Mate Selection Patterns of Men and Women in Personal Advertisements: New Bottle, Old Wine

Authors

  • Aysan Sev'er University of Toronto

Abstract

Between 1975 and 1988, 2,091 advertisements in a metropolitan newspaper were analyzed. There was a six-fold overall increase in the number of ads. Female and male advertisers substantially differed, both in terms of frequencies and the bargaining tools they utilized. The criteria utilized by men and women in selecting their mates, especially in terms of age and attractiveness, showed a continued reliance on traditional patterns. It was concluded that the rules of mate selection remain traditional and favour males and the young. There is also some reason to believe that male advertisers have learned to tailor their revelations according to what they think women want. Both qualitative and quantitative studies of such trends are suggested.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Downloads

Published

1990-04-01

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (1990)

Section

Reports and Comments

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

2. Authors are aware that articles published in Atlantis are indexed and made available through various scholarly and professional search tools, including but not limited to Erudit.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to preprint their work, that is, post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process. This can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Read more on preprints here.