Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, women’s bodies have been the business of the state. In the 1950s, labour for state-controlled work units was organised according to women’s menstrual cycles. Then for decades, there was the one-child policy.
Across vast swathes of the country the policy was enforced with a brutal severity. As well as fines for additional children, women were forced to have abortions and subjected to forced sterilisations.
Now, women in China are facing new forms of pressure from the government as China battles a fresh challenge – a falling birth rate. Women are under pressure to devote their bodies to childbearing as the government tries to encourage more pregnancies. Increasingly, women are pushing back in ways that weren’t possible in the past, while the painful legacy of the one-child policy continues to echo and reshape expectations around family today.
Limited government perhaps?
Prosperity helps too.
Those who a generation ago would have been planting rice or sewing Nike trainers are working in offices or pushing the buttons on the machines that cut the patterns for the trainers.
Surely China will see the value in importing hundreds of Third World peasants, like the Wests has?
I think you forgot a few zeros. Probably at least 6 of them!
Something China has been importing is women. The one child policy was a disaster in terms of population demographics. Families would abort girls, as boys were better labourers. There are 35 million more men in China than women. So, there’s a lot of mail order bride things with countries like Vietnam and Laos.
The Chinee seem to have done something about their surplus men, tho’ – they’ve shipped them off to Africa.
Does that increase their chances of finding wifes?
I should think so. I mean, look at it from the perspective of the local girls?
Probably not. Africans are at the very bottom of the Chinese racial popularity table.
Sure, but what else has Wun Hung Lo, forcibly relocated to Tanzania, got being offered to him …?
I was going to make a similar point. I worked on projects in Jo’burg and New Delhi with some Chinese colleagues from HK and they could barely conceal their racism and contempt. It was quite embarrassing at times.
Indeed. The one child policy had to be introduced because there were the normal market pressures that stopped people shagging. If the government pays for your kids, have lots of them.
The one child policy is a maximum, not a minimum. It was introduced due to Mao believing Ehrlich (that grifter), and the idea that China was poor because it had lots of kids. Instead of it being poor due to government policies.
labour for state-controlled work units was organised according to women’s menstrual cycles.
Sounds sensible to me. I’ve always wondered how airlines, the air force, army, etc. arrange things to account for this.
It’s one of wimmin’s greatest Schröderisms, isn’t it? They’re every bit as capable as men – absolutely equivalent, no difference – yet many require a week off a month because of PMT, period pain, etc.
Now period problems aren’t your fault, love, but while you’re off sick the equivalent bloke is working, isn’t he? What does that do to your long-term productivity and work experience compared to his? And you want exactly the same salary for 75% of the output?
“Sounds sensible to me. I’ve always wondered how airlines, the air force, army, etc. arrange things to account for this.”
Women are so much better at caring roles like being trolley dollies or doing check-in desk roles that even with a bit of crankiness, they beat men. I’m generally sceptical about a lot of “women shall have careers” thing but there are certain types of jobs they are very good at. They’re just wired better for customer care.
The people on call centres are the same people as trolley dollies: women and gay men.
Army and air force are the thumb being put on scale by the state. No-one is exactly measuring productivity in them. If we had to fight a proper war again, most of the chicks would be out. When you’re just pissing about wars that you can lose, you can just have a massive, pointless bureaucracy.
The NHS spends money for training doctors regardless of days on the blob, maternity leave, going part time. What do they care? It’s not their money being wasted on training lots of women. The vast majority of student loan write-offs are women. They do useless degrees, go to work for a decade in something not that well paid, then have kids, return part time, and by the time they return to full time, the 30 year write-off happens. But what do the people at the department of education care? Not their money.
“Women are so much better at caring roles like being trolley dollies or doing check-in desk roles”
I’ve generally found slightly camp men are better at that sort of job (other then the eye-candy aspect, of course, but how often do you see an attractive trolley dolly these days).
But I suppose there aren’t enough of them.
Like Julia said, Ping Gin should ask pea brain back with his gay Muslim friend and they’d fix the population problem. Eventually. You can’t make an omelette without bombing a few eggs…
Women are under pressure to devote their bodies to childbearing as the government tries to encourage more pregnancies.
You can’t hate Guardian enough.
How long till they make it compulsory for women between 18 and 22 turn up to be impregnated by the elite for the preservation of the state. Pretty much the evil mirror of forced abortion.