It's interesting that there is a similar imbalance in China and India (~35m). That implies to me that the imbalance was not caused by the one child policy, but by sonograms and abortions.
Great writing, lots of sources, in http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
> Do we find that “countries that lack gender equity in school enrollment” and “stereotypes associating science with males” have fewer women in tech?
> No. Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around the world. Her number of 26% for the US is slightly higher than I usually hear, probably because it’s older (the percent women in computing has actually gone down over time!). The least sexist countries I can think of – Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, etc – all have somewhere around the same number (30%, 20%, and 24%, respectively). The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality.
> Why is this? It’s a very common and well-replicated finding that the more progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in personality of the sort Hyde found become. I agree this is a very strange finding, but it’s definitely true. See eg Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sex Differences In Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures:
>> Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (n = 17,637).
> In case you’re wondering, the countries with the highest gender differences in personality are France, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. The countries with the lowest sex differences are Indonesia, Fiji, and the Congo.
Whereas, in countries where women are expected to do what society wants them to do, they are forced into tech because that is where the money is, and is how they can best help feed their families.
But in some areas less sexist than western society - you don't take your husband's last name when you marry - you're not expected to quit your job and become a housewife when you have children - girls are expected to be good at math, science and engineering just as much as boys
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/23/17272620/chinese-tech-com...
Let's not forget the gender pay gap, which imo is the main culprit
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014759671...
"In contrast to the United States and European countries, China has witnessed a widening gender pay gap in the past two decades."
China is a still a very patriarchal society. Much more so than the US or EU.
I work with powerful Chinese businesswomen and they are no nonsense tough customers. They also do not have any of the delicate mixing of sexuality and asexuality that American businesswomen need to strike - the Chinese women are all business all the time.
So you won't see any product of the one child policy begun in 1979. It will be quite some time as CCP leaders tend to run on the old side of things.
1. One of the southern states (that I'm from) ranks super-high in killing baby girls, despite what one would think intuitively.
2. Doctors offer Levi's style buy 1, get 2nd 50% off style packages for sex-determination test + abortions (both of which are banned). To ensure that parents-to-be get both, they lie that the foetus is a girl.
[0] http://www.satyamevjayate.in/female-foeticide/femalefoeticid..., scroll down for the episode
Sorry to nitpick, but female foeticide (sex-selective abortion) would be better described as “aborting female fetuses.”
The end result is identical, and despite being able to see a difference, nonetheless I feel the same way about both situations.
Abortions should be reserved for only the direst of situations.
I've always found it ridiculous that effectively 1 planck-time can be the difference between a collection of cells and a human and therefore the difference between selfish rights and outraged sorrow.
The idea that you can draw the line arbitrarily along a child's development other than the very moment of inception and call one a self-centered right and the other murder is preposterous.
The very fact that it is the premeditated interference that prevents the baby from continuing to develop should be the light-bulb moment for most discerning and logical individuals. You literally have to kill the baby to stop it from becoming a fully-formed version of itself - that is literally it. You have to kill it to stop it from getting to a point that you 'begin to feel bad'. It is ridiculous.
The fact that, when unimpeded, that baby will grow into an adult individual should be a pretty obvious reminder to people of what they're actually doing.
I've been saying this for a little while, but I'm sure a time will come when society collectively looks back on this period and shudders at the horror of it all.
Truth be told though, this renaming-bad-things-to-make-them-passable phenomenon isn't only limited to killing unborn children, and it has been going on for a long time.
I understood and didn't take offence at the nitpick mainly due to the fact that foetus vs baby is an important argument in the pro-choice vs pro-life debate in the US; the "women should be allowed to control their bodies" side is usually presented with "should they be allowed to kill a baby to control their body", etc.
Yeah, I had read and understood the context and ended up unsure of where to nest my rant so that it was most relevant to being discussed but least intrusive. I think I've missed the mark on that so sorry for the confusion.
The confusion has since been cleared up, so there’s no need to drag it on.
Not preposterous at all. The line is clear: viability outside the womb.
As a woman, I deem legal and safe abortion an exercise of my second amendment rights. If I determine that a separate individual has taken residence inside me contrary to my wishes I have the right to defend my person against that intrusion. Of course I first ask for the person to leave and find suitable accommodation elsewhere. Oh you can't leave on your own? I still don't want you here -- leave, leave now. No? Well I will stand my ground.
I really don't see why (mostly) men have no philosophical qualm with defending their home against a fully alive intruder, yet can not understand why a woman might wish to exercise a similar right over her own body.
> Not preposterous at all. The line is clear: viability outside the womb.
