First is an article headlined, “Unmarried, over 30 and proud of it”, about single Chinese women being called “shengnu” or “leftover women” by their relatives once they pass the third decade.

I can empathise with these women – I remember my grandmother who married when she was 16 calling me a “jar of pickles” when I reached 30, still single. If she were alive today, she’d call me worse than that, I am sure, but with a big smile on her face. Warrior woman that she was, even she knew when to give up with this grand-daughter.

Seems there’s less shame now attached to Chinese women being single into their 30s and they’ve even twisted the word “shengnu” around to mean “victorious” or “successful” based on the different meanings in Chinese.

According to the report by Didi Kirsten Tatlow, China has about 20 million more men under 30 years of age than women – and so really there shouldn’t be any reason for “leftover women” given the ratio – but appears more women are choosing to stay single and pursuing their own careers and lives.

“I don’t feel I am leftover, I feel I’m living the life I want,” said one.

I don’t think this trend is isolated to China – across most of Asia, as economies develop and more women enter the workplace, they now have choices that their mothers and grandmothers did not.

And this underlying trend – growing swathes of single women – will shape customer behaviour in the world’s largest travel market … so if you’re marketing to women, well, I’d watch this space if I were you.

In the second article, titled “The Confidence Questions”, David Brooks refers to the video in Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign in which a forensic artist conducts experiments with women (pictured) and how they see themselves physically – first, he sketches them as they describe themselves and then he draws another image as described by someone else, another woman.

He then gets the women to look at the two images, side by side, and there’s the moment of realization that basically proves that women are hard on themselves and overly self-critical.

Brooks then asks three critical questions of women and their positions in the workplace.

1. A generation after the feminist revolution, are women still, on average, less confident than men?

(Hard to generalize always, but my answer is yes. In my previous career, when I had to appraise team members, I found that men generally over-estimated themselves whereas women tended to under-estimate their importance and role.)

2. Are women still more likely to flow into different domains in your organization?

(As an observer of the travel industry, the answer would be yes – women tend to flow into sales, communications, marketing, planning and admin positions and then they hit a ceiling within those divisions.)

3. And thirdly, in society generally, are more problems caused by over-confidence or under-confidence?

“I guess I’m asking how to marry self-criticism and self-assertion, a blend our society is inarticulate about. I guess I’m wondering, as we make this blend, whether most of us need more of the stereotypically female trait of self-doubt or the stereotypically make trait of self-promotion,” Brooks asks at the end of his column.

My answer would be, whether you are a man or a woman, a blend of both qualities is critical – too much self-doubt and you won’t get anywhere, too much self-assertion and you’ll get somewhere for sure but perhaps too soon for your own good.

Many years ago, I met a young hotel executive, bursting with confidence and energy, and I told myself, this is a man in a hurry. True enough, he rocketed to the top very quickly – and then just as quickly, he fell.

I am glad to see that he’s back on track – a much slower track but certainly a steadier one and he’s today one of the best leaders I know.

The good thing about travel is, there are already a lot of women working in the industry. All we have to do is give it a good shake to even out the diversity at the top level.

And that’s what we will be doing tomorrow as we dive deep into the women’s market at Sofitel So Bangkok. After all, don’t cocktails always taste better, well shaken and well stirred?