Editing Mail-order bride (section)

===East and Southeast Asia===
Many international brides come from developing countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and occasionally from South Asia as well. The countries the women come from are faced with unemployment, malnutrition and inflation.<ref name="Meng, Eddy 1994">Meng, Eddy. "Mail-Order Brides: Gilded Prostitution and the Legal Response." ''Journal of Law Reform''; 28 (1994): 197.</ref> However, economic factors are not the only driving factor for women in Asia to enter the mail-order industry. In some cases women were recruited based on their physical appearance, with an emphasis placed on youth and virginity.<ref name="Meng, Eddy 1994"/> This is found among boutique agencies, most of which cater to wealthy men from other Asian nations. During the 1990s, the majority of Asian mail-order brides came from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos  and China.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies |url=http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=ijgls/ |title=The Mail-Order Bride Industry and Immigration: Combating Immigration Fraud |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140314175439/http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=ijgls%2F |archive-date=2014-03-14}}</ref>

In 2022, Monica Liu published findings which question the common assumption that mail-order brides in East Asia are often seeking marriage to escape poverty. She found that many marriage agencies in China cater to women from wealthy backgrounds.<ref>{{cite book | last=Liu | first=M. | title=Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides under China's Global Rise | publisher=Stanford University Press | series=Globalization in Everyday Life | year=2022 | isbn=978-1-5036-3374-2 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=59l-EAAAQBAJ&pg=PT14 | access-date=2023-10-14 | page=137 |quote= "Historically, Asian men have been stereotyped in both China and the United States as weaker and less sexually desirable than white men...These stereotypes originated with Western imperialism, which defined Asians as inherently feminized...Nevertheless, in China today, Western men, and white men in particular, still enjoy some degree of racial sexual capital..."}}</ref><ref name="StandfordUP">{{cite book | title=Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides under China's Global Rise – Monica Liu | website=Stanford University Press Home Page | isbn=978-1-5036-3247-9 | url=https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35148 | access-date=2023-10-14| quote= Her study of China's email-order bride industry offers stories of Chinese women who are primarily middle-aged, divorced, and proactively seeking spouses to fulfill their material and sexual needs. | last1=Liu | first1=Monica | date=27 April 2024 | publisher=Stanford University Press }}</ref> Liu found that in many cases, wealthy Chinese women sought Western, especially [[White American]] partners, because they are stereotyped within China as being more masculine and better able to satisfy women's sexual and emotional needs.{{sfn|Liu|2022|p=137}}<ref name="StandfordUP" /> However, for the wealthiest Chinese women, the lower income of their foreign boyfriends was sometimes an impediment to marriage.{{sfn|Liu|2022|p=137}} 

According to Ericka Johnson, in Taiwan, many Taiwanese men seek Southeast Asian women as mail-order wives because they prefer hard-working women who will accept the drudges of daily housewife chores, while Taiwanese women reject this traditional view of a woman's role in marriage. For this reason, Taiwanese women seek to marry Western mail-order husbands.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Johnson |first1=Ericka |title=Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband: Russian-American Internet Romance |date=13 July 2007 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-8975-0 |page=180 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mP2z8K4KAqkC&pg=PA180 |language=en}}</ref>

====Philippines====
Filipina women often entered the mail-order industry in the hope of marrying abroad, and then sponsoring their family for immigration.<ref name="Meng, Eddy 1994"/>