I’ve heard that there are more single women than single men in the D.C. beltway area: the District, and the surrounding parts of Maryland (Bethesda, etc) and Virginia (Arlington, Alexandria, etc).
Is this true?
If so, why? You would think that there would be many men because of the ‘power’ aspect of the capitol.
In general, single women outnumber single men in the eastern U.S. and single men outnumber single women in the western U.S.:
Nearly all federal government jobs have nothing to do with having power.
Most of the jobs are administrative assistant type jobs. Our society still sadly views these jobs as “female” jobs. Go into just about any bureaucracy, and compare the number of women to men doing the clerk work.
There’s that, but it’s not just admin assistant jobs contributing to this. There’s also a lot of publishing (government being a large component of that) and lots of nonprofits. Both are fairly heavily female.
However, before a bunch of single hound dogs come east looking for wimmen, be advised that I’ve seen articles in the CityPaper about how DC area single women, despite greatly outnumbering single men, tend to be bitchy and unreceptive. You’d think the opposite would be the case; go figure.
I haven’t found this to be the case, but I’m not on the singles scene, either.
That map is kind of misleading, though, because it doesn’t adjust for the size of the cities (of course there are more singles in New York than there are in Indianapolis) and lumps all singles aged 20-64 into one big category. Check out this website for a more nuanced perspective.
Here is another colored Map of singles like Wednall’s - DC is the second biggest
Some contributing factors:
There is a heavy percentage of African Americans in the DC area and they tend to marry at rates lower than whites - that cultural aspect is probably a piece skewing the results.
I think the DC area’s relatively high affluence factors in - Women who don’t want to marry do not have to.
Generally (even in NOVA) there is no social/cultural taboo on divorce or not marrying at all or living together. IOW it is more socially liberal on marriage issues
Finally I think partially a reason this is happening is that more women, in general, graduate from college than men. There are many higher end jobs on the eastern seaboard, especially in the northeast megatropolis, that tends to attract folks from other areas, jobs that you need a college degree to get into/succeed in. So if you move to [in this case] DC to use your Law degree, or MA, or BA or PHD and 62% of you are women, and that goes on for a decade or more eventually that makes a notable demographic “tick”.
It’s an illusion. As soon as he wins the election, he’s going to divorce his wife and marry her. He promised. 
Ahh, so what you’re saying is that the odds are good but the goods are odd.
Well, some of it I don’t necessarily agree with. Well educated women tend to have higher standards, and well educated men don’t necessarily tend to meet them, or something.
Damn it! I suspected as much.