Do Mail Order Brides Just Want Me For My Money?

Yes, the women signing up for international dating agencies know that they will almost certainly have a better quality of life in the European Union, the United States, or any other highly developed country than they would if they remained in the old Soviet Bloc, Asian, or Latin American. But more importantly, these women want to be treated with respect and they want to be LOVED!

Most of the countries that girls seeking to marry foreign men come from are heavily patriarchal societies where women are not afforded the same level of respect they are in the West.  This varies of course from country to country, but today these girls watch Western movies and read Western books and they want to be treated like Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, not like property of their husband, boyfriend, or boss.

If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children...
Russian Judge in his ruling against a woman in a 2008 sexual harassment case.

In Russia sexual harassment is so deeply ingrained that in a recent study 100% of businesswomen claimed to experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Thirty-two percent of women said that they had to have sex to keep their jobs. Seven percent claimed to have been raped, yes raped, on the job, but when a young woman sued her boss in an effort to become only the third Russian woman to win a sexual harassment suit she lost, because the judge ruled that  "If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children".

This article from the British Newspaper the Telegraph explains the problem for Russian women.

In Latin America the machismo tradition is still strong and in Asia the strong preference for baby boys carries over throughout the rest of women’s lives.  In nearly all of the non-Western countries violence against women is a serious problem.  Of course, Western countries are not free of domestic violence, but in most Western countries it is recognized as a serious issue, punished harshly by the criminal justice system, and the condemned by the public at large. The attitude towards domestic violence in many of the countries where the majority of women signed up with international marriage agencies is often much more permissive and often dismiss violence towards women as a family matter or in some cases even a man’s duty.

This article on the education website The Globalist has a good introduction to the violence against women around the world.

The alcohol consumption we have is colossal...
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev

In much of Eastern Europe alcohol fuels much of the harassment and violence against women.  It is such a problem that in 2009 Russian President Dmitri Medvedev called alcohol a “national disaster”. It drastically lowers male life expectancy and leads to an epidemic of violence against women. Violence against women is so bad in Russia that according to one study it kills approximately one woman is being killed in domestic violence every hour.

The quotation from the Russian president is from this article in the Christian Science Monitor,  and the statistic about one woman an hour being killed by domestic violence comes from this report from Amnesty International.

Given these cultural biases it is easy to understand why Western men, who have a reputation for treating their women well, would be attractive to the most beautiful and intelligent women from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.  If you read some of the longer profile essays at Anastasia, Elena’s Models, or some of the other agencies you will see over and over that these women are looking for men that are “nice,” kind” or will “treat me with respect”, and women also regularly mention that they do not want men that are heavy drinkers.

The real proof that the vast majority of women signed up on international dating sites is real is right there in the ladies’ own words.

Because we have no divorce here, men do not need to be nice to their wives to keep the marriage going...
Mary, a Filipina seeking an American husband, interviewed by Lisa Simmons.

Finally, the non-financial reasons for women signing up to pursue Western men regularly come up in the work of the academics who actually interview the women.  Pamela Haley examined the experience of Filipina women in South Florida and discovered somewhat to her surprise that the brides, “…unanimously deemphasized their own agency, and instead highlighted romantic narratives with each insisting that they had “fallen in love.” She means that the brides she interviewed all said they married for love.

You can download her dissertation here.

Lisa Simmons, whose dissertation is easily the best academic study of the modern mail order bride phenomenon, and her discussion of why women around the world are seeking out Western men deserves to be quoted at some length.

She wrote that, "In addition to believing that marrying a foreigner would contribute to financial security, all of the women in my sample strongly articulated the belief that an American man would make a better emotional partner than would a man from their own country. They felt that a marriage should be based on mutual love and respect; and they wanted a man who would be able to provide the sort of emotional support that they felt was not easy to find among their own countrymen. The emphasis on quality of relationship was an unexpected finding because this aspect of international marriage has not been the focus on much media coverage.”

That quotation is on page 107 of Lisa Simons dissertation, but if you are really interested in pursuing a foreign bride you should really read it cover to cover.  You can download it here.

Simmons interviewed seventy-four people in the course of her research and the final word on why so many young women from around the world are pursuing – and they are truly pursuing Western men when they sign-up at an international dating agency should go to one of the women Simmons interviewed:

I needed a good husband and I knew since I was at least 14 years old that I could not find one in Russia. I saw how my father behaved and how the fathers in my friends’ families were. Russian men do not appreciate all that women do for them. They never say thank you. They never acknowledge the contribution women make. Russian men are spoiled and are unreliable husbands. Also, they do not consider marriage to be a partnership of equals. This is why I knew I wanted to find an American husband, because they see marriage as a shared partnership.
Irina, a Russian mail order bride, interviewed by Lisa Simmons

Irina sums it up about as well as possible for thousands of young women across Eastern Europe and around the world.  However, you might also want to check out the article Why do women from Eastern Europe want to marry Foreign Men too.

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