Tsogtbal. Clubs and bars in Ulaanbaatar have begun holding speed-dating events, but people are sometimes embarrassed to attend, says Bat-Ulzii Altantsetseg, head of an events group called UB Nights. Now, instead of singles nights, they hold partner parties where men and women are assigned random pairs of numbers. He says usually 60% of attendees are women.
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