Slashdot Mirror
Australian Town Needs Women, Even Ugly Ones
Mount Isa needs women. They need them badly and are willing to settle for anything genetically classified as female. The mayor, John Molony, came under fire recently for suggesting that "beauty-disadvantaged women" looking for love move to his remote mining town where men outnumber women 5:1. "I'm a bloke who respects women. I believe we should look after women. I'm told men outnumber women here by five to one. If that's the case, then perhaps it's an opportunity for some lonely women," Molony said. Not everyone agrees with the mayor. Shirley Slann, a domestic violence worker in Mt. Isa, says, "It paints the women here as second rate and suggests the men will settle for anything. I think it's quite disgusting." It sounds like a certain domestic violence worker is worried about being low woman on the ugly-pole.
The Doors had a song that went:
--
Five to one, baby, one in five,
No one here gets out alive,
You give yours I give mine
Gonna make it baby if we try
--
And so on, and so forth...
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
. . . the men are uglier than sin.
Many of the miners working in Mount Isa do so in rotation and don't actually reside in the town. From what I hear, it's typical for someone to work for two weeks out at the mines and then take a week off, flying to nearby Townsville, Cairns or Mackay where the male to female ratios are normal and many miners actually have a wife and kids waiting for them.
I wonder if the 5:1 ratio is derived from the people in the town at any one time or people who are actually permanent residents and don't fly out on their weeks off. I would guess the former if the data is from the Australian Bureau of Statistics who derive this sort of information from who was in town on census night rather than something like electoral enrolment.