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Societies that treat women badly are poorer and less stable
- hcykb 5y agoI think they got cause and effect mixed up.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoMaybe, but not necessarily. Ostensibly, if half of your human intellectual capital as a nation is getting underutilized, it makes sense that you're gonna be poorer, and poorer countries are probably inherently less stable.
- ThrowawayR2 5y agoThat doesn't explain the economic success of Japan, S. Korea, and other parts of Asia?
- makapuf 5y agoArab Emirates, Saudi Arabia are doing quite well (economically).
- CyberDildonics 5y agoWhoever wrote this article doesn't seem to understand correlation and causation, but I think some natural resources might have their foot on the scale in your example.
- ThrowawayR2 5y agoThe Asian countries have broadly diversified economies versus the countries you listed which are primarily resource exporters, so I don't think that's a meaningful comparison.
- foldr 5y agoThey also have extremely authoritarian forms of government. It’s easy to be stable when you can lock up anyone who’s causing trouble (at least in the short term).
- adventured 5y agoThey're the exact opposite of stable. That's why they're so oppressive. They're constantly fighting against high levels of instability that never leave the system. All dictatorships and authoritarian systems have a lack of stability to varying degrees based on their systems. If you have stability, you don't have to oppress, murder, purge people to maintain power. They play whack-a-mole with the constant instability. People get this backwards very commonly. It's not stability they always have, with occasional instability. They always have instability, it's a constant, and the regimes exist in never ending fear of the population because of that. Their actions are the process of removing the greater extremes of instability as they creep up to threaten their power or as they become threatening enough to be noticed. The most common example of this I see, at least over the past ~20 years, is Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. There is a forever stream of claims that: hey, at least Iraq had stability before the war. No they didn't, they had the exact opposite of stability. They had extreme oppression, extreme instability. If you have to constantly oppress people to keep your power, it means your system is wildly unstable. Saddam had to constantly murder and purge people, even within his own ranks, to fight for keeping control against the never ending instability that his regime prompted. Saddam could never stop fighting against that instability, or it would have toppled him rapidly.
- sharken 5y agoThe constant instability can also be seen in Afghanistan, where a strong regime such as the Taliban can impose stability. Where it gets hard, is what are the underlying reasons to the constant instability. Poverty and a very religious population seem to be two factors that go hand in hand.
- imtringued 5y agoSouth Africa is a rich nation with high inequality and extremely high unemployment. Under utilization doesn't seem to make nations poor as long as they can export in-demand products. My point is that there is a huge difference between people being poor and nations being poor.
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoSouth Africa is not a rich nation. In per capita GDP, it is 113th out of 213 and at $5,444 is less than half of the worldwide average of $11,339[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
- Zababa 5y ago> Ostensibly, if half of your human intellectual capital as a nation is getting underutilized, it makes sense that you're gonna be poorer, and poorer countries are probably inherently less stable. That depends. Slavery underuses the intellectual capital of slaves but makes the society richer. Humans don't only have their intelligence to offer.
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoHow does lower intellectual utilization logically lead to the country being poor?
- kube-system 5y agoBoth factors are the effect of a third cause: liberalization of their cultures. Conservative tribal societies simply don’t like new ideas. That’s bad for women’s rights and it’s bad for economic progress.
- commandlinefan 5y agoThey don’t do a very good job of defining what “treat women badly” means - you can find lots of women in any society who will insist that they’re being treated badly, and lots of women in supposedly oppressive societies who will defend traditionalism.
- api 5y agoBeing deprived of the opportunity to get an education, physically assaulted, subjected to unfair and biased laws, forbidden from autonomy, and having ones life path dictated from birth? All that sounds like being treated badly. Would you be okay with that?
- Starmina 5y agoWhile I agree with you, I think the point made by OP is simply that everything is subjective. What is "good" and what is "bad" is subjective. Not everyone on earth will have the same definition.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoAnother challenge is that conservative or traditionalist societies can isolate women from 'dangerous' ideas. Surveys from members and their kids before and after migrating would be interesting to compare.
- foldr 5y ago> “A woman who drives a car will be killed,” says Sheikh Hazim Muhammad al-Manshad That’s the first line of the article. I don’t think it’s really subjective to say that killing women for driving cars counts as treating them badly. (Unless you just want to make some kind of general philosophical point about everything being subjective, but how would that be relevant?)
- thinkingemote 5y agoAre those the criteria the study used?
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- standardUser 5y agoReminds me of this quote from Barack Obama... "I'm absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything... living standards and outcomes."
- fnord77 5y agoyeah, look at the great job Margaret Thatcher did
- gmpart 5y agoCatherine the Great, Queen Victoria, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel. The last one caused the CDU to drop from 40% to 20% in 6 years and is partly responsible for Brexit. Thatcher has mixed reviews as well.
