Hierarchy and patriarchy are two kinds of status inequality. One mandates respect for authorities, the other concerns men having more status than women. Before now, they have always been considered separately. But this is a serious omission. Both are fundamentally about status: who is owed reverence and deference? Global heterogeneity in hierarchy is a hugely important aspect of “The Great Gender Divergence”.
The next step would be figuring out what causes cultures to change their preferred level of hierarchy.
If you've seen a Strindberg play or the Ingmar Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" it seems clear that nineteenth-century Sweden was an extremely formal, class-bound society. Men used to be addressed by their titles ("Engineer Andersson"... although that's a bad example because Andersson is a "common" surname and successful men were sometimes pressured to change their names to something more aristocratic), which is something the rest of us only do for physicians and PhDs. And up until a government-led reform in the 1960s, spoken Swedish had a complex, Japanese-style menu of social registers:
Is it possible that the causality is the other way round? Rianne Eisler‘s work on partnership vs domination (eg The Chalice and the Blade) suggests it might be. And worth reading anyway in relation to gender and equality even if you reject the reverse causality.
one thing worth considering in this matrix is narcissism & psychopathy, Narcissists & pscyhopaths can be very focus on status in whatever milieu is current, and tend to prefer win/lose arenas to play-out their status preferences, and hierarchies, see Zitek, Emily, and Alex Jordan. “Narcissists Don’t Like Flat Organizations.” Harvard Business Review, July 27, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/research-narcissists-dont-like-flat-organizations.
on the split, it's 50/50 for covert narcissism and 80% male for grandiose narcissists, 20% female. Such self-centredness is guessed to be about 10% of the population, but as is often stated psychopaths (who are all grandiose narcissists & preponderantly male perhaps 1% of population) are to be found in much higher proportions as you go up the hierarchies, I think these needs to be addressed in essays like this
I don't know about this one. First of all I am always very very skeptical of claims in which good things go hand in hand together. But let me state my case.
I know this is a qualitative analysis but there is too much selective analysis and honestly wrong understanding of culture. Following are some of the problem I have:
1.) Jante Law is very much synonymous with a collectivist outlook which in your previous post you considered a detrimental to gender equality. Also Japanese work culture is very much consensus seeking where you can talk to your boss very much freely and has been for a long time. this is not true for how promotion works but there work culture is certainly more open.
2.)Why would Korean's personal consumption be geared towards achieving more status when generally in a collectivist and hierarchical you are not supposed to show off your status: a fact certainly true for Japan.
3.) Now I can argue against the claim that Confucius culture promote hierarchy but my objection here is if I accept the premise about Confucius values being more deferential to hierarchy than why does China(origin of Confucius values) have such a better female representation than SK and Japan in both senior management and in politics despite still having in some sense way worse sexist attitudes.
I have few other objections. But the last point I want to draw attention to isn't any disagreement i have but the simple widely agreed upon point that project of gender equality is a multi generation one and is not as rapid as economic progress in best of circumstances. Hence the secret of Scandinavian success is that due to geographical closeness to UK(birthplace of enlightenment) they just have a early start on countries like SK, Japan. Nigeria, etc.
I am really not trying to be mean or aggressive or dismissive here. Just not agreeing with the analysis.
Really interesting, Alice. Once you framed it (the greater the social hierarchy, the worse the sexual oppression) it seems self apparent. Thank you. You are so prolific and continually insightful.
Is the land abundance factor still true in modern day Africa? They had very high population growth in the last six decades, especially in a country like Nigeria which now has almost 25% of all Sub-Saharan African population. Would the land shortage lead to a more hierarchical society or would the adoption of modern agriculture prevent this dynamic (African cerial yields per hectare has seen little to no improvement in the past 60 years).
Hierarchy: my comment is tangential to your main theme ...... but I feel I must point out (as an important piece of context to your interesting post) that EVERYTHING in human affairs is hierarchical -in the broadest sense of the word - is now; always has been and always will be. To adapt Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism: "nothing in life is certain except death, taxes.... and hierarchies". To give just one illustration of this universal truth: Try suggesting to the leader of some egalitarian crusade "how's about you not be leader anymore... just an ordinary foot soldier?" and see what the reaction would be.
I am sure the cross-cultural association is roughly as you describe, both because of a) general modernization theories/processes such as those suggested by Inglehart, b) because after all the two things you link are conceptually quite similar (they are both about equality after all), and c) plausible also the ideas/mechanism you identify.
