The weekend papers love to incite mass female anxiety by reporting on New Zealand’s man drought. This morning The Sunday Star Times ran yet another scare-mongering article on the issue: ‘She’s a hard road to find the perfect man’, by Nicola Russell. “Man Drought” is a pithy term for a huge social problem that has extremely negative implications for women and for society, but journalists have so far focused on sensationalism and failed to actually examine the issue. “Statistics New Zealand 2011 population estimates reveal there are more than 50,000 "excess" 25 to 49-year-old females living in New Zealand”, writes Ms. Russell. Excess? Statistics New Zealand might also like to check to see whether or not any excess female suicides resulted from this tactless reporting.

In a society where having families is so valued that people are paid to procreate, the plight of the twenty five percent of women of childbearing age* who are single has been paradoxically ignored. On a personal level these women are missing out on both romantic love and on creating families of their own. These factors must surely contribute to New Zealand’s high rates of depression among women*, who have been socialized to desire and expect a partner and children from an early age. Burdened by the financial costs of living alone and with limited family networks many of these women also face lonely, impoverished working lives and retirements.

On a social level the lack of men is also incredibly damaging. It’s a well-known fact that it’s the educated women, searching for equals, who are missing out on finding mates. As a society, we’ve lost out on all the children who could have been born to these intelligent, well-educated women – meaning we’ve lost out on the kids who would have been among our future movers and shakers, solving the leadership problems we’ve been hearing so much about lately. (The Ministry of Education's Competent Children, Competent Learners report reveals that "students whose mothers have high education levels are more likely to start school with high competency levels, and to maintain this high level of performance".) Anyone who’s seen the movie Idiocracy will see the writing on the wall for our economy and culture if we continue down this road. (Watch the opening sequence here to see why.)

Theoretically there is one plus side to the man drought. With our demographic dominance and highly-educated minds women should shortly be ruling New Zealand’s business world (though in the country that made Alasdair Thompson the head of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, it’s certainly not a sure thing). It’s clutching at straws, and no consolation for the huge numbers of women who are searching for nothing more than an equal but are being told that they’re “setting their sights too high” (that’s another eloquent quote from Ms. Russell).

Instead of writing unhelpful articles likely to drive Kiwi women to drink, how about offering some solutions? The man drought has been blamed on many things. Low male education, high male emigration, high female immigration, lower male birth rate and higher male mortality count amongst them. Here are some simple ideas that could surely have us raining men:

• If the problem is exacerbated by female immigrants, why not curb the numbers?
• Even better, why not proactively seek male immigrants?
• Let’s encourage our young men to enter tertiary education
• Let’s encourage our expats to return to New Zealand. Why not remove interest from student loans for those living abroad so that they don’t face massive debts upon coming home?

* “More than a quarter of women aged 30-44 are living without partners”, according to the Sunday Star Times article. This is the age where New Zealand women are likely to be physically and financially ready for children.
* One in five women, compared with one in eight men, will have depression over their lifetime.

For ages, I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.

If philosopher Viktor Frankl could put up with the Nazis, why couldn’t I put up with being single? As I struggled to feel ok about my situation, Frankl’s teachings kept taunting me. He survived a concentration camp. I had barely survived two years of being on my own.

I was a failure. I was shallow. I couldn’t stop thinking about why being single sucked. Here are just some of the reasons I came up with:

• Being judged. People make all sorts of funny assumptions about you. Like that you must be having a wild, swingin’ fun time. You must be promiscuous. You must have a massive disposable income. You must want to sleep with other women’s boyfriends. You must be too picky. Or too desperate. Or both! Perhaps you’re a bit too weird to have a boyfriend. And you must be sad and lonely.
• Being sad and lonely. (Ok you just are sometimes.)
• Being rudderless. At a certain point it’s hard to plan your life when you have no idea if you’ll get married or have kids. Yep, the whole “kids” thing can certainly lead to a few sleepless nights…
• Not getting any. Your coupled-up friends go to great lengths to cock block you when they fear you’re in danger of ‘lowering your standards’.
• Still not getting any. Having to be the moral handbrake for randy guys with partners. This is so unfair (and often ball-breaking as they tend to be handsome and charming).
• Yep, still not getting any.
• Social leprosy. You’re off the invitation list until you’re part of a nice, acceptable couple again.
• Low status. When it’s you vs a couple it’s always two to one. This is particularly galling in shared accommodation situations when your flatmate’s girlfriend gets her way despite not paying rent. (And you never get the couch.)
• High living costs. When you’re half of a de facto or married couple, your accommodation costs are halved. Your utility and food bills decrease. Holiday costs are lower. You no longer have a primal urge to deposit your income in bars in an attempt to find a mate. The negative economic ramifications for single people are huge.
• Social invisibility. Your problems are not important. You are one person, and therefore inherently selfish. (Not to mention promiscuous / weird / having an indecent amount of fun / sad and lonely.)

