Sydney - Surprise, surprise: rather than a giddy rush of gals, an avalanche of outrage greeted Mount Isa Mayor John Malony's declaration that even "beauty-disadvantaged" women could find a bloke in his dusty Queensland mining town because of its five-to-one ratio of males to females.

"I've been cooked and roasted and carved up," a chastened Malony said, adding, "I don't have a hair left on my body."

As Malony himself might now admit, male chauvinism is perhaps among the reasons young women with a yearning to get on in life leave Outback towns like Mount Isa for Australia's big cities.

"Years ago it was the case that a woman in those areas might have been married to the guy next door by the age of 21 and having kids by the time they're 23, but that's just not the case any more," demographer Bernard Salt said.

"Instead, we're seeing a generation that's very mobile, that's interested in obtaining a tertiary education, who want to live in the big cities, travel and do all those things that were beyond the reach of their parents."

Aspiring young women are upsetting the gender balance, Salt says in his new book, Man Drought, that plots a phenomenon particularly intense in Australia because, unlike Europe or North America, distances between towns like Mount Isa and cities like Sydney are so vast.

It used to be that farmers in remote Australia were the only ones complaining about the scarcity of women. Now, it's the blokes in country towns like Mount Isa who are feeling the chill as well.

It follows that there must be a preponderance of single women in big cities. There is, but no one seems to be complaining about it. Salt says aspiring young women are not fretting about being single.

Fellow demographer Bob Birrell notes that men in want of a wife, whether they live in rural or urban areas, would best be served by getting a degree and a good job.

Only four out of 10 men aged 30-34 and earning the minimum wage are married or in a permanent relationship whereas seven out of 10 of those of a similar age earning twice the minimum wage are no longer single.

His prognosis for single men aged 25-44 in low-income jobs is that they will most likely miss out on marriage.

Women will wait for a better prospect or stay single. It seems that very, very few will give up their lives in cities like Sydney and Melbourne and catch the bus to Mount Isa. (dpa)