- Cyph0n 5y ago> The last one caused the CDU to drop from 40% to 20% in 6 years and is partly responsible for Brexit. Excellent example of cherry-picking btw.
- pizza 5y agoMerkel responsible for Brexit?
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- ben_w 5y agoMerkel has been chancellor for 16 years, and has maintained a longer track record for popularity than any US or UK leader I can remember. She also announced in October 2018 that she wasn’t going to seek a fifth term as Chancellor in the 2021 elections, after which the CDU opinion polls moved very little for 18 months before first going up to 40% for about a year and then going down to 20% now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_German_federal_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_G...
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- droptablemain 5y agoI wonder if it ever occurred to the author that maybe societies that are poorer and less stable treat women badly...
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- lvass 5y agoOne could argue that's in the title. I understand someone might interpret it to mean [0] but it looks more like [1] to me. Could someone better versed in english and logic please clarify what the title means? [0] treat women badly ⇒ poorer and less stable [1] treat women badly ⇔ poor and less stable [2] it's ambiguous
- Ekaros 5y ago[3] poor and less stable ⇒ treat women badly That is treating women poorly is not leading to being poor, but result of being poor.
- lvass 5y agoThis may be true but definitely not what the title is trying to convey, right?
- bsza 5y agoRight above the title is "The cost of misogyny". The author(s) _clearly_ want to manipulate you into believing [0]. [0] might be true nonetheless, but that doesn't change the fact that this article is the mother of all fallacies.
- DenisM 5y agoIt to mention the hidden variable: “dysfunctional societies both end up poorer and treat their women badly”.
- janmo 5y agoCausality bias
- api 5y agoWhich way does the arrow of causation go though? Seems like it could go either way. Maybe it does.
- ravar 5y agoOr maybe a third factor causes both, you always have to consider that as well.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- d--b 5y agoMmh… Someone told me in East Germany women were treated in a much fairer way than in West Germany (equal pay, equal oppertunity etc.) it didn’t really turn into a particularly rich country nor stable…
- 19f191ty 5y agoThe argument doesn't necessarily go the other way though. Not treated well associated with less stability does not necessarily imply that women being treated equally leads to a stable society. If East Germany had treated their women worse then maybe it would have been even more unstable?
- d--b 5y agoSure but then you can’t really compare iran and the us, cause there are so many other factors. Nor can you make an average of badly-treating societies for the same reason. At least East and West Germany started off the same place in 1945.
- lucian1900 5y agoDespite being under constant attack, paying reparations and starting off much poorer than the western counterpart, the material conditions of workers were improved significantly in the DDR. Worth reading “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism” by Kristen Ghodsee.
- ben_w 5y agoGiven how totally Germany was broken by WW2, it doesn’t really say much that material conditions were improved by the DDR.
- baybal2 5y agoWell DDR treated their women bad, and their men not any better at all! That's why it collapsed.
- adventured 5y ago
- AHappyCamper 5y agoCorrelation !== Causation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deltasixeight 5y agoInaccurate. This is a overused misnomer. Correlation is a necessary precursor to causation, but it's existence does not guarantee causation. If correlation is established it doesn't automatically establish causation as well, but it functions as evidence for two possibilities: The possibility of causation and the possibility of a shared causative source. It is wrong to say they are not equal. They are equal in a really fuzzy way.
- AHappyCamper 5y agoActually, it's totally accurate. And I respectfully disagree with your opinion ;)
- deltasixeight 5y agoAnd respectfully. You're wrong. Utterly and completely. This is beyond opinion. This is logic. I urge you to think about it.
- lvass 5y agoCorrelation !== Causation // true Correlation != Causation // false So Javascript really was right about having both operators. /s
- bagacrap 5y agoI think you could say correlation and causation are correlated, but I don't think it's fair to repurpose the word "equal" to mean something it doesn't.
- deltasixeight 5y ago
- bserge 5y agoMore generally, societies that treat minority opinions and individuality badly are poorer and less stable. Whether it's women's rights, gay/other minority rights, drug usage, mental health, individual freedoms.
- umvi 5y agoChina is pretty hostile toward minority opinions and they are quickly becoming the richest country in the world
- jollybean 5y ago'China' point is definitely fair, but they're nowhere near becoming rich in a GDP/capita basis. China is poorer than Mexico on a nominal and PPP basis. Poorer than Brazil on a nominal basis. They're going to have difficulty closing in on Chile, Latvia and Poland there. [1] On a PPP basis, it's much harder to fathom - they definitely have access to 'cheap goods' so of course their PPP basis is considerably higher, at the same time the quality of most things is very bad, the air is unbreathable in many places, outside major city centres services are problematic and civic dysfunction is still rife. So the that PPP calculation is tricky, and we know it's also leverage for Brazil just as well. But also note China does have serious economic 'leaders' that those other countries do not, and, China might treat ethnic and gay minorities poorly, but for women it's not the same. DiDi CEO is a female, and female leadership is normal there. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/
- l332mn 5y ago> at the same time the quality of most things is very bad What an ignorant thing to say. China generally produces high quality stuff, for their own population as well as for the entire world.
