Date : 2024-02-05

Time : 2024-02-07

Venue : LT2, UG/F, Sino Building

How Did East Asia Overtake South Asia on Gender?

Speaker: Dr. Alice EVANS (Senior Lecturer, Department of International Development, School of Global Affairs, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, King's College London)

Moderator: Prof. Susanne Yuk-ping CHOI (Professor, Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Co-Director, Gender Research Centre, CUHK)

Abstract:

In 1900, East and South Asia were extremely patriarchal. Women’s chastity was crucial for family honour, so they were closely surveilled. But over the 20^th century, East Asian women increasingly undertook paid work in the public sphere, forged solidarity and gained status. South Asian patriarchy is much more persistent. Men continue to be revered as knowledgeable authorities, deserving of deference. To explain this divergence, I introduce “the Honour-Income Trade-Off”. Every patrilineal society faces a trade-off between honour (achieved by social policing) and income (earned by exploiting female labour). East Asian female employment rose rapidly because job-creating economic growth led to higher wages, which compensated for honour. Moreover, East Asians had a weaker preference for female seclusion. Capitalising on job-creating growth, East Asia has become much more gender equal.

Bio:

Alice Evans is a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, she is writing “The Great Gender Divergence” (with Princeton University Press), on how the entire world has become more gender equal and why some societies are more gender equal than others.