Singaporean men have more progressive attitudes towards dating than Singaporean women

"Turn the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles." - Frank Lloyd Wright

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This is especially surprising in light of the dominant paradigm that "Singaporean men marry foreigners because they are losers. Singaporean women marry foreigners because Singaporean men are losers" (then again, maybe not).


Men more open to dating out of their league: Poll

"But women still prefer taller, richer and better educated life partners

By Ang Yiying

MEN are more open to dating women who earn more, have higher educational qualifications and who are taller. But women are far less willing to bridge these gaps.

A survey has revealed that almost eight in 10 men here would date a woman who earns more, 78 per cent would go out with a more educated woman, and 38 per cent would date a taller woman.

But only a quarter of women here said they would date a man who earned less. About the same proportion said they would go for a man who did not go as far as they did in school. And 16 per cent would date a shorter man.

This difference came up in a recent survey of 1,191 singles aged 26 to 40, of which 632 were from Singapore. The rest were from Hong Kong and Malaysia and elsewhere.

The survey of dating attitudes and preferences was done by dating agency Lunch Actually and the South-east Asian arm of the United States-based Matchmaking Institute, a body which trains matchmakers.

The results, presented yesterday at the launch of a new dating service, eSynchrony.com, come days after the National Population Secretariat unveiled data which showed a growing pool of singles here, with those most hesitant about marriage being graduate women and men with below secondary-level educational qualifications.

Lunch Actually founder Violet Lim, referring to the survey results, called it an ‘education squeeze’, as women are more likely to marry up.

Ms Claire Chiang, co-chairman of a committee providing seed funding to firms running dating services, said there was a need to change people’s tendency to use education as a defining criterion in finding a mate.

‘It seems as though the women are behaving a lot more elitist in the way they look at education – education being a path to wealth and achievement,’ she said.

Falling back on stereotypes or into an ‘evaluation trap’ may compromise a woman’s chances of finding a good life partner, she said.

On the other hand, the fact that men are more inclusive may show that they are realistic in recognising that women can be more capable or earn more, she added.

Despite the differences, one area in which the two sexes here agree is when it comes to age: Half of the women polled were willing to date a younger man, and 53 per cent of men said they would date an older woman.

Of the Singaporeans surveyed, three in five have gone on dates which they thought went well but never received a call for a second outing. Of these, four in five wanted feedback on what went wrong.

The feature which sets the new dating service eSynchrony.com apart is that it offers its clients feedback after dates.

The new service matches its clients based on their compatibility as revealed in a personality test. Its clients can read a potential date’s profile online before a date and get feedback after every three dates.


Addendum: The results from 2011 are similar