- jollybean 5y agoI'm sorry that you're not aware of the reality of total lack of quality in many products and services in China, which is partly due to a function of lower costing, but also due to a general lack of industrial focus on quality, and particularly a lack of standards. And then gaslight others for pointing out the facts ... I work for a company that sells an electrical device, which has considerable standards applied in Europe and North America, and basically none in China. The competitive products to ours in China are essentially dangerous. They will start fires. We manufacture in China, and depending on the manufacturer, can usually make no assumptions about quality, other than it will be the lowest possible unless there is considerable oversight. Unbelievable, 'shocking' hacks and cutting corners, which we view as a matter of quality, they view as a matter of cost reduction. With the bigger factories that do business with big established brands, that's less of a problem because they're consistently building for markets with higher standards and requirements. For some thoughts on Food Safety [1][2] In China, in the year 2000, only 50% of the population had 'basic sanitation' services i.e. toilets. That's changed a lot, but there are still wide swaths of population literally without basic sanitation. The number is effectively 100% in almost every other semi-developed country. [3]. Even in 2015, 5% of the country still does not have access to basic water. [4] Chinese construction standards are de-facto low (they have regulations, just not very well met), so here are two videos that demonstrate some issues [5][6] - to be fair - this is all anecdotal, and China is a 'very large place'. You're surely going to find crap construction in every country, however, the anecdotes are quite excessive, and they are illustrative. Entire sections of homes, only a few years old completely falling apart, buildings falling down etc.. This affects major projects [7] - there are systematic problems with the quality of concrete that will come home to roost some day. As far as Air Quality, it's 'Very Bad' - the CEO of DiDi lamented this herself, indicating literally her children had difficulty breathing. Have a look [8] at the air quality literally at this moment in time. Up to 30% of China is, at this literal moment in time, breathing air that is 'hazardous'. And of course the political issues, censorship etc. - but those are harder to factor into an economic equation. So when calculating PPP - the material quality of goods does matter, things like 'air quality' aren't in that calculation but they very well do matter as they are a direct externalization of the system. China is a large, poor country and derives it's economic power mostly from it's size, not that much else. It's different than Brazil or India (other large, poor countries) in that it does have a number of economic champions. There's almost a 100% chance that China will soon have the largest economy in the world (by many measure it already does), but almost a 0% chance that we will see GDP/capita, even on a PPP basis, reach that of most modern nations, at least in our lifetimes. That is happening/will happen only for a subset of the population. [1] https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/07/chinas-food-safety-issues-are-worse-than-you-thought/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/07/chinas-food-safety-is... [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fsn3.1281 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fsn3.1281 [3] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-11-18/How-the-Toilet-Revolution-is-changing-China-LH2SCXCemQ/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-11-18/How-the-Toilet-Revolut... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in... [5] https://digg.com/video/heres-a-disturbing-supercut-of-poorly-constructed-buildings-in-china-falling-apart https://digg.com/video/heres-a-disturbing-supercut-of-poorly... [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E&ab_channel=ADVChina https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E&ab_channel=ADVCh... [7] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1191896/shenzhen-construction-hold-after-alert-over-cheap-sand-concrete https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1191896/shenzhen-con... [8] https://aqicn.org/map/china/ https://aqicn.org/map/china/
- gremloni 5y ago“Badly” in this case is about as subjective as it gets. For instance in many parts of the world women consider not having to work a privilege.
- satyrnein 5y agoAny data to support this?
- shakow 5y agoTalk to them. And to go further, I would argue that most people would consider not working to be a privilege. Even if I'm a man, I'd love to live off my passive earnings.
- satyrnein 5y agoDepends on the context. If one gets seriously injured, can't work, and survives off of disability, that may not feel like a privilege. At least some of the women we're talking about, they're doing all the cooking, cleaning, childcare, etc. They have no financial independence and often few options if they're being mistreated. I don't think it's comparable to passive income at all.
