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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   26117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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Japan, South Korea and China aren't exactly bulwarks of feminism compared to western countries and yet they have even lower birth rates than most European countries.

this is one of those things that gets 10000x updoots on reddit and yet no one can ever show the work to actually prove it. why do you think that east easian countries are all horribly unfeminist?

I guess I remember reading about sexual harassment in Japan being more common, like women getting groped on the subway and stuff. But yeah, to be honest, I don't really know why the idea is my in head that they are less feminist now that I think about it.

This did get me thinking on how you would quantify feminism in a country. There are things like the Global Gender Gap Report and the Gender Inequality Index, but I am generally pretty sceptical of these types of reports, because they tend to oversimplify the matter at hand. For what it's worth, the Global Gender Gap Report has the East Asian countries a bit lower than Western countries but the Gender Inequality Index has Japan and South Korea right up there with Western European countries.

However, my argument might still stand with other examples. Eastern European countries tend to have low birthrates as well, if anything usually lower than Western European ones. Although it is anecdotal, I do know some people from various Eastern European countries and have discussed cultural differences with them and as best I can tell, countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine all have low birthrates as well despite having generally much more conservative ideas about gender roles than say Sweden or the Netherlands.

as best I can tell, countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine all have low birthrates as well despite having generally much more conservative ideas about gender roles than say Sweden or the Netherlands.

Eastern European countries had and have much more progressive ideas about gender roles thanks to socialism. However, their birth rates were higher due to the elimination of the rat race:

  • they had a relatively solid QoL floor: if you had more kids you were entitled to a bigger apartment and even a car, you had ubiquitous daycare and your old position was reserved for you at your job
  • they had a relative solid QoL ceiling as well: if you weren't a cunning wordcel planning to climb the party ranks, you had no real reason to delay childbirth: your salary by the time you retired could be 200% of your starting one or it could be 190%, not really worth it

When the Iron Curtain came tumbling down, all these limits were gone as well. Forget about doubling your income by retirement. You could double it EVERY YEAR. Worse, you HAD to double it every year because hyperinflation. And at the same time, there were no glass ceilings like in the West: while some heavy industrial jobs were verboten for the weaker sex, women managers were the norm.

I was writing a reply about my anecdata that led me to the view that Eastern Europe is less progressive about gender than Western Europe, but when I was trying to fact check some related claim I wanted to make I stumbled across the Eurobarometer about Gender Stereotypes. Quickly scanning through some of the results, it doesn't actually seem like there is a clear trend of EE being more or less sexist than WE.

Interestingly, Galicia(Ukraine) is likely the most conservative area of the Christian world about stuff like that, and is a fertility bright spot in Europe despite the overall Ukrainian fertility rate being east asia tier.

Thanks, that's a good response. I don't know how to quantify it or prove it either. I've just noticed that a lot of people on the internet seem to think "oh, those east Asian countries are all so sexist" to the point where its becoming a stereotype.

Eastern Europe I think is more of an economic problem. A lot of this countries really cratered with the end of the USSR, but have since recovered a bit

But they are bulwarks of feminism compared to 1920s America, as is everywhere else in the developed world.

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