International Women's Day: Actor Daniel Craig in drag is no match for the gender inequality in China
"Are men and women equals?" asks the narrator in this video from WeAreEquals.org [via Deadline] starring Daniel Craig dressed in drag. "Until the answer is yes, we must never stop asking."
For this, we'll likely wait an awful long time. On the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, Chick History's Rebecca Price [via Huffington Post] lists 10 reasons we must continue to fight for women's rights, including Afghan wives (see left) who'd rather risk dismemberment or seek death than live the life prescribed for them. Here's one more reason to add to her list: Asia's "Bachelor Generation," in which there are 100 million more men than women. That's nothing, Newsweek's Niall Ferguson learned.
[B]y the time today's Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.
Ferguson does not predict a future that's safe for women:
It may be that the coming generation of Asian men without women will find harmless outlets for their inevitable frustrations, like team sports or videogames. But I doubt it. Either this bachelor generation will be a source of domestic instability, whether Brazilian-style crime or Arab-style revolution — or, as happened in Europe, they and their testosterone will be exported. There’s already enough shrill nationalism in Asia as it is. Don’t be surprised if, in the next generation, it takes the form of macho militarism and even imperialism. Lock up your daughters.
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--Alexandra LeTellier
Photo: The Aug. 9, 2010, cover of Time magazine features 'Aisha,' an 18-year-old Afghan girl whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband as punishment for shaming his family. Credit: Courtesy of Time / EPA
i feel sorry for those chinese boys. oh well, parents, you get what you sow.
Posted by: Jess | March 08, 2011 at 04:16 PM
You do know how that imbalance is happening, right?
Posted by: Mitchell Young | March 08, 2011 at 11:19 PM
I guess they should have thought about that before the dumped females babies to die like trash on the street.
Posted by: Kay | March 09, 2011 at 07:43 AM
"I guess they should have thought about that before the dumped females babies to die like trash on the street. "
My understanding is that sex selection abortion is the primary means of avoiding female children--and that the practice may even take place among Asians and Asian-Indians in the US. This would seem to pose quite a dilemma for abortion (or 'choice' if you will) advocates in the US.
Posted by: Mitchell Young | March 09, 2011 at 08:43 AM
Let's just point out the irony that the author of this article has invisibilized the female narrator of the film, the arguably more famous Dame Judi Dench, in a piece about the ways women are ignored or mistreated in favor of men.
Sure, it's not as striking an example as mutilation but it still points to the subtle ways sexism and misogyny operate.
Posted by: Michael | March 09, 2011 at 10:15 AM