The East Asian Miracle (for women)
If I make one contribution to the world of knowledge, let it be this:
Societies vary in their preference for female seclusion. But regardless of culture, female employment rises with job-creating growth.
Singapore provides a perfect natural experiment, we can observe how 3 different ethnic groups responded to industrialisation.
Mid-twentieth century Singapore comprised Chinese, Malays, and Indians. Overwhelmingly poor and patriarchal, families maintained respectability by keeping women close to the home. Female education and employment were uniformly low - meagre earnings failed to compensate for the loss of male honour.
Chinese, Malays and Indians differed, however, in their cultural preference for female seclusion. Honour was so important to Malays that housewives might pay 30% extra for groceries hawked near their homes, rather than congregate at the bustling market.
Only 6% of Malay women were in Singapore’s labour force. Tamil Indians (predominantly working class) were culturally similar: only 7% of women were economically active. Chinese families differed, slightly keener to exploit female labour. Faced with the exact same economic opportunities, more women worked.
Over the 1960s and 1970s, fertility fell and factories expanded. Labour was scarce; industry was desperate. “Work beside men, time they put away needlework”, said Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister. Rising wages provided hefty incentives. Even if men wanted housewives, this cultural preference was dwarfed by economic rewards.
Female employment soared alongside structural transformation - for Chinese, Malays and Indians.
Singapore shows how East Asia outpaced South Asia on gender
Now, you may think that Singapore is just one tiny city-state, but actually it is a microcosm for the Asian gender divergence.
In 1900, East and South Asian women were under the control of patrilineal, patrilocal clans. Each family restricted female mobility, as they did not want their daughters to be seen as disreputable.
East Asia overcame the patrilineal trap because it industrialised rapidly and families were willing to exploit female labour in response to new economic opportunities. By migrating to cities and working outside the family, women accrued ‘face’, freedom, and friendships.
South Asia’s slower and weaker structural transformation has not changed the income-honour trade-off as much. The economic returns to female employment remain low, while the costs to honour are high.
Given endemic precarity, people remain economically dependent on kin. This perpetuates jati-endogamy, social surveillance and purdah. Female employment only weakly responds to economic growth. Women remain secluded and separated, seldom challenging their patriarchal providers.
Many young, educated, urban and especially south Indian women want to break out of the patrilineal trap. Safety and structural transformation would help them realise their ambitions.
Why am I so sure? Because that’s precisely what we see in Singapore!
Singapore reveals the secrets to gender equality!
Jobs. Thanks to structural transformation, Singapore’s female employment is high, as is the share of female CEOs, board directors, and parliamentarians. The gender pay gap, meanwhile, is very small.
Feminist activism, public safety and state capacity have been equally imperative to cultural transformation. Employment certainly is NOT enough. Chinese women work, but are suppressed under patriarchal authoritarianism. In upcoming posts, I’ll explain more. But for now, let us recognise one of the world’s fastest ever transitions towards gender equality!
The East Asian Miracle (for women).
"But regardless of culture, female employment rises with job-creating growth."
Agreed. Next I look forward to your explicitly connecting the literature on economic freedom with economic growth. While the literature comes to diverse conclusions, especially with respect to the impact on growth of different indicators on economic growth, on balance economic liberalism, as measured by economic freedom indices, is beneficial for job-creating growth. Whether or not one then describes that as "neoliberalism" is a different question, but given the knee-jerk manner in which many academics use "neoliberalism" as an epithet, it is significant that the best way to improve the condition of women globally is to increase economic freedom, thus job-creating growth.
One of many articles,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9950822/
Aren't there some confounding factors here? Singapore's housing policy effectively banned ethnic conclaves and forced a degree of assimilation. There is also the fact that Singapore has national conscription which, of course, only applies to men but also probably helps in creating a unified national culture. So it would make sense that the social norms of the minority communities would converge to the majority Chinese norms.