One in five women in China said last year that they regret getting marriedWhy is this important economically? It is about a shifting informal economy as women wake up to unpaid work. It is not only individual but also cultural and institutional.
Concerns about domestic violence, household responsibilities and unequal public policies fuel their doubts about marriage
The revolution supposedly liberated women and it did to a great extent in that education and occupational opportunities greatly increased. But cultures shift slowly and institutions often reflect cultural biases.
While "system racism" as the new buzzword, systemic sexualism and gender-bias persist as cultural problems in most of the world to one degree or another.
This is analogous to colonization, where one cohort is treated as inferior and subject to domination, individually, socially, politically and economically.
Women of the world rise up! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
SCMP
Number of unhappy wives in China more than doubled since 2012
Mandy Zuo in Shanghai
SCMP
Number of unhappy wives in China more than doubled since 2012
Mandy Zuo in Shanghai
See also
The East Asian economies were all built on the same model of a modern export sector directed outward, and a domestic economy driven by a construction-industrial state that sprays concrete across the national landscape. It’s hardly surprising that they are facing the same social and demographic issues.
One thing they also share is brutal cultures of work overseen by patriarchal, authoritarian bosses. However you turn the prism to see Taiwan’s problems from a new angle, Boss Island, as Shieh Gwo-shyong’s (謝國雄) excellent 1993 book called it, remains the heart of the issue....
Women of the world rise up! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
ReplyDeleteTom Hickey
Says a non-woman.
Actually, it can be argued that wives have been turned into wage-slaves, like their husbands, since it now requires TWO wage earners for a decent lifestyle as opposed to not so long ago when only ONE was required.
Says a non-woman
ReplyDeleteI had my consciousness raised back in the Sixties by a fellow grad student I was going out with who was a well-read Feminist/Women's Lib'er. Actually it was an eye-opener. I literally had no idea at that time, and I assume that few men did. Even today, a lot of men just blow it off.
Textbook symptom of USD zombitis...
ReplyDeleteFeminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway from "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, which purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant: I told you so.
ReplyDeleteAbstract from the study:
By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.
The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness
There is a logical fallacy in suggesting that the women's movement either caused this or was a significant causal factor. Correlation is not causation.
ReplyDeleteI don't think they are unrelated though, based on anecdotal evidence. Woman woke up and realized that they got a bad deal for millennia. There was some excuse for it based on division of labor, with women being home-bound owing to child-rearing responsibility in the family.
But that ended in WWII, with women in the workforce, and then the advent of daycare, household appliances, etc. that provided woman with more freedom to choose their destiny as individuals and as a social cohort making up half the population of a country.
While many realize, "You've com a long way, baby," they also realize that they are not yet treated equally, either culturally or institutionally. Equal pay for equal work is still an aspiration for many.
Of course, they are dissatisfied and waking up to their condition through liberalization was a contributing factor. But a "cause"? Not.
The same thing is happening in former colonies, as well as in minority groups, which is a reason for the prevalence of identity politics. Individuals affiliate around their common interests, and naturally politicians will exploit this for advantage.
The women's movement has been carefully diverted into avenues that do not threaten the ruling class, or the economic status quo.
ReplyDeleteFeminism says that gender is a social construct. Here is some scientific evidence to the contrary.
ReplyDeleteWhen a woman becomes pregnant, a portion of her brain disappears. Literally. Here are some quotes:
Scientists now also know that becoming a mother also has long term effects on a woman’s brain. It was recently discovered that when women become mothers, the grey matter volume in regions subserving social cognition is pruned away during the final stages of pregnancy.
Here's another quote:
Pregnancy involves radical hormone surges and biological adaptations. However, the effects of pregnancy on the human brain are virtually unknown. Here we show, using a prospective ('pre'-'post' pregnancy) study involving first-time mothers and fathers and nulliparous control groups, that pregnancy renders substantial changes in brain structure, primarily reductions in gray matter (GM) volume in regions subserving social cognition. The changes were selective for the mothers and highly consistent, correctly classifying all women as having undergone pregnancy or not in-between sessions. Interestingly, the volume reductions showed a substantial overlap with brain regions responding to the women's babies postpartum. Furthermore, the GM volume changes of pregnancy predicted measures of postpartum maternal attachment, suggestive of an adaptive process serving the transition into motherhood. Another follow-up session showed that the GM reductions endured for at least 2 years post-pregnancy. Our data provide the first evidence that pregnancy confers long-lasting changes in a woman's brain. —pubmed
Another quote:
In order to conduct the study, researchers compared magnetic resonance images of 25 first-time mothers before and after their pregnancy, of 19 male partners, and of a control group formed by 20 women who were not and had never been pregnant and 17 male partners. They gathered information about the participants during five years and four months.
The results of the research directed by Òscar Vilarroya and Susanna Carmona demonstrated a symmetrical reduction in the volume of grey matter in the medial frontal and posterior cortex line, as well as in specific sections of, mainly, prefrontal and temporal cortex in pregnant women. “These areas correspond to a great extent with a network associated with processes involved in social cognition and self-focused processing”, indicates Susanna Carmona.
The analyses of the study determine with great reliability whether any woman from the study had been pregnant depending on the changes in the brain structure. They were even able to predict the mother’s attachment to her baby in the postpartum period based on these brain changes. —neurosciencenews
Surely you are aware of the distinction between gender and biology?
ReplyDeleteA man not wanting to wear a dress is a gender construct.
A kilt is like a dress...
ReplyDeleteThere you go... Scottish culture allows men to wear skirts.
ReplyDeleteBut culture cannot turn my brown eyes blue...
The women's movement has been carefully diverted into avenues that do not threaten the ruling class, or the economic status quo.
ReplyDeleteLarger issue than that. The issue is diverting attention away from the paradoxes of economic v. political liberalism by putting the narrative emphasis on social liberalism. This is the case both domestically and internationally. The intel services are, chiefly the CIA as far as public information is available, is now even more actively engaged in this than in the past, and it was very active then. They are advertising publicly for woke recruits, raising eyebrows. This is pretty clearly not principally for "equal employment" purposes. It's about harnessing the available energy and redirecting it.
There is no paradox. The US has zero qualms supporting authoritarianism abroad, and will impose it at home if need be. Liberalism is a pretense that we're the good guys.
ReplyDeleteTime to drop enlightenment verbiage. Those laurels have long since dried up.
Woke recruits will come in handy to repress internal dissent. Comparisons to the Cultural Revolution in China are not entirely off-base.