Advertisement

Opinion: International Women’s Day: Actor Daniel Craig in drag is no match for the gender inequality in China

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

‘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.

Advertisement

[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.

RELATED:

Keep female foreign correspondents on the front lines

Congress versus Planned Parenthood: Game on?

Chipping away abortion rights

Advertisement

Egypt: The country’s sisterhood sparks a movement within a movement

What’s behind our obsessive Amy Chua disorder?

--Alexandra LeTellier

Advertisement