Sri Lanka Has One Million ‘Extra’ Women
I was looking thru the latest statistics, and Sri Lanka has about 1 million more women than men. Women are the head of 23% of households, meaning there’s a lot of single or working mums. Made this infographic with available data. It’s more of an info layout really, but you get the point.
Sri Lanka’s sex ratio is about 0.9, meaning that there are around 897 men for every 1,000 women. Compare that to India (1.08), where there are around 1,080 men for every 1,000 women. That seems mundane, but it soon becomes 80,000 extra men per million and 800,000 extra per billion.
Sri Lanka’s population at 20.3 million does not make this a global issue, it’s just an interesting stat. Unlike India, there isn’t a wide practice of female infanticide and early investment in health and education meant that our population did not explode in any direction at all. Anyways, going through the numbers. This is just one thing that stuck out.
How do you say, where’s all the single men at? Oh right, Majestic City. Or any nightclub. Or anywhere. In statistical terms, Sri Lanka is a bit of a sausage party. Alternately, a testicle festival.
Posted on Friday, October 14th, 2011 in Design, Education, Infographics, Sex, Sri Lanka.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
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I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
It’s the other way round dude… the question is, “where are all the single women”?
That’s what I thought too.
Oh, never mind. it says that 80% of them are over 40 years. :(
No dude, that’s the percentage of female heads of households who are above 40 years. :)
Also, nice work with the infographic Indi. Maybe we could export women like we exported tuskers in the ye olde days. ;) *gets barbecued alive by the feminists*
we are already exporting them chavie. to the middle east mostly. have been for a while now.
I have the same bloody question. Where are they???
Having heard this mournful refrain since last year from someone who’s tall, dark and (self confessedly) handsome, I assume the problem is structural.
Here, let me help you out a bit.
http://magazine.lankahelp.com/2011/10/15/glamorous-stars-seeking-soul-mates/
Very pretty, that first one.
How about this one? Single, and comes highly recommended.
http://divine3.blogspot.com/
OK. I’m ready. I’ve got a helmet on for this one.
http://messiahofmadness.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/the-proposal/
You’ll have two whole years to get ready, unless you manage to snag one of the akkis.
And that was just from kottu. Remember I’ve put a lot of thought and effort in to this. Hope I will be suitably compensated if anything works out.
Thank you for those links, most helpful :D
I shall indeed compensate you, when you do come over to SL some time….
I’m right here already, but planning to lie low for a bit until you smooth things out with above ladies for me.
Pooja is bloody hot, unfortunately she is engaged and is mainly based in India so thats not an issue.
LD is very forgiving so you should be able to manage the one you need to watch is the Puppeteer….
They are busy barbecuing Chavie’s sorry a**
In a twisted way Sri Lanka has been exporting women to the Middle East as “‘Maids”‘. Sadly nobody cares to find out how much they suffer just working hard to provide for their children, husbands, siblings & parents.
The only mention of this is when the annual budget is around the corner, when the gov is very proud to say that the biggest generator of foreign income $$$$ is our expatriates in the Middle East.
The new trend is to send the women to the Middle East and send the yound men to Korea!!! Great, only the old will remain in Sri Lanka, may be we could employ some expatriates to do work in Sri Lanka.
Strangly, why can’t the Gov. use all these people for the development of the country.
Is the Middle East and Korea the easy way to reducing the unemployment???
Dilroy, I think the answer to your question is “Yes”
@angel…like it :-)
This is can lead to a population crisis in SL, which is less talked about even though this needs concern of the gov and social institutes. The gender imbalance that we see in the country today is a result of war. We had a war for 30 yrs and SL men have died in the war front. Also the JVP insurgencies in 70s and 80s lead to a huge human cost. The men in SL have been wasted in the war front.
We should legalise single parenting where even single women can adopt little children and raise them as thier kids. So that they would have someone to care for them in their old ages. Or we can have a system like sperm banks under strict regulation.
Another thing is having celibate monks in such a situation is not a good idea at all and with an emerging gay movement in SL society the problem of having less marriageable men can worsen.
You should go to the HIES (http://www.statistics.gov.lk/HIES/HIES2009_10FinalReport.pdf) and check out the actual numbers. The male-female imbalance is not markedly high in the Northern, Eastern, North Central and North Western provinces that bore the brunt of the war.
More interesting is the gender breakdown by age deciles that is not given in the HIES. The most reliable data on this will come when the census results are released. I am guessing the gender imbalance is most pronounced over 50 years, because women outlive men by 6-8 years now.
India has a shortage of women, we of men. If there is a real problem (we will not know until the Census is published) the logical solution is marriages across the border like Murali’s, but between Indian men and Sri Lankan women. This is how these imbalances are being dealt with in China; Chinese men are marrying Russian women (Russia has a surplus of women).
i don’t think a gap of 1.1mn can be explain using the past conflicts in this country. i think we have lost a maximum of 150k people to all insurgencies.
OhmiGod!!! Sri Lankan women marry Indian men? Perish Forbid.
India is having a female shortage because they’ve been killing off all their baby girls – because of the dowry system. I sincerely hope the problem over there becomes so bad that the tide turns and the men are obliged to pay dowries.
Meanwhile ladies, don’t even consider marrying Indian men – They not only demand huge dowries, they will then burn you in “kitchen accidents” so that they can marry again and accumulate more dowry.
And even if they don’t, they have been brought up to think they are Gods, simply because they are males. They’ve been taught from early childhood to think they are ‘special’ because of their sex and to treat women like crap.
That’s a really sick and misogynistic culture which acts as if it’s bad luck if a girl is born in the household and mistreats the daughter in law who gives birth to a girl as if it’s all HER fault.
Their comeuppance for all this is long overdue – but it looks as if it’s finally here.
We don’t know if there is an actual problem until the census results are released. But if there is an actual shortage of men in the marriageable age groups, logically, there are three possible solutions:
1. Make being single a part of the culture; in vitro fertilization can address the needs of single women who want babies.
2. Legalize/restore polygamy. It was legal under Sinhala/Kandyan Law;
3. Encourage marriages with men from countries with a surplus of men. If India arouses one’s ire, one can always marry a Chinese (though the objections re female infanticide apply there too). According to the helpful map in the infographic, even Greenland is an option, though I think the number of Greenland males must be quite small. The general principle of marrying from countries where males outnumber females is what is important; not the country. I mentioned India because it is the closest.
The above three solutions are not mutually exclusive. But it seems to me the third is the easiest to implement.
Legalise polygamy? No way. Might even confound the problem if it led to more “eka gedara keama” style polygamy, as the law could not be passed in a discriminatory manner.
Making lesbianism more culturally acceptable, and legalising adoption of children for lesbian couples might be another way. Again, males will want the same rights.
I vote for importing a few stud males, better looking/more intelligent ones who could enrich/improve the gene pool, and holding them in a stable to monitor their reproductive health. Women who dont want the encumberance of a husband could pay for their services.
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They should marry American men! The ladys of north America are of such low quality… :-(
Hey Zak, What did you use to measure, hope not your dip stick :)
I think I met some of those single women, when I came to SL with my family :). Pretty much most were introduced, with some ulterior motives. Lucky for me I carry my girlfriends photos on my iPhone and show them to everyone right away!
You missed an apostrophe in girlfriends. Do we add it before or after the “s”?