Men & Women: Different Dating Experiences
DATING & RELATIONSHIPS
"It is the same way with dating. The time you are most prepared for dating is when you don’t need anyone to complete you, fulfill you, or instill in you a sense of worth or purpose."
- Myles Munroe -
Nearly half (47%) of all Americans believe dating is more difficult today than it was ten years ago. Women are far more likely than men to say dating has become more difficult (55% vs. 39%). Among those who believe dating is more difficult today, 21% believe it is due to increased risk, which includes both physical risks and the risk of being scammed or lied to. Both women (57%) and men (35%) say they have been harassed in the dating process. Women are much more likely than men to say they have been pressured for sex (42% vs. 19%) or have been touched in an uncomfortable way (35% vs. 9%). 60% of female users aged 18-34 say someone on a dating site or app kept contacting them after they said they weren't interested, and 57% say another user sent them a sexually explicit message or image they didn't ask for. Additionally, 44% of women say they have been called an offensive name on a dating site or app, and 19% say they have been threatened physically.
Younger women are considered more attractive in our society as a whole, and typically there are far more men on dating apps than women. However, we must examine what attractiveness entails, as it is more than just physical looks. "There's this misconception that attraction stems from a superficial view of people," said Mr. Rad (cofounder of Tinder). "Everyone can detect thousands of signals in these photos. A photo of a guy in a bar with his friends sends a very different message than a photo of a guy on the beach with his dog." While companies such as eHarmony continue to claim that they have a "scientific approach" to helping people fall in love, some dating sites are beginning to admit that the only thing that matters when matching lovers is someone's picture. OKCupid examined its data, and discovered that a person's profile picture is "worth that fabled thousand words, but your actual words are worth... almost nothing."
Statistics can be misleading and its important to look at the bigger picture when considering the numbers. There is a perception that women are insanely picky, bombarded with countless messages a day, and have the luxury of choosing from multiple options. For men, the popular belief is that they have to send many messages in order to get even a few responses. However, it’s important to examine the facts in context, not just the numbers.
According to a widely circulated statistic, the “bottom” 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the “bottom” 22% of women and the “top” 78% of women are competing for the “top” 20% of men. In other words, if you're not in the top 20% of men, you have virtually no chance of going on a date with the top 80% of women, and since you are competing amongst a large pool, your chances are slim, even amongst this “less desirable” pool of women. When statistics like that are read, it appears to paint a very clear picture; women must be extremely picky, and men are being unfairly rejected. How could it possibly be anything else?
What this statistic actually shows is that men use dating apps far more than women. In fact, men account for 80% of dating app users globally, while women account for only 20%. In the United Kingdom, which has the highest male/female disparity of any wealthy country, there are 9 men for every 1 woman. So, the fact that the top 80% of women are competing for the top 20% of men is due to the fact that there are far more men than women on dating apps. As a result, the majority of men have difficulty finding matches, whereas the majority of women are inundated with them. The complete misapplication of statistics to portray either men or women as bad people has resulted in an even greater schism when it comes to dating. Between gendered ideals and expectations rooted in a past that is no longer a lived reality, and the people-as-commodity dating culture, it’s no wonder everyone is finding the whole process frustrating.
How are attractiveness gaps related to economic theory? A number of economists have found it entertaining to examine the data within a dating app like Tinder as if it were an economy, where the “currency” of said economy is “likes” and “swipe rights” and those with more attractiveness have access to more and better romantic experiences (the dating economy's equivalent of consumer goods). Every economy has different kinds of inequality, frequently discussed in public policy debates and social media platforms. Everyone thinks about inequality on occasion, but young single people obsess about one kind of inequality almost constantly: inequality of sexual attractiveness. Robin Hanson, an economist, has written some fascinating articles that compare income inequality to sexual inequality. When we think of dating in this way, we can use economic analytical tools to reason about romance in the same way that we reason about economies.
The Gini coefficient is a useful tool used by economists to study inequality. This is simply a number between 0 and 1 that represents the degree of income inequality in any given country or group. An egalitarian group in which everyone has the same income has a Gini coefficient of zero, whereas an unequal group in which one person has all the money and the rest have none has a Gini coefficient close to one. When Jeff Bezos enters a room, the Gini coefficient skyrockets. Some curious data scientists have taken on the task of estimating Gini coefficients for the dating "economy." In the case of heterosexuals, this entails calculating two Gini coefficients: one for men and one for women. This is due to the fact that heterosexual men and women essentially occupy two distinct "economies", with men competing only for women and women competing only for men. The two coefficients have no direct influence on each other, and each sex collectively determines the Gini coefficient (the level of inequality) for the other sex.
