
Asia Struggles for a Solution to Its ‘Missing Women’ Problem - kevindeasis
http://www.wsj.com/articles/asia-struggles-for-a-solution-to-its-missing-women-problem-1448545813?tesla=y
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unchocked
Not mentioned here is war: a traditional and horrifyingly effective means to
dispose of excess male population.

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analognoise
“I feel badly for my mother who has to do all of the housework and wash all of
my clothes at her age because I can’t find a wife,” he says.

...you're a grown ass man making your elderly mom do all the housework and
laundry? I wonder why nobody's going after this jewel of a man!?

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ragnarok451
In Asia, it is customary that women take care of all the household tasks. Many
women actually feel insulted (not sure if that's the right word, maybe more
upset?) if a man starts to do one of those chores. This is more common in even
the younger women there than you think.

Also, the way dating works is much different than the current western
standards. Think more US circa 1930. Therefore, his not doing the chores may
not be such a huge part of why he can't find someone.

Not making a judgment on whether its good or bad, but that's how it is.

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stingraycharles
Living in Cambodia for a few years now, and I can definitely say that this is
true. I always make the comparison of how in Western society, it is custom
that a man carries the bags / does the heavy lifting; he doesn't feel bad
about it, and it would upset him if he saw his wife / girlfriend / etc do
heavy lifting instead of him, even when she's perfectly capable of doing so.

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jwhitlark
That's a good comparison. My wife is from Asia Minor, and despite being a
modern career woman in other respects, gets very weirded out if I cook for
myself. Cooking for both of us is fine, oddly enough, but she'll insist on
doing it if it's just for me.

Everybody has their hang ups.

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Animats
Check out the statistics for Silicon Valley.[1] The gender imbalance is much
sharper than for China.

[1] [http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles-
map/](http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles-map/)

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thatusertwo
Silicon Valley is a self-selecting imbalance whereas China is not.

~~~
meric
China has a parent-selected imbalance.

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astral303
Isn't the problem exacerbated by the traditional monogamous relationship
structures? Why must there be a pairing and nothing else? Why are there only
two choices of "unmarried men" or "married men"?

Article's terms like "competing for brides" betrays a certain "ownership of
women" mentality, IMO.

So when we talk about cultural attitudes leading to this "missing women"
problem, we can't disregard the cultural/societal context of two-person
marriage as the only way.

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ragnarok451
This is a really interesting topic.

I think that there are two ideas that combine to create a requirement for
traditional monogamous structures - 1) Land Ownership and 2) The family as a
power-wielding unit (not just immediate family but extended family)

Land is power, in Asia and everywhere else. It's advantageous for a family to
get more land. Also, it needs people to take care of/improve the land. The
best way to do this is to have a son who can earn more land, bringing it into
the family, and then marry a young girl who can create more members of the
family to work and repeat the process.

Now, here's where competition for brides comes into play - it is in the girl's
best interests that she picks a mate with lots of land/power, since that means
her offspring will be better off, and she will also probably have a better
life. So potential suitors will compete to show they have better resources.
This is really in the girl's interests - she has the power here.

So why doesn't a girl work herself? Well, in much of Asia, hard labor is still
dominant. Men are much better at physical labor than women. With the advent of
more IT-related jobs this is starting to change, but men are still in higher
demand for jobs than women.

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astral303
It's fascinating to me to contrast this with the dominant American nuclear
family paradigm. The family as a power-wielding unit is not the part of the
American Dream. And so there's no incentive to build such extended families. A
nuclear family strikes me as a much more expensive way to live, however.

But really, how many of us would want to live with our extended family? (A
significant percentage would not, I reckon)

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jwhitlark
Much of the pressure for an extended family is the lack of rule of law and the
need to have people close to you to watch your back. When people become more
comfortable that they will not be treated arbitrarily, that pressure relaxes.

~~~
astral303
Awesome insight!

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aianus
Shouldn't this self-correct eventually with women becoming more and more
valuable (dowries, etc.) until people have no problem having daughters since
they'll be getting just as rich?

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peteretep
Sadly there's a considerable lead time and capex cost in spinning up new women
of marryable age.

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aianus
No more than the lead time and capex in spinning up new men of hard-laboring
age.

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peteretep
Did you read the article? Men are currently over-provisioned in that
availability zone.

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HillaryBriss
The countries that are most affected by this problem are countries which have
staggeringly large numbers of people already.

Is it truly all bad that population growth will be decreased somewhat by this
problem?

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protomyth
Its not so much the population decrease as the distribution of people in
different age groups. A lot of seniors with a much smaller number of young
people is problematic when your structure is based on the other way around.

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drfuchs
Oh, it's even worse than that. Lots of unhappy males leads to fear among the
ruling class of where the discontent might lead, which encourages them to pick
a fight to start a shooting war, which has the dual benefits of keeping the
now-patriotic males busy on the front, and also directly serving to decrease
their numbers to fix the original problem. Kind of a big problem if you're the
one they decide to rile the masses up against.

~~~
protomyth
How does this play out with countries with nuclear weapons?

// sorry for late response - flu shot did not work this time

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geff82
In reality, the imbalance is even greater as many men aren't fit for
marriage/relationship. Look at the men living on the streets, look at the
criminal statistics, look at universities: too many men get lost somehow along
the way and will never ever have a wife and children. Men genetically strive
to be great to impress women. While this sometimes leads to new rock stars,
the invention of airplanes and the creation of SV startups, the reality is
that many more get lost on the wrong track (drinking/drugging to show how
manly they are and because their peers do it, stealing something to "get rich
quick", etc...). I even read a study that 100% of the children only stem from
30% of men (AFAIR, I do not find the link any more).

So those societies favoring the birth of boys over girls are really far away
from what should be.

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pervycreeper
>One study by Lena Edlund at Columbia University and others suggested a causal
link between a more masculine sex ratio and crime, analyzing province level
crime data in China to show that a single point rise in the sex ratio of men
aged 16 to 25 raised property and violent crime by between 5% and 6%

If they are referring to this study [http://anon-
ftp.iza.org/dp3214.pdf](http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp3214.pdf) then this is
contradicted by the abstract which claims the figure is 3%.

>feticide

I'm a bit surprised by the authors' reasoning here, as I would have imagined
that they would be in favor of allowing the mothers to choose for themselves
whether to carry a child. I guess they're in favor of choice unless the choice
is different from their own.

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newjersey
> I'm a bit surprised by the authors' reasoning here, as I would have imagined
> that they would be in favor of allowing the mothers to choose for themselves
> whether to carry a child. I guess they're in favor of choice unless the
> choice is different from their own.

I think the idea is that the mothers are innocent and pure and the pressure to
abort based on gender of the fetus is external. I imagine there is broad
consensus against forced abortions in both pro-choice and anti-choice circles.

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pervycreeper
>I imagine there is broad consensus against forced abortions in both pro-
choice and anti-choice circles.

Curious: in which category would you place Geeta Anand and Jaeyeon Woo?

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newjersey
I'd put them in a category of horrible people.

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horsecaptin
From the article: There are some hopeful signs. The imbalance in China and
India appeared to peak at the end of the last decade and has started moving
towards normal levels.

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dropit_sphere
This sucks, but what can be done?

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peteretep
Non-nuclear Himalayan war. Has the added benefit of potentially pacifying
Tibet.

