The value of women in Asia

[TPFKA@W]

China and India have both screwed themselves over by killing off their female children, in the case of India, either through selective abortion or outright murder of the newborn female, and with China by putting many of the girls in orphanages to be adopted overseas. (In which those little girls get the last laugh since they are typically living very privileged lives when adopted by wealthy Americans or Europeans.) In India now they are missing about 30% of the females they should have had to serve as wives. Thirty percent of their females have been killed off. Now marriage minded young men can't find wives. No one to care for their aged parents, no one to make more Indians for them.

The implications for their societies are staggering.

[Joe Guy]

One little, two little, three little Indians
Four little, five little, six little Indians
Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians
Ten little Indian boys.

Ten little, nine little, eight female Indians
Seven little, six little female Indians
Five little, four little female Indians
Looking for Indian boys.

Three little unborn female Indians
30 percent will never be Indians
Three little missing female Indians
Less little Indians for boys.

[rubato]

When you reduce the supply of something, the value goes up. Women already have and will continue to have a larger economic advantage in China and India which can perhaps be translated into a political advantage?


yrs,
rubato


And in another way ... fewer women of childbearing are means fewer children and a lower population in the future.

[TPFKA@W]

Except it isn't working out like that at all. Lower class Indians are selling their daughters. These women are looked down upon by their husbands, their husband's family and society in general. They are no better off than slaves.

[Big RR]

Indeed, and that is where the economic value calculation fails; just because a slave commands a higher price does not make her any less a slave.

[Jarlaxle]

Isn't the traditional means of correcting this type of imbalance starting a war?

[TPFKA@W]

Isn't the traditional means of correcting this type of imbalance starting a war?

I am not sure that the age old Asian mistreatment of women has resulted in this particular issue before. The advent of sonography has made selective abortion a factor.

[Long Run]

We've seen this train coming down the tracks for the last couple of decades. Not sure there has been a societal situation like this before. Wars have caused the opposite impact -- way more young females than men -- but it seems that things righted before too long in those situations (however, I've not really studied the issue). Jarl's point, I think, is that when a country's power holders have messed things up causing dissension at home, it is common for the governors to try to rile their population against some other population so as to deflect attention.

[rubato]

Except it isn't working out like that at all. Lower class Indians are selling their daughters. These women are looked down upon by their husbands, their husband's family and society in general. They are no better off than slaves.

It is far too early to say how it will work out. The demographic shift has only just begun to change; 940 women to 1000 men is not a large margin. We will see over time if this creates pressure for social change overall. It is just one element in the larger changes happening in India and China as their cultures come into more and more intimate contact with the rest of the world. The dowry system is under pressure to change and I would expect that as women become scarcer commodities they will have greater force in resisting abusive demands for dowry.:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... india.html

In China it is getting harder for young men to find suitable women to marry. Chinese women have traditionally exerted considerable social power so it will not be surprising if they more quickly exploit an advantage. In technical fields at least there are a lot of Chinese women who have moved into positions of authority in just one generation. As a group, they are much more sophisticated at wielding authority than most European women.

The gender imbalance in China appears to be larger, and lager still for educated families. Educated young women are especially rare so they will have even greater power in choosing a mate.:

http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/gender-i ... statistics

We cannot go back and undo what has been done. We might as well see what comes out of the experiment.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

We've seen this train coming down the tracks for the last couple of decades. Not sure there has been a societal situation like this before. Wars have caused the opposite impact -- way more young females than men -- but it seems that things righted before too long in those situations (however, I've not really studied the issue). Jarl's point, I think, is that when a country's power holders have messed things up causing dissension at home, it is common for the governors to try to rile their population against some other population so as to deflect attention.

One effect they are seeing in China is rising crime as the excess males cannot marry and begin families. Shaka used to motivate his army to want to spoil for war by not allowing his warriors to have sex with women until they had killed their man in battle. And the Mamluks were warrior-slaves who ruled Egypt for centuries; as young men they were segregated from women and (so I'm told) so many of them learned to prefer sex with men before they reached the age where they were allowed to marry that they were not fertile enough to replace their ranks thus necessitating the importation of more slaves from Turkey, Sudan, and Central Asia.

Some men are more malleable in their sexuality than others, which will no doubt take up some of the 'slack', but what happens with the rest is an unanswered question. The sex drive is traditionally easily sublimated into violence (as mentioned above).



yrs,
rubato