My experience trying to date women in physics and comp sci says this is mostly a crisis amongst non stem women.
Of course, because in STEM it's the opposite: an oversupply of (educated) men.
The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
131–140 of 158 posts
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or Germany. It was just announced today that Merkel was unable to form a majority coalition after the recent election One has nothing to do with the other. The political landscape in Germany is transforming, and has been since long before the refugee crisis. Previously typical majority constellations have gone away (and won't come back, AfD or no), and the parties are struggling to find a place in this new reality.…
I directly quotes Reuters. > Merkel was weakened after a September election as voters angry with her decision in 2015 to open Germany’s borders to more than a million asylum seekers punished her conservatives by voting for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party She had trouble forming a coalition because her party's share was further weakened after the vote, presumably because of 2015 migration crisis and…
> I directly quotes Reuters.
No doubt.
Reuters still fails to see (or report) the forest for the trees in this instance.
> She had trouble forming a coalition because her party's share was further weakened after the vote, presumably because of 2015 migration crisis and the rise of AfD,
AfD and its initial growth predates the migration crisis (but had originally had very different political goals and actors). You're right of course, they benefited from it. But I think the lack of a far-right party in the German political spectrum was always a distortion of reality, which has now been corrected. My gut feeling is that there will always be ten-ish percent of the population who subscribe to such ideas. They've merely become politically visible now.
The fate of CDU/CSU merely repeats what SPD already suffered with Die Linke more than a decade ago: a contender further towards the political extreme, who will make previously common coalitions impossible. I've repeatedly read the claim that such a development was overdue for CDU/CSU. For that reason, it's generally assumed that AfD (and its effect on feasibility of particular coalitions) won't go away.
I further think there's an underlying issue that politics in Germany has become complacent and removed from the people, deeming it unnecessary to justify and explain their politics to the public. The rise of AfD seems to be one of the reactions, in a vague parallel to Trumpism.
In fact I consider this the one redeeming aspect of AfD's entry to parliament: the parties suddenly find themselves forced to justify their choices. I've already observed that effect in the political discourse.
> requiring a potential partnership with 2 different parties, at different ends of the political spectrum, in addition to Merkel's.
It's worse than that: three different parties (you overlooked CSU). And CSU is in full campaing mode, as there's a state-level election in Bavaria less than a year away, and CSU is threatened with losing their 50-year absolute majority. Plus there's a battle going on for the seat of CSU chairman.
Interestingly, the two antipodes, CSU and Grüne, weren't yet ready to abort the talks, and had in fact both made painful concessions in order to attempt a coalition.
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is addressed in the article: "Mating psychology may not be that malleable." i.e. Biology.
Biological explanations for social phenomena are generally frowned upon these days, and they certainly have a poor track record, historically.
Um, no? Biological explanations work great. Want to explain the social phenomenon of people going home every night? It's biology: they have to sleep. Want to explain why people smoke? They're addicted. Want to explain why grown up adoptees behave more like their biological parents than their adoptive parents? Genetics.
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#134Interestingly no discussion of what must be a similar crisis among less-educated men.
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
that won't expand the pool as much as you think. it widens it on the education variable, but narrowers it to men who aren't threatened by women who are more educated (and possibly higher-paid) than they are.
>men who aren't threatened by women who are more educated (and possibly higher-paid) than they are Do these people actually exist anymore? What kind of man is really going to pass on an otherwise suitable partner just because she's more educated and makes more money than him? I can't imagine a single person I know thinking something along the lines of "yeah, she's great, but she makes more money than me, it won't wor…
You’re missing the option that they wouldn’t dismiss such a woman priori, but many men’s egos wouldn’t take it well in a long-term relationship. (I cannot really speak from personal experience unfortunately.)
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#136I'm not trying to incite a flamewar here, and this will probably be downvoted to death. Well, the argument here should be: Men don't find education and accomplishment as attractive as women do - they find youth and beauty important also. Therefore, in order to attract a mate, logically women should try to attract a mate when they're younger, and try to improve the way they look. They should not be trying to get more…
Good luck trying to explain this simple reality of life. Youth is very important to males because of the diminishing ability of women to reproduce as they get closer to 40, with males it is much later. It is biology 101 but today mentioning biology as a reason to anything related to the relations between sexes is a heresy.
It's not a heresy if it isn't being reductionist.
The problem is the reductionism towards a "simple and easy explanation", biology is one factor as so are other sociological ones, if you keep your argument just based on (what you've called) biology 101 you aren't wrong, you are just misguided, ill-informed or being malicious.
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#137> But for accomplished women who successfully traverse the waters of a mating pool unfairly stacked against them, mating triumph at the individual level typically takes precedence over loftier goals of reducing societal-level inequality when the two come into conflict. It's wrong to characterize the pool as "unfairly" stacked against them; they could choose to date men with lower incomes or less education.
Yeah, it's assortive mating. It's not that the mating pool is stacked against them - it's that their self assessment of their own "rank" is too high. They assume men want in a woman what women want in a man, and for the most part men don't care about the (potential) wife's career.
> for the most part men don't care about the (potential) wife's career.
There might even be an inverse correlation - the more successful the man is (hence the more money he earns, and the more hours he works), the more he would prefer his partner to take the lion's share of childcare and house-making, and also be able to pay for it.
Ideally, of course, neither parent would have to work, but that's even more unrealistic for most of the population.
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#138Better tools to connect women and men could have a major impact and increase the chances that couples connect with each other. Tinder and other dating sites are absolute shit (plenty of literature on their problems for both men and women out there) and in person interactions are becoming more rare. Improving these tools might help some of the people who would otherwise not connect or find suitable mates to do so, tho…
Why do you think "connecting" would help? It's possible, likely even, that it would further exacerbate the problem, allowing more choice for those who want it (men), and allowing all those who are choosy (women) to aim for the top.
Similar to the media - we thought that making the world more connected would make it better, but so far all we've got is more sensationalism, fake news, and cat videos. Most people ignore the "leaks".
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
>They can of course do whatever they want, but I have very little sympathy for people who recognize how reality is and don't try to act in ways that will optimize the probability of the outcome they want. Yep. I recognized that I was ugly, and I thought that this was the primary obstacle when it came to dating. I fixed that with surgery, and I was right.
It's only a matter of time before we can pay CBT psychotherapists to give us good senses of humor and easy-to-be-around personalities. We're fast converging on a future where IQ and inherited wealth will be the only two fundamental positive qualities.
Fortunately, different people like different traits, so we'll definitely not be converging.
Re: The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Biological explanations for social phenomena are generally frowned upon these days, and they certainly have a poor track record, historically.
Um, no? Biological explanations work great. Want to explain the social phenomenon of people going home every night? It's biology: they have to sleep. Want to explain why people smoke? They're addicted. Want to explain why grown up adoptees behave more like their biological parents than their adoptive parents? Genetics.
I probably should have put 'explanations' in quotes, because I was thinking of the bogus 'biological' just-so stories that have frequently been advanced in the past to 'explain' why women should not or can not do this or that, and the alleged inferiority of various ethnic groups.
It is somewhat moot, however, as my comment is mostly about contemporary mores regarding the use of biological explanations (or 'explanations'), though perhaps I was not explicit enough. I don't know enough to have a definite opinion as to whether, or to what extent, biological explanations apply in this case.