Friends mean the most to women
THIRTY-SOMETHING Scottish women place more value on relationships with female friends than with their partners and believe that men are driven by ambition and money, according to a new study.
They also believe that women are more professional and streetwise than men and that the sisterhood cares more about society.
An exclusive online survey by Scotland on Sunday into the attitudes of Scots women in their thirties has also revealed that many believe that their careers are damaged by having children.
The survey found that 82.1% of those who took part in the survey, rated their female friends as “very important” or “quite important” in their lives, compared to just 65.3% who felt the same about their partners.
When it came to the differences between the sexes, women think more of each other than they do of men; 61.2% of them believe that “driven by ambition and money” is the phrase that best describes men, while just 42.3% of them think the same for women.
More than a third believe that “selfish” best describes men, while just a quarter think it of women.
When it comes to men, the women said the most popular trait was the ability to make them laugh, with being intelligent coming second and romance third. Being rich, at least according to the study, only came in eighth.
And when it comes to children and careers, 42.1% believed that having children had either “definitely” or ” to a certain extent” held them back in a job. However, 31.6% of the women who responded to the survey said that having children had “definitely not” held them back in either the course of their career path or in their education and study.
When it comes to the right age for when to start having children, women overwhelmingly believed that the best time for starting a family was sometime in their early thirties.
In addition, the women surveyed had mixed feelings about their looks. About 60% liked the appearance of their own faces and said they were satisfied with their hair, but just over half are unhappy about their weight and 54% said they would consider having cosmetic surgery. However, two fifths said they never dieted.
