Women of “marriageable age” are flocking to New Zealand at rates of up to one-third higher than men.

A new study has found that New Zealand has a higher ratio of women to men in the peak childbearing ages of 30 to 34 than any other industrialised country, with 9 per cent more women than men.
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Researcher Paul Callister says the surplus of women in their 30s is higher today than it was after thousands of men died in the Great War.

“In New Zealand in 1921 and 1926 we were busily building war memorials in small towns to ‘missing men’,” he said.

“The overall picture of sex ratios in 2004 is even more dramatic than the ongoing effects of loss of men in World War I.”
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“It could be to do with how the economy is changing,” Dr Callister said. “We have always had historical immigration that has been gendered. When we had a lot of tree cutting, we had more men than women.

“Now that we want more nurse-aides, childcare workers, cleaners and, dare I say it, prostitutes, we are going to bring in a different sort of labour and it’s going to be predominantly female.”