Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Now, women take charge to find life partners

Sindhu.Hariharan@timesgroup.com

Chennai:27.02.2019

Urban migration, improving education levels, better professional status , and changing social constructs of families are driving today’s women in taking charge and making the first move to select their life partner. Data from matchmaking platform suggests that women are not just open to using matchmaking portals to find partners, but also hold control of such searches.

Shaadi.com’s user data over the past 10 years showed that there was a 10 percentage point increase over the past decade in single single women creating and posting profiles on their own, as opposed to the past, when parents did it for them.

“The female self-created profiles have grown from 40% in 2008 to 50% in 2018 largely contributing to the overall growth of female profiles on the platform. However [the ratio of] male self-created profiles have remained unchanged since 2008,” Gourav Rakshit, CEO, Shaadi.com, told TOI.

Women users are “sending out 3.5 times more interests” to men in 2018 than they did in 2008, the data said, noting that today’s women are also taking the first step to interact and assess matched profiles.

Women who create and manage their profiles are 20% more likely to “send interests to profiles from a different community as long as there is a lifestyle fitment and financial independence,” Rakshit said. He explains that while parent-created profiles are more inclined towards family history and community, among other aspects, women (majority of them urban) are looking for matches that meet their expectations of occupation, finances and location.

It is also 33% more likely for such women to chat with matches, than in the case of accounts created by parents, he added. In a separate survey of over 2,800 women users of Shaadi-.com, 84% said they would initiate a conversation with a man if they found his profile interesting. Matchmaking portal Matrimony.com found that “the number of women who self-register has been steadily rising over the past few years,” and currently, 60% of the women users have created profiles on their own. “While traditionally men have been making the first move, nowadays we see that women are confident enough to make the first move and express interest to matching males on BharatMatrimony,” Murugavel Janakiraman, founder and CEO, Matrimony.com, said.

Professor S Anandhi of Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) believes improvements in women education levels are playing out in matrimony, but is quick to add that it’s largely an urban trend.

As per the All India Survey on Higher Education, Gender Parity Index, i.e. the female participation in higher education was 97 women per 100 men in 2017-18, compared to 86 women per 100 men in 2010-11.

Anandhi also notes reducing family pressures for women as more of them enter the corporate sector. “Social transactions in a family were earlier dictated by male lineage, but as women get economically stronger, they are taking charge,” she said.

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