That however makes the exceptions even more intriguing. For example, what to make of highland Papua, that was (is) both egalitarian and gender unequal.
The next step would be figuring out what causes cultures to change their preferred level of hierarchy.
If you've seen a Strindberg play or the Ingmar Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" it seems clear that nineteenth-century Sweden was an extremely formal, class-bound society. Men used to be addressed by their titles ("Engineer Andersson"... although that's a bad example because Andersson is a "common" surname and successful men were sometimes pressured to change their names to something more aristocratic), which is something the rest of us only do for physicians and PhDs. And up until a government-led reform in the 1960s, spoken Swedish had a complex, Japanese-style menu of social registers:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen
All of this changed because Swedes consciously decided to become very egalitarian. But why did they do that?
Is it possible that the causality is the other way round? Rianne Eisler‘s work on partnership vs domination (eg The Chalice and the Blade) suggests it might be. And worth reading anyway in relation to gender and equality even if you reject the reverse causality.
one thing worth considering in this matrix is narcissism & psychopathy, Narcissists & pscyhopaths can be very focus on status in whatever milieu is current, and tend to prefer win/lose arenas to play-out their status preferences, and hierarchies, see Zitek, Emily, and Alex Jordan. “Narcissists Don’t Like Flat Organizations.” Harvard Business Review, July 27, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/research-narcissists-dont-like-flat-organizations.
on the split, it's 50/50 for covert narcissism and 80% male for grandiose narcissists, 20% female. Such self-centredness is guessed to be about 10% of the population, but as is often stated psychopaths (who are all grandiose narcissists & preponderantly male perhaps 1% of population) are to be found in much higher proportions as you go up the hierarchies, I think these needs to be addressed in essays like this
I don't know about this one. First of all I am always very very skeptical of claims in which good things go hand in hand together. But let me state my case.
I know this is a qualitative analysis but there is too much selective analysis and honestly wrong understanding of culture. Following are some of the problem I have:
1.) Jante Law is very much synonymous with a collectivist outlook which in your previous post you considered a detrimental to gender equality. Also Japanese work culture is very much consensus seeking where you can talk to your boss very much freely and has been for a long time. this is not true for how promotion works but there work culture is certainly more open.
2.)Why would Korean's personal consumption be geared towards achieving more status when generally in a collectivist and hierarchical you are not supposed to show off your status: a fact certainly true for Japan.
3.) Now I can argue against the claim that Confucius culture promote hierarchy but my objection here is if I accept the premise about Confucius values being more deferential to hierarchy than why does China(origin of Confucius values) have such a better female representation than SK and Japan in both senior management and in politics despite still having in some sense way worse sexist attitudes.
I have few other objections. But the last point I want to draw attention to isn't any disagreement i have but the simple widely agreed upon point that project of gender equality is a multi generation one and is not as rapid as economic progress in best of circumstances. Hence the secret of Scandinavian success is that due to geographical closeness to UK(birthplace of enlightenment) they just have a early start on countries like SK, Japan. Nigeria, etc.
I am really not trying to be mean or aggressive or dismissive here. Just not agreeing with the analysis.
Really interesting, Alice. Once you framed it (the greater the social hierarchy, the worse the sexual oppression) it seems self apparent. Thank you. You are so prolific and continually insightful.
Is the land abundance factor still true in modern day Africa? They had very high population growth in the last six decades, especially in a country like Nigeria which now has almost 25% of all Sub-Saharan African population. Would the land shortage lead to a more hierarchical society or would the adoption of modern agriculture prevent this dynamic (African cerial yields per hectare has seen little to no improvement in the past 60 years).
Hierarchy: my comment is tangential to your main theme ...... but I feel I must point out (as an important piece of context to your interesting post) that EVERYTHING in human affairs is hierarchical -in the broadest sense of the word - is now; always has been and always will be. To adapt Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism: "nothing in life is certain except death, taxes.... and hierarchies". To give just one illustration of this universal truth: Try suggesting to the leader of some egalitarian crusade "how's about you not be leader anymore... just an ordinary foot soldier?" and see what the reaction would be.
I am sure the cross-cultural association is roughly as you describe, both because of a) general modernization theories/processes such as those suggested by Inglehart, b) because after all the two things you link are conceptually quite similar (they are both about equality after all), and c) plausible also the ideas/mechanism you identify.
That however makes the exceptions even more intriguing. For example, what to make of highland Papua, that was (is) both egalitarian and gender unequal.