Mail-order bride
A mail-order bride is a woman who lists herself in catalogs and is selected by a man for marriage. In the twentieth century, the trend primarily involved women living in developing countries seeking men from more developed nations. Men who list themselves in such publications are referred to as "mail-order husbands", although this is much less common. As of 2002, there were an estimated 100,000–150,000 mail order brides worldwide.
The term mail-order bride has been criticized by international marriage agencies, who nevertheless continue to use it as an easily recognizable term. Women of Asian descent have also criticized the term, which they consider stigmatizing to women in such relationships. Consequently, some researchers have rejected the term.
Demographics
Around 100,000 to 150,000 women advertised themselves as mail-order brides globally in 2002. Of these, around 4,000 to 6,000 are married to American men every year, according to CIS estimates. More mail-order brides originate from the Philippines than any other country, in spite of the illegality of mail-order brides in the Philippines.According to Robert Scholes, in a sample of 6,000 mail-order brides, 76% were of Asian origin, while 28% originated from former Soviet Union countries such as Russia and Ukraine. A smaller portion were from Latin America. The majority of the American men who married foreign wives were white and upper-class.
Of the foreign brides given residence status in the United States in 2002, 50% were from East Asia, 25% were from European countries, and 5% were from Latin America.
Owing to the large number of single men in rural Japan, mail-order brides from the Philippines became common in the 1990s, and in 2006, the number of such marriages peaked at 12,150. Although the number of marriages has dropped to less than 4,000, Filipinas still make up the largest number of foreign brides in Japan.
Due to the rising cost of paying for a bride in China, some Chinese men from working class communities have paid marriage brokers for wives from Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. Although many of the women from Vietnam willingly marry for love or economic reasons, some are kidnapped and sold by human traffickers. According to China's Ministry of Public Security, 17,746 women were rescued from human traffickers in a period of less than two years.
Motivations
East and Southeast Asia
Many international brides come from developing countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and occasionally from South Asia as well. The countries the women come from are faced with unemployment, malnutrition and inflation. However, economic factors are not the only driving factor for women in Asia to enter the mail-order industry. In some cases women were recruited based on their physical appearance, with an emphasis placed on youth and virginity. This is found among boutique agencies, most of which cater to wealthy men from other Asian nations. During the 1990s, the majority of Asian mail-order brides came from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Taiwan, Macau, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China.In 2022, Monica Liu published findings which question the common assumption that mail-order brides in East Asia are often seeking marriage to escape poverty. She found that many marriage agencies in China cater to women from wealthy backgrounds that were primarily middle-aged and divorced. Liu found that in many cases, wealthy Chinese women sought Western, especially White American partners, because they are stereotyped within China as being more masculine and better able to satisfy women's sexual and emotional needs. However, for the wealthiest Chinese women, the lower income of their foreign boyfriends was sometimes an impediment to marriage.
According to Ericka Johnson, in Taiwan, many Taiwanese men seek Southeast Asian women as mail-order wives because they prefer hard-working women who will accept the drudges of daily housewife chores, while Taiwanese women reject this traditional view of a woman's role in marriage. For this reason, Taiwanese women seek to marry Western mail-order husbands.
Indonesia
Indonesian women, mainly sex workers, enter the mail-order bride industry in hopes of escaping poverty in Indonesia. The Indonesian government has warned its citizens against mail-order bride schemes rampant in the country, which are often fronts for illegal human trafficking activities. Still, mail-order bride activities persist in Indonesian society today, especially in the country's impoverished and provincial areas. In April 2025, Indonesian news agency Antara revealed in a report that incidents of mail-order bride schemes used as fronts for prostitution, human trafficking, and other illegal activities have seen a steady increase in the country.Philippines
Filipina women often entered the mail-order industry in the hope of marrying abroad, and then sponsoring their family for immigration.Eastern Europe
Economic and social conditions for women in Russia and other Post-Soviet states are a motivational factor in finding foreign arrangements. The rise of Russian mail-order brides happened immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2004, testimony before the United States Senate, Professor Donna Hughes said that two-thirds of Ukrainian women interviewed wanted to live abroad and this rose to 97% in the resort city of Yalta.Russia
In 1999 it was reported that women in Russia earned 43 percent of what men did. Marriage is a substantial part of Russian culture, with 30 years being the age at which a woman is considered an "old maid".International marriage agencies
An international marriage agency is a business that endeavors to introduce men and women of different countries for the purpose of marriage, dating, or correspondence. Many of these marriage agencies are based near women in developing countries. International marriage agencies encourage women to register for their services, and facilitate communication and meetings with men from developed regions of Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. This network of smaller international marriage agencies is often affiliated with web-based international dating sites that are able to market their services on a larger scale, in compliance with regulations such as the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. Experian, a market research firm, reports that the top 10 international dating sites attracted 12 million visitors in March 2013, up 29% from March 2012. International dating sites provide a wide variety of online communication, including instant messaging, email letters, webchat, phone translation, virtual gifts, live games, and mobile-based chat. International marriage agencies are frequently referred to as "mail-order bride" agencies. However, many consider the term "mail-order bride" derogatory and feel it demeans foreign women by comparing them to commodities for sale and by falsely implying that, they exercise no judgment over the men they meet and would marry anyone from a relatively wealthy country.Services offered by marriage agencies typically include:
- Offering a catalog with verified women's profiles
- Introductions
- Platform for communication and interaction
- Translation of correspondence between clients not speaking a common language
- Excursions, in which a man is introduced to several women interested in marriage
History
17th and 18th centuries
British colonies
In 1620, the Virginia Company recruited mail-order brides for the Jamestown colony, sponsoring the emigration of 140 women in hopes of reducing desertion by the settlers and to avoid the men marrying women from the local Native American tribes. They were sometimes referred to as "tobacco wives", because each male colonist who married a mail-order bride had to reimburse the company for her passage at a cost of 120 pounds of "good leaf tobacco". The women who were brought over by the company were free to marry whomever they chose, even men who were too poor to pay their passage fee. The average age of these brides was 20.French colonies
France took a similar tactic in the mid-1600s, recruiting and sponsoring approximately 800 women to immigrate to New France. These mail-order brides were known as the filles du roi. The New France colony followed the same patterns as Jamestown: male settlers returned home or married Native American women and left the colony to live with their wives' tribes. For the filles du roi, the government not only paid to recruit and transport them, it also provided each woman with a dowry of at least 50 livres. As with the "tobacco wives" of Jamestown, the filles du roi had the right to choose their partners and could refuse any suitor. Genetic studies of French Canadians have suggested that millions of people in Canada today are descended from the filles du roi.When New France began its Louisiana colony in 1699, it requested more mail-order brides. These were known as Pelican girls. This program was not successful; the women had been recruited with false descriptions of the struggling colony and had many complaints about their treatment. When women in France heard of the terrible conditions and of how the Pelican girls had been treated, the government was unable to recruit many more mail-order brides. France had to resort to shipping over thieves and prostitutes, known as "correction girls".