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India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress will probably come from creatin

India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress will probably come from creating safe, well-paying jobs.

trianglem 6y ago
That’s because you are not counting housekeeping and child rearing as essential labor which is inaccurate.
- qsort 6y ago
  Is there any particular reason why you are assuming that housekeeping and child rearing should be the exclusive responsibility of women? I'm struggling to see any honest point in this comment.
  - trianglem 6y ago
    I said saying only 20% of women are involved in labor in India is incorrect. That number is much much higher if you take those into account.
    - managerclass 6y ago
      The statistic is saying that 20% of women in India participate in the workforce as it is defined. Are you trying to say that the 60% of Chinese women includes women who are homemakers and aren't in the workforce as it is defined?
    - volgo 6y ago
      You’re wrong. Every country would have 99% labor participation rate if you count those. It’s not meaningful The fact is only 20% of women are not getting paid for their labor. It’s a sign of huge lack of development progress
  - foggyeyes69 6y ago
    I think OP was making a statement about how things are rather than how they should be. I agree with you that this shouldn’t be the case, but right now it absolutely is the case in India.
    - oblio 6y ago
      OP's comment doesn't add anything of value in that case. In 99% of cultures out there, traditional roles imply that the women is a homemaker. Nobody reasonable assumes that women not counted in labor participation statistics are partying on the moon :-) I.e.: we already knew what he's saying.
      - trianglem 6y ago
        A childcare facility shows up in labor statistics, why shouldn’t a mother’s labor?
- volgo 6y ago
  Labor participation would be 99% in all countries. What’s your point? The 20% to 60% is meant to demonstrate female inequality in India, because most of them are working at home for zero pay and low social status. Whereas in more developed countries, women get paid to work in industries.
  - svieira 6y ago
    I think the point the parent is trying to make is that saying that "participation of women in the workplace" isn't a directly-correlated metric for the "how happy / empowered / established / productive are women in this society" metric that we all care about improving. To put it another way, if we just take the former metric as the gold measure it is better to be payed to care for someone else's children than to not be payed to care for your own.
managerclass 6y ago
TIL China has a higher female labor participation rate than the US. Unexpected.
- YinglingLight 6y ago
  The real murky question is if that's desirable.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  Why unexpected? The Soviet Union did too. A few reasons for that (for the Soviet Union; I know less about China): 1) One of the premises of communism is equality of all people, including equality of men and women. As a result, a bunch of official barriers to women's labor force participation that existed in the US up until recently were removed quite a bit earlier in communist countries. Not only that, but the right to a job was considered a basic human right in the Soviet constitution, and not having a job was a crime punishable by jail time starting in the early 60s (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense)#Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense)#So... for some basic details). Note that this did not necessarily affect societal attitudes about household labor, by the way: women were just expected to both work _and_ do the cleaning/washing/cooking at home... 2) Female employment in the US surged during WWII to make up for all the men drafted into the military, then dropped as the size of the military was reduced in the aftermath. Something similar happened in the Soviet Union with women stepping into "men's jobs", but without as much of a corresponding drop after the war. Something to do with the fact that US deaths in WWII (combat and non-combat) were ~400k, which was about .6% of the male population in 1941, on the assumption that most of those deaths were males and males were half the total population. For the Soviet Union estimates for military deaths (mostly male) in WWII vary from ~8 million to ~14 million (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... ), which corresponds to 4-7% of the 1941 total population. 8-14% of the male population if the pre-war breakdown between male and female was 50-50, which may or may not have been the case. Plus whatever the breakdown was among the ~10-15 million nonmilitary deaths in WWII in the USSR... But the upshot was that there were a lot more women alive than men after the war, which reduced he "men coming home and taking back their jobs" effect, because the men just did not come home.
r00fus 6y ago
It's more than that. I know many women who quit their well-paying jobs because societally in the US we have not fully socialized child rearing in a way that China has. e.g.: Our infrastructure and attitudes about kids transport is in dire need of refactoring.
- mbg721 6y ago
  That's not necessarily a bad thing. What about women who prefer to see their kids grow up rather than endlessly chase paychecks?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - officeplant 6y ago
    What about dads who would like to do the same?
    - mbg721 6y ago
      Plenty of families would benefit from dividing labor that way; the biggest (non-artificial) obstacle is probably the inertia from the realities of giving birth and breastfeeding.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    I think we agree; labor participation rate for women may not be a good single-dimensional indicator of societal progress.
iguy 6y ago
Seems unlikely this 20% number implies that 80% of women are sitting at home drinking tea & looking after kids. Where is it from? Is this formal sector employment? IIRC the informal labor market is something like 80% of the country in total. Lots of people work in ways that are difficult to gather statistics about.
- volgo 6y ago
  If you’ve visited India, you wouldn’t be surprised. Most women do stay home and take care of kids And it’s really hard work btw, cooking and looking after the house and kids. They’re definitely not just “sitting home and drinking tea.”
  - iguy 6y ago
    Yes I exaggerate slightly. But I wonder a lot about the quality of this data. Doesn't about half the country still work on farms? Low-tech farming has endless labor for all kinds of hands, but little paperwork.
    - bloodorange 6y ago
      It's not exaggeration. It's disrespectful and taking their effort for granted.
      - iguy 6y ago
        To be clear, I mentioned this stereotype specifically to claim this is not what's happening.
    - asenna 6y ago
      I'm from an upper middle-class family in India and the data from all my relatives (including distant ones) matches this - 80% does seem about right for housewives. Similar for my friends. It's changing rapidly with the newer generation but for my parents' generation that is definitely the norm.
  - 6y ago
jimmaswell 6y ago
Isn't any labor statistic from India suspect because so many people work in the "shadow economy"?

