China's wife sharing proposal!

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

Here is a proposal put forth by a professor in China to solve their gender imbalance.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34612919

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A Chinese professor's controversial suggestion that poorer men could share wives has sparked debate online on how to solve China's gender imbalance.

Zhejiang University economics professor Xie Zuoshi's proposal has been met with heavy criticism that it is immoral.

China has one of the biggest gender imbalances in the world, with about 118 boys born to every 100 girls.

The imbalance is largely due to the one-child policy and cultural preferences for male children.

Increasing wealth and population movement also means many women are leaving the countryside to work in cities, with men who stay behind struggling to find partners.

The huge demand for women and the lack of supply would result in the "value of women going up", he wrote.

"Men with high incomes will have an advantage in finding women, because they can afford the high price.

"And what about the low income men? One way is for several men to band together to find a wife. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky idea of mine. In some remote and poor areas there are cases where brothers jointly marry one wife, and they can live happily and harmoniously."

Chinese media, attracted mostly appalled derision from readers, who criticised his idea as immoral and illegal.

"If you can't find a mate then don't bother, if women are just only meant for producing heirs and have to mate with many men just to solve the population growth issue, how does this make us any different from animals?" said Weibo user Superelfjunior.

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Any views?

Sriram

[Harrowby Hall]

 India doesn't come out of this too well either, Sriram.

India’s gender imbalance ‘worst in recorded history’

AMRITSAR, India, Fri Apr 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The 2011 census in India has revealed that the gender imbalance is at its highest level since records began being kept at the country’s independence in 1947.

The average gender ratio in the country declined to 914 girls aged six and under for every 1,000 boys.

India conducts a census every ten years. According to 1991 census, the age 0-6 sex ratio was 934 girls to 1,000 boys, which decline to 927 in the 2001 census.
Image

Dr. Gursharan Singh Kainth, director of the Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies in Amritsar, remarked in an article in Eurasia Review: “A cultural preference for sons and the increasing availability of prenatal screening to determine a baby’s sex have helped contribute to a worsening in the ratio, which has been deteriorating rapidly even as the ratio for the population as a whole has improved.”

“More worrying,” Dr. Kainth pointed out, “places that used not to discriminate in favour of sons… have begun to do so. Economic success seems to spread son preference to places that were once more neutral.”

“Sex selection is now invading parts of the country that used not to practice it. Indeed, as the average family size drops in India, the preference for sons only intensifies. It is sons who inherit land, pass on the family name, financially provide for parents in old age and perform rituals for deceased parents.”

Some areas in the country, which Dr. Kainth described as the “Bermuda Triangle for girls” in India, register only 774 girls for every 1,000 boys born.

Dr. Kainth expressed deep concern over the “600,000 Indian girls [who] go missing every year.”

“The impact on Indian society is grim,” he said, explaining that the “missing girls” are usually aborted, shortly after the parents learn of their sex.

Despite India’s policy of prohibiting doctors from reporting the sex of a child to the parents before birth, and the fact that sex selective abortion based on ultrasound scans is illegal, Dr. Kainth reported, “there are numerous medics who recommend a place that would do it. They are ready to reveal a fetus’s sex for as little as 500 rupees.”

“A skewed sex ratio may instead be making the lot of women worse,” Dr. Kainth observed, who pointed out that “robbery, rape and bride trafficking” are associated with societies with “large groups of young single men.”

“Put bluntly, it’s a competition over scarce women. Women in India are sometimes permitted, even encouraged, to ‘marry up’ into a higher income bracket or caste, so richer men find it easier to get a bride. The poor are forced into a long or permanent bachelorhood; a status widely frowned upon in India, where marriage is deemed essential to becoming a full member of society. Poor bachelors are often victims of violent crime.

“The daughter deficit will create a society that is much less stable and much more volatile than it would be with a more balanced ratio,” Dr. Kainth warned.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/indias-gender-imbalance-worst-in-recorded-history

The United Nations Population Fund published a report in 2007 warning about the sex imbalance in India. It can be downloaded here http://www.unfpa.org/resources/characteristics-sex-ratio-imbalance-india-and-future-scenarios

No doubt you will interpret this post as another example of my anti-India position. You will be wrong. I am merely pointing out that - as far as this thread is concerned - the irony is overwhelming.

This is not just a matter about who can have a wife and who cannot, this is about ingrained cultural attitudes to women and their place in any society. At least, India has had a woman prime minister. But was Indira Ghandi a beacon for the role of women in India? I don't think so.

