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Comment by c2 | Hacker News Reader

Reminded me of this article about Chinese women:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/chinese-women-milli...

Seems in the West men buy sports cars and women buy luxury handbags, and it's the reverse in the East.

It probably doesn't come down to any significant cultural differences either. Buying expensive things is a way for some people to feel more confident about themselves, or to spoil themselves, or some area in between. Basically, it's a curious statistic, but ultimately a non-story for actually doing business.

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maybe in China.. but definitely not in all of the East

Very true point, China has a good record of gender equality. Much better then it's neighbors and also the West.

Foot binding?

Not saying things might not be generally 'equal' for women in China now, but things are generally 'equal' for women in the West. For certain values of generally.

Seems to me societies have traditionally objectified/oppressed women world over.

> Foot binding?

One unequivocally positive outcome of the communists winning over the nationalists that even an ardent anti-communist like Jung Chang will attest to was their gender equality reforms. The first and most symbolic act was a serious crackdown on foot binding.

Yeah, and the first act of the Indian intelligentsia was against sati. It's easy to be against the most obviously wrong.

My point wasn't that reform hasn't happened, my point was objecting to the casual generalization of China as currently superior to the West in gender equality--by demonstrating the concrete sexism of the past.

Having ruled out the past since both West and China infringe gratuitously, what do we really _know_ about gender equality in China in the present day?

And I am the sort of person for whom a gender equality rating is strongly influenced by high ratings in tolerance for homosexuality and other non-gender-norm labels.

> Having ruled out the past since both West and China infringe gratuitously, what do we really _know_ about gender equality in China in the present day?

A third of China's millionaires are female. We know concrete facts like that. Guanxi rules business in China, so it would have been very easy to keep women entirely out of the higher echelons had the culture been predisposed to do so. That said, there is still, for example, plenty of low-level sexual harassment against women that wouldn't be tolerated in most of the West.

In other words, China has much the same problems as the West and much the same successes. I posted in response to the statement "Much better then it's neighbors and also the West."

My point about foot-binding might have been off-topic, actually; I was trying to demonstrate that both cultures have, err, regrets about gender inequality in the past.

> In other words, China has much the same problems as the West and much the same successes.

One has to be careful comparing these things on a linear scale. But yes, I agree. Beyond the context of our immediate discussion, the equality of men and women in China is noteworthy because it contradicts the still-commonplace orientalist conception that Asian women are submissive.

I wasn't using a linear scale; I was in fact rather pointing out that one shouldn't, and even if one did one could hardly conclude China was more advanced.

Now we're getting a bit off-topic, so I'm going to close with the idea that women in China could still be considered largely submissive if the ratio is a third instead of a half if one were to really press the viewpoint asking "In what ways could gender equality improve?" but that's a bit of devil's advocacy I'm ready to let fall silent. ;)

They have over 30 million more males than females. The Chinese may have equality, but that's a lot of sexually frustrated men that's going to contribute to unrest.

Since that ratio is in part the consequence of a pretty strong parental preference for male heirs, it's also a pretty good indicator that traditional attitudes die hard.

You do realize that's less than a 3% difference, right?

Additionally, don't most countries have more men than women?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_ratio

No, just the opposite. Most countries have more women than men.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_total_population...

Edit: check out that big red country on this one...: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Sex_ratio...

Only at birth. Men die faster than women, so most countries in the world have more women than men.

Bottom line, it's still 30 million guys not getting laid (or married, at least). I think this is an instance where the raw number is important.

But given that it's only a 3% difference, can't another possible trend just be men waiting slightly later for marriage and marrying slightly younger women?

Theres still not enough women to go around. The ponzi scheme collapses sooner or later.

Downplaying it like a percent doesn't change the fact that there are 30 million men than women in a few generations. This was a result of (typically rural) parents determined to have males under the one-child policy. Why? Males are seen as better than females in returning honour, wealth and more to the families.

My original point was that equality should begin from start where infanticide shouldn't be allowed in this regard.

This demographic bomb is going to go off at some time in this century. The same problem faces countries where the sex ratio might be equal, but the actual marriage ratio is skewed because of poligamy.

The likelihood is that the men will be absorbed into some type of military action, whether state-sponsored (invasion) or non-state (terrorism).

Horny young men with no conceivable outlet tend to listen to anyone who tells them what they want to hear.

I would dispute this - China did not permit women to own land until 1950. Furthermore, laws against domestic violence weren't enshrined until 2001.

China certainly has been liberalizing its gender laws at a faster clip than the west, which took the Women's Suffrage Movement several centuries.... but it's never been ahead of the curve.

Interesting. Japan's never been a country that people would hold up as an example for gender equality, but women have always been "permitted" to own property---"permitted" as in: they never had that right taken away from them, and thus never had to fight to have it (in contrast to both China and the West).

>China did not permit women to own land until 1950.

After 1950 men were not permitted to own land either. :P

edit: In some ways China should really be looked at as two distinct demographics, urban and rural. They have vast different values that makes the country completely bipolar. The gender attitude among the urbanites are much more progressive, in some ways even more so than the west, while in the countryside they still practice infanticide.

It may have to do with the fact that the communist ideology campaigns mostly targeted the cities, because Mao feared a bourgeoisie counter-revolution, while he already had grass root support from the countryside, so he took it for granted.

This view on maoism and the infanticide allegation seem ungrounded to me. I know some alpha-males in China and they don't buy bags, they climb montains or sing in a punk band, like their mates in the West

I'm not sure which part about Maoism you are referring to.

No, the infanticide is not well-grounded, just reports.

I'm Chinese btw. I actually don't know anyone who buys these bags, I only see them on the streets occasionally. Giant wallets/strapless hand bags seem to be much more common among the middle-aged men. Most young people wear regular messenger bags.

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