Competition: Where in the World?
A Cultural Challenge!
Do you want to play a game?
Identify the countries this author is referring to.
The first person to correctly identify the countries gets a one week complimentary subscription. Provide justification and it’s a full month. Explain how this data enhances our understanding of cultural evolution, then it’s 3 months. Okay, let’s go!
Men’s concern for status
Dating
Marriage
Divorce
Where, when, who? Answers below!
Answer:
British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft penned these observations of Scandinavia, during her four month travels across the region. This suggests that contemporary support for gender equality is relatively recent. Stay tuned for my upcoming essay on the deep roots and 20th century celebrations of Scandi egalitarianism.
Bravo to @Abahok for being the first to correctly identify Scandinavia.
Since you asked for *countries*, I'm gonna guess the Scandinavian countries.
The suggestion of cold weather, relatively egalitarian courtship rituals, and the suggestion of light industrialization via "men of business" leads me to believe this is somewhere in Northern Europe.
If it is the Scandinavian countries which are thought to be the most gender equal countries in the world today, the patriarchal gap suggests that gender relations are highly contextual to the material conditions of the times. Maybe Scandinavian men aren't newly evolved beings as far as gender is concerned but simply the products of successful economies.
putting a wild guess here. this might be Japan in the late Edo/early Meiji period.
reason:
- cold weather
- mentioning "men of business" seem to suggest some high degree of commercialization in author's country (presumably the UK). And we know that men of business were a thing in Japan.
- this reads like a travelogue. A British person is quite likely to be writing about Japan in that period.
- the way that women are treated here seems very far away from the Western European culture tradition of chivalry, but closer to the Japanese/East Asian tradition of putting men first.
- "which I have never noticed in any other country": this makes it less likely to be an Eastern/Central European country (which could fit some of the other reasonings above), as if it were the case, this would probably not be unique.