Mongolian women 'want status over big families'
A new study suggests the aspirations of women in Mongolia have rapidly shifted. Before the rapid economic transition of the 1990s, the wealthiest women in the Communist-style era had big families. However, women today are less interested in babies and driven more by money and status. The research by Oxford University and Sheffield University was based on interviews with 9,000 women in Mongolia, a country that underwent a sudden transition from a Soviet-style state to mass privatisation. While the older cohort who lived under a Communist-style regime were likely to have bigger families if they were wealthier, younger women living in a more capitalist society want wealth and a partner with social standing before starting a family. The research is published in the latest issue of the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B . The authors describe this as a 'demographic-economic paradox': the unequal and skills-based society of Mongolia today enables the educated women to rise up the social ladder and make money, but rather than this change being liberating, the paper suggests it seems to be at the expense of high fertility.
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