[weeksie]

It sounds like a sexist comment because it is.

The reality is that in a place like New York educated women move to the city for their careers. So do men, however when men get married and have children they tend to continue to work, whereas it's more common for women to leave the workforce. Hence, the percentage of the men in the city that go home to their family in Connecticut (or Westchester, or whatever) is much higher than the percentage of women that do so. Far more of the men in the city are ineligible. Couple that with higher university graduation rates among women and the trend will only continue.

I've _never_ seen behaviour that would indicate that women move [to New York] in order to find successful men. Oy.

[nessus42]

I'm not sure I understand your logic. Let's say 100 men and 100 women move to the Big Apple for their careers. Now let's say 50 of the men and 50 of the women hook up, get married, and move to Scarsdale. Let's say all of the women who have moved to Scarsdale buy a minivan and give up their jobs. Now, during the day, we have 100 men in the city and 50 women, giving a 2:1 ratio of men to women, but there are still 50 single men and 50 single women, giving a 1:1 ratio of single men to single women. And at night there are 50 men, all of whom are single, and 50 women, all of whom are single. Again, a 1:1 ratio.

So where does the demographic skew come from in your model?

Personally, I'm not so convinced that women move to the Big Apple merely search of successful men, though. There's all sorts of stuff going on in NYC that would appeal to women!

[ahelwer]

Ignoring the heteronormativity here, there are far more single women on the east coast (especially NYC) than men. It's the opposite on the west coast.

[weeksie]

You're forgetting the job vacancies that are filled when the married women leave the workforce.

[nessus42]

And these job vacancies are gender-specific? If the 50 job vacancies must then be filled by 50 single women, then yes we now have a lot more single women in the Big Apple. If they can be filled by 25 single women and 25 single men, then the single men:women ratio is still 1:1.

I guess I might buy the argument that the vacant jobs might go to 30 women and 20 men, which would back up your point.

[weeksie]

Yeah, I probably should have expanded. Those jobs are often in fashion, journalism, and other fields that have a higher female to male ratio.

[knowaveragejoe]

I see it as a sexist comment if you're incredibly sensitive to any claim that men or women might have trivial motivations. It's unfortunate, but stereotypes don't just come into existence with precedent.

[weeksie]

No, it's sexist if it's presuming that more women than men have trivial motivations or that those have more influence among women than men. Particularly when there are other, far less condescending and far more likely reasons for the gender skew in NYC.

[qu4z-2]

I think you're right that this is not the reason for the gender skew, but I feel obligated to point out that the men might just take different actions in response to the trivial motivations.