This was a joy to read, but i would love to take this discussion ahead, i don't know exactly what, but so much is coming to my mind, i will sieve through my thoughts, and hopefully write something meaningful and worthwhile.
Good essay！But how do the labour、marriage and fertility affect GDP？I want to add another evidence which approve the young ladies own a greater choice:On e-commerce platforms, young women are the demographic with the strongest purchasing power. With their high spending power, the market targeting young women in China is extremely robust. On social media platforms, influencers with a high proportion of female followers typically charge 3 to 5 times more for advertisements than those with a predominantly male following. For example, a beauty influencer on Douyin with 300,000 followers might charge up to six figures in RMB per ad, while a military-themed influencer with the same number of followers might charge only a few thousand RMB.
Do we have evidence that women spend more than men in China? I think men earn more, and young women often give their parents a higher share of total earnings.
Yes！Definitely, men earn more! But in traditional opinions, the responsibility of raising parents is for men's. The responsibility of high cost may affect the men's consumption. I mean the men and their families would spend most of their earnings for housing or other huge funditional costs. While women did not have this support, it was hard for them to buy a house, so they spent more on daily costs ( clothes、foods....)
I'm interested in perhaps doing a piece looking at a particular interest of mine: My hypothesis is that the loneliness epidemic and the rise of sexlessness is not driven by the most attractive women; but the middling women and the least attractive (both physically/and in their prospects) dropping out of the market.
My argument would be this, if you are a beautiful, attractive, young woman, from an upper class background with high mate value; you can attract the kind of man who will be considerate of you and more egalitarian. However, if you are in the middle to lower part of the dating market, you can't. For those women, in the past, they had to marry men who might have been brutish or cruel, because they had to survive. However now, singledom is a better deal than marriage with an inconsiderate man.
And this would lead to a bifurcated market: Where the most desirable men and women would have happy companionate marriage but others/the rest would be lonely and increasingly at odds.
I think this is a rather patriarchal look into who gets a mate and who doesn't.
The thought that- those who are desirable in the 4 points you listed- beautiful, attractive, upper class and young and thus “high mate value” would easily find an egalitarian man, is literally something out of the patriarchal value system.
in other words, women mate value is supposedly decided by youth and beauty IS patriarchy.
And then the point that thus she would get an egalitarian man seems like something where you are thinking that if she has high mate value then the man is going to be ready to put up with whatever she likes.
This is nowhere near what an non-patriarchal equitable partnership looks like.
The easiest way to test whether feminism raising fertility is to look within countries and ask if feminists or trads are having more kids. But in every society the trads are having more kids.
All societies, no matter how feminist, are seeing crashing fertility rates.
The most likely culprit is that child rearing costs are privatized, but the retirement tax revenue of children is public. If you give up your job to raise eight kids their future tax revenue doesn’t belong to you. Someone that remains single and has no kids gets to keep their income and has no expenses, and then is provided a retirement paid for by another women’s kids (in fact a more generous retirement because SS increases with contributions).
This is fundamentally what feminism is about. It’s an intra female competition between low and high fertility strategies. Which parent changes the diapers is small change compared to the fact that raising an extra child cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
More feminism won’t work because more feminism is always going to mean centering the self interest of low fertility urban professional women over everyone else.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article. This makes me think about economies where the link between GDP and Women's Emancipation breaks. In highly patriarchal states like Haryana and Delhi in India, although the GDP per capita is strong, the FLPR is extremely low. Although there is a high literacy rate among women and good infrastructure, women here participate less in the workforce.
1. how do we know that the female emancipation creates growth and not the other way round? The anecdotes aren't helpful and the data might suggest either way idk? (Think about British empire)
2. Your east asian examples are striking, except they're missing one major point - all these women can afford maids! (because of rising GDP!)
3. More imp, I beg you to study the ramifications of everything you're doing under the lens of alternate histories - we've been enjoying healthy growing GDP for almost a century now. What if it stalls/crashes etc.? Will women be disproportionately more affected than men? If yes, shouldn't we prepare for those scenarios?
4. Also, note that a large no. of women have the free option of staying at home (not all, but many under several circumstances) if they want to. Why would men change their zamindar attitude if a. they do not get that option esp. under tough economic conditions and b. they're still selected as mates majorly based on their ability to earn money?
5. Another point to ponder upon - all this progress in technological?
Idk I just laid down whatever came to mind. Thanks!
Interesting. But it's important to think about what GDP means. When Kuznets defined it, it measured mostly things needed by humans, both male and female. Nowadays, it is close to a ridiculous measure of human activity. The obsession with it and the associated ideas of efficiency and productivity are a ballooning false God. Focusing on women's relative income/wealth achievement once they are significantly and securely above a reasonable level of material power is increasingly myopic and does not contribute to human well-being. Like too many things, feminist thinking is out of date.
This was a joy to read, but i would love to take this discussion ahead, i don't know exactly what, but so much is coming to my mind, i will sieve through my thoughts, and hopefully write something meaningful and worthwhile.
Thanks alot for writing this.
