With or without campus jargon, the annoyingly unfair fact is that marriageable men tend to like women who are young, fertile and intellectually unthreatening.
In some communities female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, is seen as a traditional rite of passage and is used culturally to ensure virginity and to make a woman marriageable.
For first-born children, the sex ratio was normal 105 baby boys to 100 baby girls (since boys are slightly more vulnerable to childhood diseases, this ratio provides for equal numbers at marriageable age).
Antonio (Jeremy Irons) seems already to be mourning the loss not just of his ships at sea but of his friend Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) to the wealthy and marriageable Portia (Lynn Collins).