India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress will probably come from creating safe, well-paying jobs.

trianglem 6y ago

That’s because you are not counting housekeeping and child rearing as essential labor which is inaccurate.

qsort 6y ago
Is there any particular reason why you are assuming that housekeeping and child rearing should be the exclusive responsibility of women? I'm struggling to see any honest point in this comment.
- trianglem 6y ago
  I said saying only 20% of women are involved in labor in India is incorrect. That number is much much higher if you take those into account.
  - managerclass 6y ago
    The statistic is saying that 20% of women in India participate in the workforce as it is defined. Are you trying to say that the 60% of Chinese women includes women who are homemakers and aren't in the workforce as it is defined?
  - volgo 6y ago
    You’re wrong. Every country would have 99% labor participation rate if you count those. It’s not meaningful The fact is only 20% of women are not getting paid for their labor. It’s a sign of huge lack of development progress
- foggyeyes69 6y ago
  I think OP was making a statement about how things are rather than how they should be. I agree with you that this shouldn’t be the case, but right now it absolutely is the case in India.
  - oblio 6y ago
    OP's comment doesn't add anything of value in that case. In 99% of cultures out there, traditional roles imply that the women is a homemaker. Nobody reasonable assumes that women not counted in labor participation statistics are partying on the moon :-) I.e.: we already knew what he's saying.
    - trianglem 6y ago
      A childcare facility shows up in labor statistics, why shouldn’t a mother’s labor?
volgo 6y ago
Labor participation would be 99% in all countries. What’s your point? The 20% to 60% is meant to demonstrate female inequality in India, because most of them are working at home for zero pay and low social status. Whereas in more developed countries, women get paid to work in industries.
- svieira 6y ago
  I think the point the parent is trying to make is that saying that "participation of women in the workplace" isn't a directly-correlated metric for the "how happy / empowered / established / productive are women in this society" metric that we all care about improving. To put it another way, if we just take the former metric as the gold measure it is better to be payed to care for someone else's children than to not be payed to care for your own.

managerclass 6y ago

TIL China has a higher female labor participation rate than the US. Unexpected.

YinglingLight 6y ago
The real murky question is if that's desirable.
bzbarsky 6y ago
Why unexpected? The Soviet Union did too. A few reasons for that (for the Soviet Union; I know less about China): 1) One of the premises of communism is equality of all people, including equality of men and women. As a result, a bunch of official barriers to women's labor force participation that existed in the US up until recently were removed quite a bit earlier in communist countries. Not only that, but the right to a job was considered a basic human right in the Soviet constitution, and not having a job was a crime punishable by jail time starting in the early 60s (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense)#Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense)#So... for some basic details). Note that this did not necessarily affect societal attitudes about household labor, by the way: women were just expected to both work _and_ do the cleaning/washing/cooking at home... 2) Female employment in the US surged during WWII to make up for all the men drafted into the military, then dropped as the size of the military was reduced in the aftermath. Something similar happened in the Soviet Union with women stepping into "men's jobs", but without as much of a corresponding drop after the war. Something to do with the fact that US deaths in WWII (combat and non-combat) were ~400k, which was about .6% of the male population in 1941, on the assumption that most of those deaths were males and males were half the total population. For the Soviet Union estimates for military deaths (mostly male) in WWII vary from ~8 million to ~14 million (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... ), which corresponds to 4-7% of the 1941 total population. 8-14% of the male population if the pre-war breakdown between male and female was 50-50, which may or may not have been the case. Plus whatever the breakdown was among the ~10-15 million nonmilitary deaths in WWII in the USSR... But the upshot was that there were a lot more women alive than men after the war, which reduced he "men coming home and taking back their jobs" effect, because the men just did not come home.

r00fus 6y ago

It's more than that. I know many women who quit their well-paying jobs because societally in the US we have not fully socialized child rearing in a way that China has. e.g.: Our infrastructure and attitudes about kids transport is in dire need of refactoring.

mbg721 6y ago
That's not necessarily a bad thing. What about women who prefer to see their kids grow up rather than endlessly chase paychecks?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- officeplant 6y ago
  What about dads who would like to do the same?
  - mbg721 6y ago
    Plenty of families would benefit from dividing labor that way; the biggest (non-artificial) obstacle is probably the inertia from the realities of giving birth and breastfeeding.
- r00fus 6y ago
  I think we agree; labor participation rate for women may not be a good single-dimensional indicator of societal progress.

iguy 6y ago

Seems unlikely this 20% number implies that 80% of women are sitting at home drinking tea & looking after kids. Where is it from? Is this formal sector employment? IIRC the informal labor market is something like 80% of the country in total. Lots of people work in ways that are difficult to gather statistics about.

volgo 6y ago
If you’ve visited India, you wouldn’t be surprised. Most women do stay home and take care of kids And it’s really hard work btw, cooking and looking after the house and kids. They’re definitely not just “sitting home and drinking tea.”
- iguy 6y ago
  Yes I exaggerate slightly. But I wonder a lot about the quality of this data. Doesn't about half the country still work on farms? Low-tech farming has endless labor for all kinds of hands, but little paperwork.
  - bloodorange 6y ago
    It's not exaggeration. It's disrespectful and taking their effort for granted.
    - iguy 6y ago
      To be clear, I mentioned this stereotype specifically to claim this is not what's happening.
  - asenna 6y ago
    I'm from an upper middle-class family in India and the data from all my relatives (including distant ones) matches this - 80% does seem about right for housewives. Similar for my friends. It's changing rapidly with the newer generation but for my parents' generation that is definitely the norm.
- 6y ago

jimmaswell 6y ago

Isn't any labor statistic from India suspect because so many people work in the "shadow economy"?