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Comment by karmajunkie | Hacker News Reader

In other words, in countries where men make all the rules and run the show nobody dares look askance at a man in a public setting?

Go figure.

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Where the heck did that come from? For example, China is arguably a very matriarchal society, and guys take their kids out all the time.

Are you talking about the Mosou? Because they're only about 40,000 strong in a country of 1.34 billion, and aren't even a true matriarchy, as political power tends to be in the hands of men.[0]

If you're talking about the rest of China, the absence of modern women leaders has been a concern.[1] I don't see any way you could call China "very matriarchal".

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo

[1]: http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/03/07/6206108-ch...

Leaders of the country are male. Leaders of the family are female.

Your point?

Dude, do you even hear what you are saying? Women being required/pressured to stay home and look after the family while men gather political power and control the flow of resources is one of the hallmarks of a patriarchal society.

For example, Western societies in the past, and, to a lesser extent now, were like china in this regard, and are almost universally considered more patriarchal as we go further into the past. If you consider china matriarchal, you mean it in a different sense than almost anyone talking about gender politics ever.

> Women being required/pressured to stay home and look after the family

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about! Most (95%) women work here, there are no such things as stay at home moms (maybe stay at home grandparents...). Women make up around 60% of the small business owners here, possibly more, they are highly represented in most every field with a few hold outs (e.g. security guards and taxi drivers).

Obviously it is different in politics, but I have no experience there at any rate, just in the home lives that you seem to know more about than me for some reason. The concept of feminism is foreign here not because the men are macho, but because the women hold much of the family and economic power already.

67% according to http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/labor-participation-ra.... And that's without even discussing the quality of jobs people are getting, or the gender pay gap within particular jobs (30% in china, woo, matriarchy!). I find it hard to believe your statistic that women make up the majority of small business owners when they participate in the workforce lower rates than men, but perhaps you have a citation?

I really don't know how you can defend china as an egalitarian society, much less a matriarchal one, considering their problems with sex selective abortion and infanticide among female babies, to say nothing of the labor issues I just presented. I guess you must have just chosen a position and you are going to ignore or twist whatever inconvenient facts contradict it.

Is that official or does it also include gray market numbers? Also, remember women retire at 55 in China, compared to men at 60.

I told my wife what you said, she had a good laugh about it.

Oh, I'm glad your anecdote had a good laugh at my data. We should also query your anecdote what she thinks about medicine and call her answer science. That would totally be an effective way to arrive at true results.

I'm sure you are a wonderfully published scientist then. Best to you.

In other words, men are not shamed in those countries for being men.

by your statement you'd almost think people like margaret thatcher, Dilma Rousseff and benazir bhutto never existed.

Obviously the existence of a handful of women leaders means sexism is dead, men and women are completely equal, and feminism has warped into an evil movement bent on making men social pariahs.

Does that mean women are setting the rules in America?

No, the inference from karmajunkie's post is that in America men don't make all the rules.

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