That's not an argument that makes any sense at all, nor does it stack up when put under scrutiny.
What about the viability of an infant that you arbitrarily decide you wish to eject from the home? You ask them to leave; well they can't walk. You ask them to find suitable accommodation elsewhere; well they can't talk. You tell them to feed themselves. Oh, you can't leave on your own? I still don't want you here -- leave, leave now. No?...
What about the viability of a minority group that the government decides they don't want in their country? Lets say it's a bunch of Jews, eh? Follow through with your principle and see where it leads you.
So I'd argue that this is an argument of selfishness, lack of responsibility and willful foolishness - traits which are considered highly unhealthy to self and society.
Putting that aside, the other issue is that this argument completely skips the point at hand - human life. As a society, we deal with human life carefully for a reason - it's beautiful and important - it's something to be cherished and nurtured. Arguments like these try do deny this fact by looking the other way.
Women in these United States of America have no paid maternal leave unlike all other countries except 2 others, we have the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world on par with Sri Lanka, and until Obamacare rolled around did not have automatic pre-natal care in our health insurance plans. Why should I relinquish my right to self determination for a nation that cares so little for my successful motherhood? The US at a policy level has no skin in the game, yet a large group of its citizens want to tell me what do? Screw that...
We tolerate all sorts of nonsense in the US that ends people's lives in the name of freedom. Just look to the pro-2A crowd. They take no societal accountability for the lives of people in their policy preferences. Why should I accept any less for myself?
This argument is again one that rejects the moral responsibility to the human child growing in the body. The notion that discontent with the situation justifies killing a human doesn't stack up.
The point about the broken USA healthcare system will never justify the killing of unborn children. It also serves as a first-world excuse that is essentially based around inconvenience.
Finally, the argument that "others do horrible things so therefore why can't we do this horrible thing too" doesn't make any kind of sense either.
This is the crux of the issue though, isn't it. The desperate attempt to de-humanize the child so that, in some twisted way, it's OK to kill it before you feel bad.
I only feel bad for those poor women living as a slave to their authoritarians husband in theocratic distopias and the women who are forced against their will, in the face of a system stacked against both them and their children, to bear an unwanted child because you value the life of the unborn over the lives of the living.
So long as all of those things are being attacked, women need to be having as many abortions as possible.
> So long as all of those things are being attacked, women need to be having as many abortions as possible.
Putting aside the bizarre and unfounded argument you just gave - all you've done is again looked the other way when it comes to taking human life. It's like you're sticking your fingers in your ears and loudly proclaiming "lalalala!".
It's absolutely not like that, in fact this is a spot on description of your response.
Politicians who hate LGBT (by words and/or by legislation), fight to regress sex education, fight to made women's health care difficult to acquire, cite obnoxious BS like "family values" while cheating on their wives, soliciting homosexual encounters in restrooms, literally actually molesting children and defending the molesters, unambiguously defending the act of rape (rather than strictly refuting allegations), unanimously voted against net neutrality, budget cuts for education to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, cut the social safety net for impoverished people like single mothers, fetishizing the struggle of poor people with social Darwinism while denying biological Darwinism as fact, all this with waves of jobs bring automated away.
These politicians play lip service to the abortion crowd and get the abortion vote. You can't call yourself "Pro Life" if you want to try to force women to carry unwanted children with one hand while making the world as shitty as possible for both the single mothers and their children with your other hand. You're the one who is sticking your fingers in your ears and loudly proclaming "lalalala!". The entire abortion platform is set up to fuck us all over as soon as the child is born.
I've demonstrated that I actually care about human life, at least 100x more than you. You care about human being born. You immidietly don't give a shit about them the second after they're born.
You're conflating completely unrelated politics with the point I'm making, as well as assigning them to me.
> I've demonstrated that I actually care about human life, at least 100x more than you. You care about human being born. You immidietly don't give a shit about them the second after they're born.
No you haven't. You're assigning to me the broad spectrum of stupidity of a political viewpoint and not addressing the argument at all.
Nope, you can't vote in favor of banning abortion without voting for every shitty way republicans want to fuck over minorities. I didn't conflate them, they merged themselves together decades ago. I can't take any anti-abortion arguments seriously so long as they are attached to a long list of horrendous anti-human agendas. At this point, it's extremely difficult to consider the anti-abortion agenda to be anything other than about controlling and discriminating women. If you sincerely cared about babies, you would be completely disgusted by the way they are treated and supported after birth. But you literally only care that they pop-out alive.
There's no argument to consider because nothing about your position is sincere.
You've set aside reason.
> If you sincerely cared about babies, you would be completely disgusted by the way they are treated and supported after birth.