Thank you Rishabh!!
Good essay！But how do the labour、marriage and fertility affect GDP？I want to add another evidence which approve the young ladies own a greater choice:On e-commerce platforms, young women are the demographic with the strongest purchasing power. With their high spending power, the market targeting young women in China is extremely robust. On social media platforms, influencers with a high proportion of female followers typically charge 3 to 5 times more for advertisements than those with a predominantly male following. For example, a beauty influencer on Douyin with 300,000 followers might charge up to six figures in RMB per ad, while a military-themed influencer with the same number of followers might charge only a few thousand RMB.
Do we have evidence that women spend more than men in China? I think men earn more, and young women often give their parents a higher share of total earnings.
Yes！Definitely, men earn more! But in traditional opinions, the responsibility of raising parents is for men's. The responsibility of high cost may affect the men's consumption. I mean the men and their families would spend most of their earnings for housing or other huge funditional costs. While women did not have this support, it was hard for them to buy a house, so they spent more on daily costs ( clothes、foods....)
Excellent article, amongst the many of your articles that I have read and enjoyed, I think this was the best. Well done and keep up the good work!
I'm interested in perhaps doing a piece looking at a particular interest of mine: My hypothesis is that the loneliness epidemic and the rise of sexlessness is not driven by the most attractive women; but the middling women and the least attractive (both physically/and in their prospects) dropping out of the market.
My argument would be this, if you are a beautiful, attractive, young woman, from an upper class background with high mate value; you can attract the kind of man who will be considerate of you and more egalitarian. However, if you are in the middle to lower part of the dating market, you can't. For those women, in the past, they had to marry men who might have been brutish or cruel, because they had to survive. However now, singledom is a better deal than marriage with an inconsiderate man.
And this would lead to a bifurcated market: Where the most desirable men and women would have happy companionate marriage but others/the rest would be lonely and increasingly at odds.
What do you think?
I think this is a rather patriarchal look into who gets a mate and who doesn't.
The thought that- those who are desirable in the 4 points you listed- beautiful, attractive, upper class and young and thus “high mate value” would easily find an egalitarian man, is literally something out of the patriarchal value system.
in other words, women mate value is supposedly decided by youth and beauty IS patriarchy.
And then the point that thus she would get an egalitarian man seems like something where you are thinking that if she has high mate value then the man is going to be ready to put up with whatever she likes.
This is nowhere near what an non-patriarchal equitable partnership looks like.
The easiest way to test whether feminism raising fertility is to look within countries and ask if feminists or trads are having more kids. But in every society the trads are having more kids.
All societies, no matter how feminist, are seeing crashing fertility rates.
The most likely culprit is that child rearing costs are privatized, but the retirement tax revenue of children is public. If you give up your job to raise eight kids their future tax revenue doesn’t belong to you. Someone that remains single and has no kids gets to keep their income and has no expenses, and then is provided a retirement paid for by another women’s kids (in fact a more generous retirement because SS increases with contributions).
This is fundamentally what feminism is about. It’s an intra female competition between low and high fertility strategies. Which parent changes the diapers is small change compared to the fact that raising an extra child cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
More feminism won’t work because more feminism is always going to mean centering the self interest of low fertility urban professional women over everyone else.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article. This makes me think about economies where the link between GDP and Women's Emancipation breaks. In highly patriarchal states like Haryana and Delhi in India, although the GDP per capita is strong, the FLPR is extremely low. Although there is a high literacy rate among women and good infrastructure, women here participate less in the workforce.
Thanks, Alice, love the idea of patr. rents.
Questions -
1. how do we know that the female emancipation creates growth and not the other way round? The anecdotes aren't helpful and the data might suggest either way idk? (Think about British empire)
2. Your east asian examples are striking, except they're missing one major point - all these women can afford maids! (because of rising GDP!)
3. More imp, I beg you to study the ramifications of everything you're doing under the lens of alternate histories - we've been enjoying healthy growing GDP for almost a century now. What if it stalls/crashes etc.? Will women be disproportionately more affected than men? If yes, shouldn't we prepare for those scenarios?
4. Also, note that a large no. of women have the free option of staying at home (not all, but many under several circumstances) if they want to. Why would men change their zamindar attitude if a. they do not get that option esp. under tough economic conditions and b. they're still selected as mates majorly based on their ability to earn money?
5. Another point to ponder upon - all this progress in technological?
Idk I just laid down whatever came to mind. Thanks!
Interesting. But it's important to think about what GDP means. When Kuznets defined it, it measured mostly things needed by humans, both male and female. Nowadays, it is close to a ridiculous measure of human activity. The obsession with it and the associated ideas of efficiency and productivity are a ballooning false God. Focusing on women's relative income/wealth achievement once they are significantly and securely above a reasonable level of material power is increasingly myopic and does not contribute to human well-being. Like too many things, feminist thinking is out of date.
Note: when i said "when it would become clear that that would be a bad idea to even think about" here.
I meant- restricting women from workforce, sorry for any misunderstanding becuase of this.