Mail-order Bride

A mail-order bride is a woman who lists herself in catalogs (online or otherwise) and is selected by men for marriage. In nineteenth-century America, mail-order brides came from well-developed areas in the East to marry men in Western frontier lands (see history section). In the twentieth Century, the trend was towards women living in developing countries seeking men in more-developed countries. In the twenty-first Century, the trend is now based primarily on internet-based meetingplaces which do not per se qualify as mail order bride services. The majority of the women listed on in the twentieth-century and twenty-first century services are from Southeast Asia, countries of the former Soviet Union and (to a lesser extent) from Latin America. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union large numbers of eastern European women have advertised themselves in such a way, primarily from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Men who list themselves in such publications are referred to as "mail-order husbands". Mail-order husbands come from primarily (in alphabetical order) Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.

The term "mail-order bride" is both criticized by owners (and customers) of international marriage agencies and used by them as an easily recognizable term. It has been pointed out that there is a discrepancy between how international adoptions are regarded ("saving a child") and how international marriages are regarded ("buying a wife"). It has also been noted that "In feminist writing on mail-order brides, women’s and men’s voices remain absent. Instead, this scholarship assumes a one-to-one correspondence between the male gaze on the Web sites and women’s exploitation as domestic laborers in the home".