- simonh 5y agoThe criteria used were: “This is a composite of such things as unequal treatment of women in family law and property rights, early marriage for girls, patrilocal marriage, polygamy, bride price, son preference, violence against women and social attitudes towards it (for example, is rape seen as a property crime against men?).” That doesn’t seem particularly subjective. These are all clearly instances of unequal treatment based on gender. Finally there is a world of difference between not having to work and being prohibited from working, but in any case not having a paid job isn’t the same as not working. There’s plenty of domestic work to be done, and there are studies into relative leisure time by gender. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13668803.2018.1528968 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13668803.2018.1... “ In countries with conservative gender norms, low levels of childcare coverage, limited paternity leave and lower political power for women, women’s leisure quality is lower than men’s. In more egalitarian countries, the gender gap in leisure quality is lower and in some cases, reversed.”
- gswdh 5y agoChristopher Hitchens was taking about this a long time ago.
- jrootabega 5y agoModern societies are modern
- trophycase 5y agoBut they are reproducing at a much faster rate.
- _pmf_ 5y agoCause, effect.
- redleader55 5y agoIf I were to make this study I would pick a list of ten things that women report as "bad treatments", verify how does each society/country do in those areas based on available statistical data or even surveys, and correlate with wealth of that society. Obviously there is the possibility that some of these metrics correlate negatively or even do not correlate with society's wealth, but an ethical study should report all findings.
- TedShiller 5y agoProbably also true for societies that treat ANY group badly
- ashtonkem 5y agoEspecially any group that represents a huge percentage of the population.
- TedShiller 5y agoTreating people badly is always bad
- ashtonkem 5y agoYes, it is. But if those that wielded state power (or significant cultural influence) were motivated by that, we wouldn't be having this conversation. On the matter of measurable outcomes of social inequality, it seems logical to me that the larger the demographic[0] that is mistreated, the larger the measurable effect on society itself. This beside the ethical matters, which clearly do not motivate enough people, alas. 0 - I was tempted to put "minority" here, but women aren't a minority, now are they?
- TedShiller 5y agoAny large group being mistreated is bad, it doesn’t matter what that group is.
- ashtonkem 5y agoPlease point to where I said anything to the contrary.
- willis936 5y agoSaudi Arabia is ruled by Sharia law and is no. 12 in the world for median income per capita.
- kadoban 5y agoSaudi Arabia has special circumstances.
- galago 5y agoI just say outright that the "special circumstances" means that their wealth comes from a magic hole in the ground and not something their society was capable of creating or producing.
- postsantum 5y agoJust like Norway?
- l332mn 5y agoIn Saudia Arabia the people are basically on universal basic income. In Norway on the other hand, the oil profits are all invested into the pension fund, which is very sparingly used for any other purpose.
- galago 5y agoI would say yes, like Norway. If you have money coming out of nowhere the social stuff doesn't much matter as long as you can keep people from stealing your wealth.
- shakow 5y agoExcept that Norwegian oil money is only used for pensions and state investment. Your average Norwegian never sees the color of the petrodollars until their retirement, and they're still doing quite well.
- 5y ago
- black_13 5y agoDo this explain places like Oklahoma that lead in female incarceration?
- aaron695 5y agoMen are treated worse in almost all societies by any logical analytic. The woke always jump to the village leaders, not the men who die of hepatitis from cleaning the sewers. I guess if you look at averages, one billionaire + many dead men in a bar equals richer men. Targeting men/women in programs will work, and women have had preferential targeting for decades. It's so bad, if a project might also help men it won't get funded. Clean water projects that stop 'humans' dying of diarrhoea will not be funded. If it allows a women to walk less to collect water then it will get funded. If the world cared about the 10,000 kidnapped boys of Boko Haram (Many more were killed of course) then the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping would never have happened. We don't need more emotive talk about girls not going to school. The fucking solution is simple, as we've seen in every country in the West, raise families out of poverty. We need to get back to helping humans.
- collaborative 5y agoI think that the real cause for stability and economic progress is the measure of how loving a society is to all its members, regardless of gender or any other parameters Love leads to empathy, fairness, meaningful discussions, etc
- baxtr 5y agoReminds me of this TED talk about differences in women literacy in India compared to China and the resulting difference in economic growth: https://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang_does_democracy_stifle_economic_growth/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang_does_democracy_stifl...
- zosima 5y agoAlso seems obvious that poorer and less stable societies treat men (in general) quite badly. I think the economist has to work a bit harder to make a compelling argument for what makes the arrow of causality go in the non-obvious direction.
- antattack 5y ago"A WOMAN WHO drives a car will be killed,” says Sheikh Hazim Muhammad al-Manshad. " I would not characterize causing someone to die as treating that person badly. If one allows such examples than anything that is bad, but does not resort to killing (a woman in this case) could be viewed as ok - which excuses a lot of mistreatment that women still experience in our societies.
- andy17231 5y agoPoorer and less stable societies treat women badly…