In Britain we had Margaret Thatcher - but she generally considered to have more testosterone than the rest of her Cabinet. It would do the USA a lot of good to elect Hilary Clinton - but the inept US constitution would make her doubly emasculated.

[Sriram]

HH

As usual an irrelevant post....which doesn't address the issue in the OP at all.  (You just can't seem to stop yourself)

And I expect the entire bunch will now join the bandwagon and make this an anti India thread. Not unexpected of course!!  LOL!

[Harrowby Hall]

I believe that there are some communities in remote China where the practice of brothers taking a single wife exists. I remember talking about it to a friend - who had studied anthropology - and she said that only the eldest brother had sexual contact with the wife. The other brothers were workers. Sounds like life in a beehive.

Nevertheless, Sriram, there is a much more important element in this matter than who sticks his dick into what. It the the importance, the value, the role of women in society. Any society. Not just those in which the pathology of masculine superiority has cast its spores.

The article you appended contains a much more important message than the one you choose to perceive. Why not see if you can find it?

[Udayana]

This, brothers sharing a wife, already happens regularly in North India, esp. Punjab, where sex selection is most prevalent. Polyandry is also frequently found in Tibet where resources are scare and it can take the work of more than one man to support a family.

You would think that in this kind of situation, with women in short supply, girl children would become more valuable and nurtured, but for some reason it doesn't work like that. The balance keeps tipping in favour of men ... until the next war.

[jeremyp]

If the trend continues, what will happen is that girls will become more valuable than boys and the balance will swing back to the centre.

This is, incidentally why, in sexually reproducing species, the numbers of sexually viable males and females in the population is alway more or less 50/50.

[Harrowby Hall]

You would think that in this kind of situation, with women in short supply, girl children would become more valuable and nurtured, but for some reason it doesn't work like that. The balance keeps tipping in favour of men ... until the next war.

Perhaps the question that should be asked of anyone who wants to rid himself of a potential girl child should be "Who will ensure that you will have grandchildren - a girl or a boy?"

[Harrowby Hall]

If the trend continues, what will happen is that girls will become more valuable than boys and the balance will swing back to the centre.

This is, incidentally why, in sexually reproducing species, the numbers of sexually viable males and females in the population is alway more or less 50/50.

In many species, the majority of males are virgin when they die. One reason posited for the bright colours of male and the dull plumage of female birds is that the females are less likely to attract the attention of predators.

[jeremyp]

In many species, the majority of males are virgin when they die.

Indeed, which makes you wonder why their parents go to the effort of producing so many of them. However, if you happen to parent one of the successful males, you hit the jackpot which makes it a good strategy to produce males - up to a point.

[Udayana]

Well, I tend to think that people have children because their better judgment has been snowed under by hormones. The only reason, I imagine, anyone would need a grandchild is if they feel their children need offspring to be happy.

Or maybe there is some pecking order/status issue involved, that I'm not getting?

Anyway, at the point of having children, they are probably not thinking of grandchildren.

[jeremyp]

Anyway, at the point of having children, they are probably not thinking of grandchildren.

My previous point was not about thinking at all, but only about evolution. Having males and females in a half and half proportion is inevitable in evolutionary terms because in the case where there is an imbalance, a variation which causes an animal to have more offspring of the less numerous sex will be advantageous and will spread throughout the population.

[Udayana]

Anyway, at the point of having children, they are probably not thinking of grandchildren.

My previous point was not about thinking at all, but only about evolution. Having males and females in a half and half proportion is inevitable in evolutionary terms because in the case where there is an imbalance, a variation which causes an animal to have more offspring of the less numerous sex will be advantageous and will spread throughout the population.

We must have crossed posts as mine was in response to to HH's which I should have quoted:

You would think that in this kind of situation, with women in short supply, girl children would become more valuable and nurtured, but for some reason it doesn't work like that. The balance keeps tipping in favour of men ... until the next war.

Perhaps the question that should be asked of anyone who wants to rid himself of a potential girl child should be "Who will ensure that you will have grandchildren - a girl or a boy?"

I agree with your general point for evolution .. but don't think it will work like that for humans in the short term.

[Harrowby Hall]

Udayana

It is my observation that as people grow older, so the presence of grandchildren becomes important to them. They possibly see this as ensuring the continuation of their family.

In the kind of culture where continuation of the family line is considered sufficiently important as to abort a female foetus then the probability of a male child finding a wife, and thus producing a grandchild, is reduced with every generation.