Today I found out that Frankl’s teachings were based around the concept of love. He believed that love is the purpose of life. The apple-dropping moment came when he realised that by daydreaming about his wife he could mentally escape his circumstances. Meditating on their love helped him retain his dignity in appalling conditions. Her love gave him purpose.

So it’s no wonder that without love, life can feel a bit pointless sometimes. Especially when you feel judged, isolated and marginalized because of a social crime you didn’t even want to commit. I’d like to see more love and less suspicion between ‘singles’ and ‘couples’. Hey, we’ve all been on the other side. And we probably will be again.

Anyway, I finally cured my single gal blues. All it took was moving into a place of my own.
My little 70s unit may not be a very profound solution.
But I really love it.

For ages, I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.
I worked hard and achieved well in a full-time professional role.
I lived pretty frugally: Primarily second hand wardrobe, still (embarrassingly) going to the same cheap bars I frequented as a student, used a motorbike (or legs) instead of a car. Rarely bought cheese.

None of my expenses (insurance, rent, ¼ mortgage on the cheapest house in Henderson) seemed extravagant for a hard working 30 year old professional with a great education. None of my desires (a trip to the dentist, a holiday once a year, the ability to contribute 4% to Kiwisaver) seemed unreasonable.

I had no dependants other than one very cost-effective cat.

I didn’t expect to be living like Carrie Bradshaw. But I didn’t anticipate my shoe collection would be a bunch of battered boots and tatty heels sitting in a bag until I had enough money to take them to the cobbler.

Then it hit me.

Student loans.

Student loans came into force after high tertiary education fees were introduced in 1991. Previously, university education was essentially free.  The average annual university fee was $4000 by the time I was studying. A BA, an MA, necessary living costs (I also worked all through my studies) and a botched year failing to learn audio engineering later, and I had a pretty sizeable loan. That loan is still coming out of my pay packet, in very noticeable chunks, and will continue to do so for another 4-5 years (longer if the next government decides to reintroduce interest). The day my payments end I’m going to feel like I’ve won lotto. But in the meantime, I’m part of the first wave of people with student loans in the workforce, struggling to make ends meet in a professional role.

The worrying results of high student fees and student loans:

• Decline of living standards. Student loan repayments are severely injurious to my ideal way of life, and ironically, also affect the way I’m perceived at work. (“Oh her. Why does she always wear second hand clothes in the office? What a hippy.  Let’s never give her a promotion.”)
• Class divide. The rich, who perhaps didn’t pay their fees themselves or who paid their loans back quickly, are able to pocket and invest more of their salaries, for longer. The poor and middle class are bonded to student debt for years or decades, thus being even less likely to invest in home ownership, start-up businesses, retirement, other financial interests, or their children’s educations
• Gender divide. No allowance is made for women who take time away from the workforce to raise children. Given that in most circumstances a family is created with the willing participation of two parties, the fact that the woman (or primary caregiver) is one who has to suffer financially – not only by missing out on possible promotions, but in potentially having a student debt for life – is blatant discrimination
• Impact on families. I certainly wouldn’t want to have a kid until I’d paid off my loan, and I can’t be the only woman who feels that way. (It also occurs to me that Working for Families could be in part necessitated by couples who are unable to make ends meet because of their student loans… but that’s a whole other blog entry)
• Brain drain. ‘Nuff said.