A data scientist for the popular dating app Hinge reported on the Gini coefficients he discovered in his company's massive data, treating "likes" as the equivalent of income. He reported that heterosexual females had a Gini coefficient of 0.324, whereas heterosexual males had a Gini coefficient of 0.542. So neither sex has complete equality: in both cases, there are some "wealthy" people who have more romantic experiences and some "poor" people who have few or none. However, while the situation for women resembles a normal economy with some poor, middle-class, and wealthy; the situation for men resembles a world where a small number of super-billionaires are surrounded by vast masses who have almost nothing. According to the analyst at Hinge, the female dating economy would be 75th most unequal and the male dating economy would be 8th most unequal on a list of 149 countries' Gini indices provided by the CIA World Factbook.
Today's social commentators are fascinated by "gender gaps," particularly the alleged disparity in pay between men and women who do the same work. Other notable gaps include a well-documented "libido gap" (with men desiring sex much more frequently and intensely than women on average) and a "age gap" in which younger adults are described as more attractive on average, with older women having an especially large age disadvantage. The ‘Gini coefficient gap’ identified in these studies is similar to a ‘sexual inequality gap’ or ‘attractiveness distribution gap’ - which is less obvious but potentially more socially significant than some other well-known gender gaps.
According to these findings, the vast majority of women are only willing to communicate romantically with a small minority of men, whereas most men are willing to communicate romantically with the vast majority of women. It appears difficult to avoid a basic conclusion: the majority of women find the majority of men unattractive and unworthy of romantic involvement, whereas the opposite is not true. To put it another way, men appear to create a "dating economy" for women with relatively low inequality, whereas women appear to create a "dating economy" for men with very high inequality.
However just because a man is willing to communicate with a woman does not mean he perceives her to be a long term partner. There is a disconnect between what men and women are “looking for” in the dating world, and the “libido gap” that exists between men and women plays a factor in these statistics that seem to show women as being ultra-picky. If a woman is more likely to be “looking for” a long term partner for a stable relationship, (and not a purely sexual connection) she is out of necessity going to be selective in her options, as a long term, monogamous, cohabitating life-partner requires more qualities for compatibility. However, short term sexual compatibility by nature, does not have so many requirements. Because the relationship would be short term, it would not matter if the sexual partner has different habits regarding housekeeping, religion, politics, or career ambition. If you are not going to be living with that person or talking with them on a regular basis, why would it matter how they lived their life or what opinions they hold?
This data gives rise to a lot of pointing fingers and fuels resentment between the sexes. However nobody can or should be blamed for his or her honest preferences, and if women collectively believe that most men are undesirable, then these are the facts we must contend with, remembering that a woman’s priorities are more often focused on finding a long-term life-partner. Although men appear to be more tolerant and open, if they are looking for less of a commitment, due to the libido gap, this can be deceiving. Once they start looking for a true life partner to marry and raise children with, men also lengthen their list of requirements. Stereotypically, men are seen as reluctant to be ‘domesticated’ and its not hard to find movies and shows that glorify a bachelor lifestyle as being more free, with a life-partner jokingly referred to as a “ball and chain.” This is not just a media-fueled concept, it is based in a history of a patriarchal society, where marriage meant a man was expected to produce children with his wife, and provide for the whole household monetarily, while his wife focused on domestic work and child-rearing. Getting married meant an almost instantaneous transformation of expectations, and a man would have been expected to “provide” for other people, as compared to being responsible only for himself or being the one “provided for” by his parents.
Attractiveness is not only a matter of opinion, it is also a spectrum, heavily weighted with societal expectations and standards. There is more pressure on women to be properly groomed and made up for social occasions such as dating, and the monetary cost to be attractive for a woman is measurably greater. The fashion/grooming expectations between the genders is simply different, and women typically have to put in more work on their appearance before a date. Beauty and style do not happen accidentally. Of course, men put effort and money into their appearance as well. Be that as it may, not only is there a “pink tax” (where products marketed to women are more expensive, smaller, or of lower quality than equivalent men’s products) but women have standard expenses men simply don’t have: makeup, nails, purses and other feminine clothing items. It’s easy to point out women could choose not to invest in those products. However when finding a mate is a societal and economic expectation, and your chances of a quality match improve as your relative attractiveness goes up; buying makeup and flattering clothing can be seen as a genuine “investment”, insofar that it will deliver “profitable” returns in the form of being able to attract a high-quality, compatible partner.
Even setting aside the difference in grooming expectations, there is still a significant and measurable “attractiveness gap” that provides ample ammunition for the continued battle of the sexes. Do not indulge in self-pity, no matter your gender, as both “sides” deserve our sympathy. We can feel sorry for men, who have to deal with constant rejection, and we can also feel sorry for the majority of women who are doomed to be in relationships with someone they find unattractive, and constantly bombarded with low effort attempts at sexual intercourse. Nature is the only villain in this story, as she has shaped our preferences to cause this tragic mismatch of attraction and availability.
That isn’t the whole story of course, and everyone loves a good nature vs nurture debate. We might have certain biological imperatives (it makes sense younger women are considered more attractive when they are at their prime years for fertility, if procreating is considered the main purpose of cohabitation) but some of our dating habits are purely social constructs, as we can see by the evolution of such practices.