I am. However, despite this fact I'm not sure you can look past your hyperbole to discuss the points rationally.
> But you literally only care that they pop-out alive.
Where did you get this from? You're just saying random things. I can only assume you're either in a confused rage or you're just trying to misdirect the discussion to prevent rational thought about what I'm saying.
I know you're exactly what you're saying. Baby murder bad, why refusing to acknowledge that baby murder abolishionist don't actually care about making the world a better place.
It doesn't work this easy way. Many people are unviable outside the womb due to illness, trauma or age-related troubles, and yet they are considered humans, anyway. More to that, many (probably, majority) countries have laws punishing for refusing aid to such humans.
Rational people don’t think that some magical process occurs between one instant and the next as a fetus goes from “ok to abort legally” to “illegal to abort.” The law also isn’t as involved in the spiritual or emotional content of the debate, but the practical implications. As such, law represents a compromise, hopefully a reasonable one.
Part of the problem is that some people look at a fetus and think, “small baby” and others see a potential baby. For some there is a moral imperative to support that potential, and for others there isn’t. Yet others look at a newborn and see a person, others see a potential person. The problem is that this debate is ultimately too emotionally charged for the hard biological reality to enter for most.
As a result, the law picks viability of the fetus as a line, not because of some magical transformation, but for practical reasons. It does this because outlawing abortion in no way stops abortion, it just drives it underground. The law also recognizes that the mother is a fully viable and developed person with their own rights, and (this is going to sound harsh) playing host to a parasitic organism.
Needless to say none of what I’m saying goes over well with people who don’t have a strong background in biology. The idea that the life of the mother might matter more than the life of another potential person doesn’t sit well with some people. The idea that even newborns are less “people” and and more “grub-stage people” tends to be downright offensive to many.
It doesn't go over well for many people with a strong background in biology either, to be fair.
This particular argument tries to skirt the issue by attempting to deny the existence of humanity and, less directly, "real" life by essentially stating that vulnerability removes your right to humanity. If you follow through the principle of the argument this is undeniably its core. For an overwhelming number of obvious reasons, this doesn't stack up either.
All I’m doing is failing to put human life on a pedestal, while acknowledging the difference between what something currently is vs its potential. A fetus isn’t a person, it’s something with the potential to become a person. Biology and the law both recognize that, religion and sentiment don’t.
That's a leap from my statement.
> All I’m doing is failing to put human life on a pedestal, while acknowledging the difference between what something currently is vs its potential.
You've only restated that vulnerability removes right to humanity.
> A fetus isn’t a person, it’s something with the potential to become a person. Biology and the law both recognize that, religion and sentiment don’t.
A fetus is a person who's not reached the stage where you can meaningfully communicate. Your argument assigns humanity to lucidity, which is ridiculous.
Additionally, biology doesn't recognise that "it’s something with the potential to become a person", biology merely explains the building blocks, process and method. To say otherwise is to really attempt to twist mere observation to suit your viewpoint.
Female child is expensive in India and Indians are poor hence not all can afford the luxury of female child.
I absolutely hate the objectification of women as vaginas for our boys. All the discussion around the topic is "we need vaginas for our boys" who will produce babies if we kill all girls?
Heh, another fix for that is to work towards making a female child not a luxury
Even if your daughter is that kickass smarty pants you stand to lose.
PS - All these problems mellow once the income level of people rise significantly as people marry through love marriage etc. But there are other skews because majority of Indian girls fall in ugly category hence men compete for 5% of girls in love marriage market where as no one goes after the 95% one. Check this : https://www.singledudetravel.com/2013/12/indias-shocking-lac...
> this is a very specific Indian thing which I cannot begin to understand as there are already less women than men.
It is because parents just don't want to get rid of the daughter. They want to use her as a currency to get related to a much richer family than them. That is what makes it a far tougher market.
Think of it like this. You might think you get more sex as 20 year old because of your youth. But in reality a 20 year old is likely to sleep with girls between 18 to 20 year old. But if you are 40 year old your target set becomes 20 to 35 which is much bigger and very likely you might get more sex partners than 20 year old.
If you are a girl with income level X you want a husband whose income level is 2X. The boy can chose any girl from income levels < 2X. In fact higher up you are on economic level you can point your finger to a girl and pick her to marry.
The single "I am not getting a wife" people are essentially at the poorer spectrum they are not uniformly distributed. These are the people sending "show bobs and vegene" messages on facebook !
> like say the groom earns 5-10x the wife's salary Correct and all girls pay this dowry willingly. No one has forced them to marry up. They can marry equal or below.