BANGKOK -- For the past seven years, the forty-something single mother has started work at four in the morning and gone home just before nightfall. It's a living that has helped educate her two sons, one of whom is now in law school and the other in the United States.

Lin, who separated from her husband 21 years ago, is part of a trend in Thailand -- women opting to remain single and even raising a family on their own, Reuters reported.

"Why would I want to be with a man who will end up taking my money and slapping me around?" asks Lin, her hands tightening on the steering wheel of her yellow-and-green taxi. "My children have good futures. I don't want them tied to someone like that."

More opportunities for education and greater affluence are enabling Thai women to gain financial independence in unprecedented numbers. But alongside, increasing numbers say they are finding it more difficult to find men they can be happy with, or men who will be comfortable with their success.

The number of single women in Bangkok eligible to work outnumber single men by 12 percent, according to National Statistics Office data.

More Thai women than men are working in their 20s, still the time when most Thais get married. That number grew 25 percent in the last 10 years, more than doubling the 12 percent growth for men.

Thai women workers are also more educated. The number of women employed in Bangkok who have attended university is rocketing: Around 440,000 women to 378,000 men, compared with 187,000 women to 206,000 men 10 years ago.

Recruitment officers say women have the edge over men.

"We've certainly detected employers prefer women," says Michael Unsworth, director of smart city people, a Bangkok-based recruitment service for office professionals.

"They tend to take their jobs more seriously, and are more willing to attend to mundane aspects of the job. People tend to view them as more stable employees."

But in traditional Thailand, better jobs for women come with dimmer romantic prospects.

"Men won't approach me," says Dew, a corporate lawyer in her 20s who works for an international law firm.

Many successful young women look for at least equal accomplishments in their partners, and that can sometimes be a tall order.