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November 28, 2015 06:38
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Asia Struggles for a Solution to Its ‘Missing Women’ Problem (wsj.com) | |
27 points by kevindeasis a day ago | 19 comments | |
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/asia-struggles-for-a-solution-to-its-missing-women-problem-1448545813?tesla=y] | |
Comment by Animats 35 minutes ago: [10640174] | |
Check out the statistics for Silicon Valley.[1] The gender imbalance is much | |
sharper than for China. | |
[1] [http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles-map/] | |
Comment by thatusertwo 22 minutes ago: [10640205] | |
Silicon Valley is a self-selecting imbalance whereas China is not. | |
Comment by kevindeasis 29 minutes ago: [10640186] | |
Neat stats. | |
Side note, people are really starting to use mapbox. Can anyone here tell me | |
there experience with it? | |
Comment by unchocked an hour ago: [10640081] | |
Not mentioned here is war: a traditional and horrifyingly effective means to | |
dispose of excess male population. | |
Comment by aianus 41 minutes ago: [10640157] | |
Shouldn't this self-correct eventually with women becoming more and more | |
valuable (dowries, etc.) until people have no problem having daughters since | |
they'll be getting just as rich? | |
Comment by peteretep 3 minutes ago: [10640229] | |
Sadly there's a considerable lead time in spinning up new women of marryable | |
age. | |
Comment by astral303 an hour ago: [10640064] | |
Isn't the problem exacerbated by the traditional monogamous relationship | |
structures? Why must there be a pairing and nothing else? Why are there only two | |
choices of "unmarried men" or "married men"? | |
Article's terms like "competing for brides" betrays a certain "ownership of | |
women" mentality, IMO. | |
So when we talk about cultural attitudes leading to this "missing women" | |
problem, we can't disregard the cultural/societal context of two-person marriage | |
as the only way. | |
Comment by ragnarok451 an hour ago: [10640099] | |
This is a really interesting topic. | |
I think that there are two ideas that combine to create a requirement for | |
traditional monogamous structures - 1) Land Ownership and 2) The family as a | |
power-wielding unit (not just immediate family but extended family) | |
Land is power, in Asia and everywhere else. It's advantageous for a family | |
to get more land. Also, it needs people to take care of/improve the land. | |
The best way to do this is to have a son who can earn more land, bringing it | |
into the family, and then marry a young girl who can create more members of | |
the family to work and repeat the process. | |
Now, here's where competition for brides comes into play - it is in the | |
girl's best interests that she picks a mate with lots of land/power, since | |
that means her offspring will be better off, and she will also probably have | |
a better life. So potential suitors will compete to show they have better | |
resources. This is really in the girl's interests - she has the power here. | |
So why doesn't a girl work herself? Well, in much of Asia, hard labor is | |
still dominant. Men are much better at physical labor than women. With the | |
advent of more IT-related jobs this is starting to change, but men are still | |
in higher demand for jobs than women. | |
Comment by astral303 an hour ago: [10640134] | |
Thanks for this perspective! | |
Comment by pervycreeper an hour ago: [10640079] | |
>One study by Lena Edlund at Columbia University and others suggested a causal | |
link between a more masculine sex ratio and crime, analyzing province level | |
crime data in China to show that a single point rise in the sex ratio of men | |
aged 16 to 25 raised property and violent crime by between 5% and 6% | |
If they are referring to this study [http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp3214.pdf] then | |
this is contradicted by the abstract which claims the figure is 3%. | |
>feticide | |
I'm a bit surprised by the authors' reasoning here, as I would have imagined | |
that they would be in favor of allowing the mothers to choose for themselves | |
whether to carry a child. I guess they're in favor of choice unless the choice | |
is different from their own. | |
Comment by newjersey 39 minutes ago: [10640161] | |
> I'm a bit surprised by the authors' reasoning here, as I would have | |
imagined that they would be in favor of allowing the mothers to choose for | |
themselves whether to carry a child. I guess they're in favor of choice | |
unless the choice is different from their own. | |
I think the idea is that the mothers are innocent and pure and the pressure | |
to abort based on gender of the fetus is external. I imagine there is broad | |
consensus against forced abortions in both pro-choice and anti-choice | |
circles. | |
Comment by HillaryBriss 2 hours ago: [10640049] | |
The countries that are most affected by this problem are countries which have | |
staggeringly large numbers of people already. | |
Is it truly all bad that population growth will be decreased somewhat by this | |
problem? | |
Comment by protomyth an hour ago: [10640087] | |
Its not so much the population decrease as the distribution of people in | |
different age groups. A lot of seniors with a much smaller number of young | |
people is problematic when your structure is based on the other way around. | |
Comment by drfuchs an hour ago: [10640112] | |
Oh, it's even worse than that. Lots of unhappy males leads to fear among | |
the ruling class of where the discontent might lead, which encourages | |
them to pick a fight to start a shooting war, which has the dual | |
benefits of keeping the now-patriotic males busy on the front, and also | |
directly serving to decrease their numbers to fix the original problem. | |
Kind of a big problem if you're the one they decide to rile the masses | |
up against. | |
Comment by analognoise an hour ago: [10640062] | |
“I feel badly for my mother who has to do all of the housework and wash all of | |
my clothes at her age because I can’t find a wife,” he says. | |
...you're a grown ass man making your elderly mom do all the housework and | |
laundry? I wonder why nobody's going after this jewel of a man!? | |
Comment by ragnarok451 an hour ago: [10640072] | |
In Asia, it is customary that women take care of all the household tasks. | |
Many women actually feel insulted (not sure if that's the right word, maybe | |
more upset?) if a man starts to do one of those chores. This is more common | |
in even the younger women there than you think. | |
Also, the way dating works is much different than the current western | |
standards. Think more US circa 1930. Therefore, his not doing the chores may | |
not be such a huge part of why he can't find someone. | |
Not making a judgment on whether its good or bad, but that's how it is. | |
Comment by ??? 26 minutes ago: [10640191] | |
[deleted] | |
Comment by dropit_sphere an hour ago: [10640059] | |
This sucks, but what can be done? | |
Comment by peteretep 2 minutes ago: [10640230] | |
Non-nuclear Himalayan war. Has the added benefit of potentially pacifying | |
Tibet. | |
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