Career women have long been thought to be putting motherhood on ice because they choose their job over a baby.

However most women who freeze their eggs are doing so not because of their career but because they cannot find a similarly successful man.

The claim was made following reports that women are a third more likely to attend university than men in the UK.

These highly educated women, who pay around £5,000 each for egg freezing, are described in a new study as the ‘leftover women’ amid a generation of ‘missing men’.

Their problem, according to US and Israeli researchers, is that they are unable to find similarly clever, driven men because fewer males are entering higher education.

Most women freeze their eggs because they cannot find a similarly successful man (stock)

IVF CLINICS PEDDLE FALSE HOPE OVER EGG FREEZING Fertility clinics are giving desperate women false hope by exaggerating their success rates with frozen eggs, it was revealed earlier this year. MailOnline's undercover reporter was told the chance of the delayed motherhood technique working was as high as 65 per cent. Yet official figures show only around 15 per cent of IVF cycles using frozen eggs are successful. One doctor said freezing 15 to 20 eggs was an insurance policy. Yet the fertility watchdog says just one in 50 frozen eggs leads to a baby. The watchdog – the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority – launched an urgent investigation into the findings back in May. IVF pioneer Lord Winston said giving women false information was an ‘outrage’. Advertisement

'Missing men' and 'leftover women'

Their findings, from a study of 150 women, have been backed up by British fertility clinics.

The study’s author Marcia Inhorn, professor of anthropology at Yale University, said of women who freeze their eggs: ‘There are not enough graduates for them. In simple terms, this is about an oversupply of educated women.

‘In China they call them “leftover women”. It sounds cold and callous but in demographic terms this is about missing men and leftover women.’

On the situation in Britain, Professor Geeta Nargund, medical director of Create Fertility, said: ‘It is something to celebrate that more women are going to university and getting educated but, at the same time, when it comes to starting a family it seems there is now a societal problem with these women finding men at the same level of education.

‘Women tell us frequently that they are freezing their eggs because the men they meet feel threatened by their success and so are unwilling to commit to starting a family together.’

Freezing eggs as an 'insurance policy'

In western countries soaring numbers of women are freezing their eggs as an ‘insurance policy’ to beat their biological clock.

The latest study examined 150 women in the US and Israel, more than 90 per cent of whom said they were not intentionally ‘postponing’ their fertility because of their education or career.

Rather, they were desperately ‘preserving’ their fertility before their eggs ran low and they lost their chance to have a child, because they were single or without a man to marry.

The authors said female graduates, who outnumbered male graduates and made up four-fifths of the study group, were unable to find educated men willing to commit to family life.

Highly educated women are described as ‘leftover’ amid a generation of ‘missing men’ (stock)

FREEZE YOUR EGGS AT A YOUNG AGE IF YOU PLAN TO HAVE CHILDREN AFTER 35 Women who think they will be too busy to have children by 35 should freeze their eggs, one of the world’s leading fertility specialists said in October last year. Whether they simply have not found Mr Right, their career is too important or it is simply not a good time, egg freezing offers a chance to cheat the biological clock, a medical conference heard. Richard Paulson, President Elect of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said he has advised his own daughters - both in their early 30s - that if they do not have ‘two or three’ children by the age of 35 they should consider egg freezing. After that age the quality of the eggs takes ‘a sudden downturn’ and getting pregnant becomes much harder, he said. Dr Paulson made the remarks at the ASRM Congress in Salt Lake City, USA. He was commenting on a survey that found women who had undergone egg freezing had ‘lessened biological clock pressure’ and made them feel ‘less desperate’ during dating. Advertisement

More university educated women than men

Last year 30,015 more women aged 18 were accepted for university in the UK than men of the same age, according to UCAS.

In that year, 56 per cent of acceptances were for females.

Up until 2014, 3,676 women in Britain had opted to have their eggs frozen, with experts saying it is now more popular than ever.

University admissions service UCAS said while 36.8 per cent of women entered higher education in 2016, the figure for men was 27.2 per cent, with more women than men on two-thirds of courses.

The gender gap for higher education is now as large as that between rich and poor people, which was described as a ‘worrying inequality’ by former UCAS chief executive Mary Curnock-Cook.

The gender gap is also historic, and applies to women currently in their 30s.

In 2000, 54 per cent of university students were female. They are now likely to be aged 35 to 38.

In 2005, national statistics for the UK show 57 per cent of students were female - a group now aged 30 to 33.

What the experts say

Describing the phenomenon, Professor Inhorn said: ‘This is an issue that has been misinterpreted so much - this idea of a selfish career woman, putting her fertlility on hold.’

She added: ‘Maybe women need to be prepared to be more open to the idea of a relationship with someone not as educated.

‘But also may be we need to be doing something about our boys and young men, to get them off to a better start.’

Professor Simon Fishel, founder of Care Fertility, said: ‘Anthropologically we are always searching, consciously or unconsciously, for like-minded people so it is not a great leap to understand that women are looking for someone on the same level, who is university-educated or a professional.

‘They certainly ask about that when looking for a sperm (or egg) donor, so it is likely to apply to a partner.

‘This problem of “missing men” is absolutely the case in many situations in the UK, but there is a wider problem behind the increasing desire for egg freezing, not least about men and women being too unaware of their biological clocks.’