It seems that our parents lived through some kind of financial golden age, and that it’s foolish to try to measure our lives against theirs (not to mention extremely depressing). And in a year when people have lost lives to disasters, homes to the earthquake and jobs to the recession it seems pretty trivial to be whinging about not being able to afford tickets to the odd Powerstation show.

But I can’t help wondering whether incomes will ever catch up to the level demanded by student loans, or whether high education fees are slowly but surely contributing to social problems and class divides we can’t even fathom yet.

Interesting Salient article on student fees here.

Throughout high school arts nerds tolerate sports jocks, confident that they’re a temporary annoyance who will retire to the suburbs to breed while the nerds become leaders of creative industry, cultural innovators and philanthropists. But here in life’s sandpit something hasn’t gone to plan. The film geeks, the fan boys and the theatre luvvies want to know why 2011 has been decreed the year of the rugbyhead.

It’s natural for Aucklanders to be excited about The Rugby World Cup – it’ll benefit the economy and tourism enormously, right? It’ll even give the arts a boost (excited about The REAL New Zealand Festival, anyone?). We’re told financial gains to the city could total $20-200m. But public money spent on readying Auckland for the Cup is already estimated at $285 million. Um, that’s a loss.

43,000 international visitors are expected to storm the city, but is ‘Auckland: city of rugger buggers’ really the image we want to project? RWC Chief Executive Martin Sneddon claims we’ll show the world the best of what we have to offer, but in the wake of the Anna Faris scandal we’re more likely to be caught with our pants down exposing the shame of our lout culture to the world.

So if the Cup doesn’t have clear benefits for our wallets and our image, why are we hosting it? As a nation we’re renowned for our attachment to rugby. It has Kiwi everyman appeal; it’s televised, easy to understand, it’s something we feel we are good at. Business meetings routinely open with irrelevant rugby references; rugby knowledge ensures gold card access into a VIP club. We love to voyeuristically experience the glories we’ll never rise to, the bodies we’ll never possess, the lifestyles we’ll never have. In a society without war, rugby gives us an opportunity to indulge our sadistic side and our national pride. Rugby herds us together, grips us with quasi-religious ecstasy and brings meaning to our lives. Given the lack of logical reasons for hosting the Rugby World Cup, the basis for the decision can only have been emotional.

The public may accept a RWC financial loss... if the All Blacks win. But there’s another event happening in our backyard this year that is a guaranteed win for the entire city. An event with genuine benefits to Auckland’s international reputation, culture and economy (the last one contributed $13.4m). Most importantly, it develops and showcases authentic innovation in a way that rugby never could. It’s called The Auckland Arts Festival. Why aren’t we supporting it with the same fervour?

At first glance the arts aren’t as open-access as rugby. As Anne Rodda (Director of the Writers and Readers Festival) says, “you can’t watch a play on the TV, you’ve gotta be there.” The arts are perceived as elitist, but in reality they permeate the most mundane moments of our lives; Rodda points out that “advertising frequently steals from the arts,” and kiwi musicians serenade us daily through supermarket speakers. The festival programme is equally egalitarian; the spectrum of events includes everything from randy puppets to Beckett-inspired dance. Several events are low-cost or free.

Popularity isn’t a problem either. 25,000 people attended last year’s Writers and Readers Festival, 45,000 people attended this year’s Big Day Out, and Auckland Arts Festival Chief Executive David Inns says that “with Pasifika and the Festival you’ll have the density of crowds of the Rugby World Cup.” Aucklanders are voting with their feet but media support lags behind. Festival publicist Rachel Lorimer says that while sports make the front page of the paper, arts are confined to the arts section. A change in media attitude will be crucial if we are to have a festival that sets our souls alight in 2013.

Arts geeks are pragmatic. “If life kicks sand in your face, build sandcastles,” they say. Inns compares the likely effect of the World Cup on Auckland to the effect of the Olympics on Sydney; “it makes the city grow up a bit.” Let’s grow up enough to cast emotion aside and think strategically about where we place our support. The Auckland Arts Festival is a logical choice. As Inns says, “come in our doorway; it’s an invitation to discover a new world”. And an invitation for the world to truly discover us.