My guess is that, in such a culture, the practice of dowery will reverse and high status girls will be sold for high prices. Low status girls will end up in the brothels. In both cases girls will effectively become prostitutes.

[Sriram]

The article you appended contains a much more important message than the one you choose to perceive. Why not see if you can find it?

You need to get yourself checked... HH!  Otherwise someday you are going to run out into the streets waving your hands wildly  and shouting..'India'...'India'.....and people are going to either drag you to an institution or to a Balti restaurant.

[Udayana]

Why start the topic as if it was a Chinese issue, when Indians are already using the proposed solution to tackle a worse situation?

In fact China has already relaxed the one child rule, and the situation can be reversed, by changing incentives.

[Udayana]

Udayana

It is my observation that as people grow older, so the presence of grandchildren becomes important to them. They possibly see this as ensuring the continuation of their family.

In the kind of culture where continuation of the family line is considered sufficiently important as to abort a female foetus then the probability of a male child finding a wife, and thus producing a grandchild, is reduced with every generation.

My guess is that, in such a culture, the practice of dowery will reverse and high status girls will be sold for high prices. Low status girls will end up in the brothels. In both cases girls will effectively become prostitutes.

In India the situation is that there is no pension or welfare system for the aged. People have children in the expectation that the boys will support them in old age. Having girls is an expensive luxury in such a system, based on traditional roles.

Of-course a surplus of men, not finding women to pair with, will not work to support aged parents either, but spend their lives drinking, gambling and fighting. Profits from their work will go to Western pensioners whose funds have gone into buying shares in Indian businesses.

[Sriram]

Why start the topic as if it was a Chinese issue, when Indians are already using the proposed solution to tackle a worse situation?

In fact China has already relaxed the one child rule, and the situation can be reversed, by changing incentives.

You are talking rubbish as usual... Udayana! No one has proposed any such solution as 'wife sharing' in India. You might have perhaps witnessed some such incident among your relatives & friends...which is a private matter of yours. 

If the same news item as in the OP was about India, I can well imagine what ruckus you and your ilk here would have created.....about the 'weird practices proposed in India'.

And just because a similar problem exists in India there is no reason not to discuss similar problems in other countries...and their 'unique'  solutions.

You're a typical ex-Indian alright! 

[Udayana]

...
You're a typical ex-Indian alright! 

Maybe, but then you would be a typical urban Indian hiding in religious fantasies, trying not see what happens in your own country, outside your walls.

[Hope]

Hi everyone,

Here is a proposal put forth by a professor in China to solve their gender imbalance.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34612919

Sriram, what's so newsworthy about this.  There are plenty of cultures across the world where this already happens.  There are societies where one woman has more than one husband (often brothers) and societies where one man has several wives.

[dadvokat]

According to Hindu scriptures didn't the five pandava brothers Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva marry the same woman called Draupadi?

[Sriram]

According to Hindu scriptures didn't the five pandava brothers Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva marry the same woman called Draupadi?

Another 'brown sahib'...of course!   LOL!   

[Sriram]

People have said...in most cases that 'In India you have the same problem' ().... evolutionary mechanisms will sort it out....'the Chinese can reverse the situation etc. 

In the OP article...many Chinese women have condemned the 'wife sharing' proposal saying it treats women as objects and as child producing machines. If some men have to remain single...that's their problem! Funnily, no one here seems to have seconded that!

[OH MY WORLD!]

Only 120yrs ago my people would swap and share a wife. Our traditional enemies would even bite the nose off their wives if they were guilty of adultery. The women were possessions, and when the whiskey traders came we would sell them so we could get good and drunk. Oh yes, those were the days my friends, thank God they came to an end with the arrival of the men in the scarlet serge.

http://www.horsejournals.com/files/rcmp1879c_EDIT.jpg

[dadvokat]

I am sure you are aware that Polyandry has existed in ancient Indian societies and still exists in pockets of North and South India. Still unsure what the purpose of this thread was?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry_in_India

[Udayana]

True enough DA. But that, and the story of Draupadi don't really seem that relevant to the issue here, which is to use polyandry to compensate for the effects of gender imbalance.

This won't work, as the misogyny that is causing the imbalance is only further aggravated by "wife sharing". The Chinese women are certainly right to speak against it.

China can just adjust it's one child policy, eg. relax it and encourage keeping females - say allow two children if the first is a girl etc. 

But you can't tackle this so easily in India and other states with the imbalance.