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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

In discussions on reddit yesterday some people suggested this was merely a bad translation of ‘child rearing age’. If so, the bottom end (youngest) of 18 seems to make sense and is a lot less dystopian than it might otherwise read.

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The government tracking when a woman is able to bear a child isn’t made less creepy at all by slightly changing the translated name.

They’re not sure who owns the database.

Yes it is. Do you think the US doesn't maintain similar statistics based on age? The data including more fertility indices, such as health issues or similar would be another story.

Keeping statistics on something and keeping an actual list of names isn't the same. E.g., I have statistics on credit card purchases in the US, versus I have a list of every purchase rsch made with their credit card.

The time of women's puberty and menopause is a key health metric for a given population. If it's moving up or down something's likely to be very wrong (e.g. exposure to pollution, hormones in the food/water supply). It would be negligent not to track it for health reasons.

There seems to have been something shady going on here. I won't comment on that, but the government tracking this isn't per-se strange or unwarranted.

Of course it is. Governments collect vast databases of statistics about all manner of attributes of their population as a matter of course. They even keep track of things like which sexually transmitted diseases people have, and how much money they earned.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that insurance companies in the U.S. are tracking similar data.

Depends, no? If the translation is "women between 18 and 40", it's harder to be upset about it, because US census data clearly has similar information.

This is a great example of how different translation styles can convey completely different meanings.

We should keep in mind not to trust the connotations of any translated phrase. Heck, we can barely trust the overt meaning.

I saw a different explanation which is that it's a bad translation of "has had children".

could be. that's my first guess.

Beyond that we often track / talk about people who are in their "prime working years".

That doesn't mean the government is planning to round them up and put them to work.

Not the users but the Guardian article the thread was linked to. In the comments on Reddit you constantly watch the few who read the article collect karma for explaining the very same points to those who didn't.

Besides, in the US the census collects the same kind of data, it just probably hasn't used with an agenda. Among EU members, on the other hand, data protection laws often disallow the collection of such information.

The list only includes single, widowed or divorced women, so in that regard the list has been created from a bit more filtering than just age.

EDIT: to your point however, being married would not preclude a woman from being "breed ready" as we understand the phrase. So clearly there is some missing context needed to really understand what that column represents.

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