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arXiv · 2605.22587

Endogenous drivers of gender disparity in online dating

Huaiyu Tan·Chenyu Li·Taha Yasseri·Lei Shi·Petter Holme
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Abstract

In its early days, online dating was heralded as a great equalizer, removing biases built into the structures of heterosexuality courtship. However, as repeatedly observed, that prophecy was never fulfilled, and some biases have even become exacerbated. In this paper, we identify a general endogenous mechanism that drives the widening of the gender gap in first-contact rates of heterosexual dating. This mechanism relies on assumptions about the participants' expectations of new contacts and their time constraints. We formulate this symmetry-breaking mechanism as a system of differential equations and analyze its fixed points and their stability.

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Huaiyu Tan, Chenyu Li, Taha Yasseri, Lei Shi, Petter Holme. 2026-05-21. Endogenous drivers of gender disparity in online dating. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22587

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