asia

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.