Trying to find a woman to date? Join a book club, says University of Kansas study

Is the bar scene not bearing fruit for you romantically? Here’s some extremely boring advice: Join a book club. 

Sure, you’d have to read a book. And — in theory, at least — you’d be expected to discuss the contents of that book, and even express an opinion about it, aloud, in front of other people. But if you’re willing to endure all those horrible things (shout-out to my book club; I’m coming next month, I promise!), it turns out that you may find yourself amidst eager romantic partners — if you live in America and desire females.

That’s according to a new study from the University of Kansas conducted by Christy Craig, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the school. Craig is working on a dissertation “examining contemporary women’s fiction and its readers to better understand how women construct sexuality amidst gendered cultural norms,” according to a release from the school. She recently attended 36 book-club meetings and interviewed 53 women, ages 19 to 80, about what they hope to get out of book clubs. 

“American women utilized their status as readers and book club members to increase their popularity in the dating field and explained that they would never date or marry a non-reader,” Craig says. 

Craig also researched book-club members in Ireland, but found that there, “Irish women did not find this [dating possibilities] as relevant, and many told me they joined book clubs because their significant others did not spend much time reading.” 

Looming around the discussion of women’s fiction and sexuality, of course, is the erotic best-seller 50 Shades of Grey. 

“None of the women read ‘Fifty Shades’ in their book clubs, but it was regularly discussed in that context,” Craig says. “Overall, women I talked to about Fifty Shades felt conflicted.” 

Openly reading about female sexuality in public was seen as a sign of women’s progress, many agreed, but, Craig says, “At the same time, many felt it was not truly as empowering as they wanted it to be, or as they hoped women’s erotic fiction would be.”

Craig presented “Not Just a Book Club: Gendered Sexual Identity through the Lens of Women’s Book Clubs” at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in Chicago this past Saturday.