Silicon bachelors

Santa Clara County beats out Alaska to become home to more single guys than anyplace else in America.

Published June 29, 1999 4:00PM (EDT)

Someone alert the authors of "The Rules": Silicon Valley could become the No. 1 dating destination for women in search of a single man. As of October 1998, there were 5,372 more single men than women between the ages of 20 and 45 in Santa Clara County -- making it the metropolitan area with the highest percentage of unmarried men in America, according to a research survey from Claritis cited in a San Jose Mercury News report on Monday.

This news -- along with a recent report that only one out of the 100 top-salaried CEOs in Silicon Valley is a woman -- should be another indication of the continuing gender disparities in the valley. Tech is clearly an industry still dominated by men.

That said, there are probably some women who will be cheered by the news of the valley's latest dubious honor; primarily, those women more interested in a potential partner than in the politics of glass ceilings and testosterone-laden engineering departments. The news might even hearten those single women a few miles north in San Francisco, who have long lamented that most of the city's cute guys are gay.

Will Silicon Valley now become a mecca for diamond-seeking gals, just as Alaska (a previous holder of the "most single men" title) has in the past been a mecca for certain brazen women? Certainly, the single men in Silicon Valley must constitute one of the wealthiest bachelor populations in the world, thanks to that stock-option lifestyle.

Still, considering the lifestyle and work hours of many of Silicon Valley's finest, anyone who believes that "single" automatically equals "interested" or "eligible" might be in for a big surprise.


By Janelle Brown

Janelle Brown is a contributing writer for Salon.

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