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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   26117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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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.

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