Women's marriage opportunites then and now - Janette Miller

The dating gap: why the odds are stacked against female graduates finding a like-minded man

How great to have so many clever, educated young women spilling out every year, but there could be negative consequences, as a new book, Date-onomics, points out: there may not be enough educated men to go around.

So writes Emine Saner in today's UK Guardian.  Not enough educated men to go around!

So different from  my day. I am circa 1900/1970, then 80% of women of whatever class were, what would today be called, uneducated. Our parents just did not think educating their daughters was a priority as they would get married. Amazingly men of whatever education did not worry about this. Those were the days and it is not so very long ago when Oxford colleges did not admit women.

It was very obvious to all intelligent single women that not only did we require a husband as a career of any meaning was unobtainable without the unobtainable degree but we required a pension as well. This narrowed the field of acceptable mates.  Lucky for us too that most men had to put up with silly women. Most of us, me included, had to be educated after marriage. I certainly was - sex, science and Darwin. I had been educated by the nuns who did not seem to realise these subjects existed. Enough said. 

Today it seems that there are not enough educated men to go around as women have been admitted to the university ranks and rightly wish for a partner of equal intelligence, unlike my day when it was almost impossible for a man to find a partner who was basically educated let alone of equal intelligence.

Maybe the contributor is correct and women will have to lower their sights. Men of my day needed someone to run their lives, like house and children, so they married a woman who was by his standards uneducated  and it worked, sort of. This creature was called a wife. Today many high powered women could do with such a wife to do these useful tasks. 

I found this out when my Oxford educated husband  was  physically attacked in his surgery and had to give up medicine. It was then our roles changed as I become the breadwinner and had to keep husband and daughter in the manner to which they were accustomed. I wished then I had a wife to help me with the living part as neither husband or daughter obliged. It would have helped if I had had a formal education but that is by the by. To my surprise I did manage to keep house and family even though I was not supposed to do this.

Today I should have had a career and an education. If my husband had got to Oxford I think I should have got there too. I should have chosen someone as a husband who could fulfil these roles of housekeeper. lover and father and let me get on with my career.  Today's educated women should think about this.