1 00:00:00,590 --> 00:00:03,770 Hi, welcome to the Works in Progress podcast. My name's Sam Bowman. 2 00:00:03,790 --> 00:00:05,330 I'm one of the editors at Works in Progress. 3 00:00:06,010 --> 00:00:08,430 My name's Aria. I'm also an editor at Works in Progress. 4 00:00:08,890 --> 00:00:10,630 Our guest today is Dr. Alice Evans. 5 00:00:11,040 --> 00:00:13,710 Alice is a social scientist at King's College London, 6 00:00:14,050 --> 00:00:17,110 as she also writes the excellent substack, The Great Gender Divergence. 7 00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:21,470 And I wanted to start Alice by asking what is The Great Gender Divergence? 8 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:22,450 Thank you, Sam. 9 00:00:22,450 --> 00:00:25,990 So The Great Gender Divergence is about why the entire world has become more 10 00:00:25,990 --> 00:00:29,230 gender equal, and why some societies are more gender equal than others. 11 00:00:29,250 --> 00:00:32,550 So over the past century, women in some parts of the world, like Latin America, 12 00:00:32,660 --> 00:00:35,740 East Asia, Europe, have made tremendous strides in terms of gaining status, 13 00:00:35,980 --> 00:00:39,550 running parliaments, working at high-end careers, 14 00:00:39,810 --> 00:00:42,750 and also gaining protections from male violence. But in other places, 15 00:00:42,760 --> 00:00:46,670 women continue to be very much suppressed and their mobility is limited and they 16 00:00:46,950 --> 00:00:48,990 continue to have low status. So the question is why? 17 00:00:49,410 --> 00:00:50,710 So what I've been trying to do, 18 00:00:50,930 --> 00:00:55,870 rather ambitiously is study the cultural evolution of every single society 19 00:00:55,930 --> 00:00:57,670 in the world going about thousands of years. 20 00:00:58,170 --> 00:01:01,350 And I'm the first person in the world to do qualitative research pretty much 21 00:01:01,350 --> 00:01:02,630 across all world regions. 22 00:01:03,130 --> 00:01:06,790 So I'm trying to cobble together this massive jigsaw. 23 00:01:07,850 --> 00:01:12,430 Is there anywhere in the world that is less gender equal now than it was say a 24 00:01:12,430 --> 00:01:13,263 hundred years ago? 25 00:01:13,910 --> 00:01:14,743 Aria, that's a great question. 26 00:01:14,830 --> 00:01:19,310 I think a hundred years ago before the event of state institutions and 27 00:01:19,610 --> 00:01:21,150 modern communication technology, 28 00:01:21,150 --> 00:01:23,580 there would've been an enormous amount of cultural heterogeneity. 29 00:01:23,850 --> 00:01:28,030 So there may well have been some matrilineal tribe where women had high status 30 00:01:28,130 --> 00:01:30,750 in their village and maybe that could have got suffocated, 31 00:01:31,170 --> 00:01:35,270 say by the Iranian Islamic Revolution, right? So there's lots of heterogeneity, 32 00:01:35,500 --> 00:01:39,430 lots of things moving backwards and forwards. But I think for the most part, 33 00:01:40,180 --> 00:01:43,750 most parts of the world have seen improvements in women's status and protections 34 00:01:43,750 --> 00:01:44,380 from violence. 35 00:01:44,380 --> 00:01:48,070 What counts for that being such a straightforward trend everywhere? 36 00:01:48,870 --> 00:01:50,710 Economic growth. So economic growth, 37 00:01:51,010 --> 00:01:55,990 job creating economic growth is a powerful engine of social change because one, 38 00:01:55,990 --> 00:01:58,470 it motivates parents to invest in education. Two, 39 00:01:59,060 --> 00:02:02,590 when there is contraceptions and other kind of technology enables women to 40 00:02:02,770 --> 00:02:06,710 reduce their fertility, control their time, pursue education, pursue careers, 41 00:02:07,010 --> 00:02:08,950 but it's mediated by culture. 42 00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:13,150 So in cultures where male honour depends on female seclusion, 43 00:02:13,150 --> 00:02:15,070 women don't necessarily seize those jobs. 44 00:02:16,730 --> 00:02:20,390 In authoritarian countries where women are heavily repressed in terms of what 45 00:02:20,390 --> 00:02:24,030 they can say and organised, it's harder to mobilise and persuade at scale. 46 00:02:24,250 --> 00:02:29,150 And is your view that growth both enables empowerment of 47 00:02:29,150 --> 00:02:31,630 women by providing resources for their education, 48 00:02:31,810 --> 00:02:36,310 but also create incentives for it as well by basically growth can happen, 49 00:02:36,570 --> 00:02:38,670 so there are returns to investing in education? 50 00:02:38,910 --> 00:02:39,190 Absolutely. 51 00:02:39,190 --> 00:02:42,150 So I have this theoretical framework called the honour-income trade off. 52 00:02:42,290 --> 00:02:44,790 So let's suppose in South Asia, East Asia, 53 00:02:44,790 --> 00:02:47,990 they're both concerned about male honour, but they also value income. 54 00:02:48,610 --> 00:02:51,510 So which one do you value more? And if you value income at all, 55 00:02:51,530 --> 00:02:55,540 if you value upward mobility and economic prosperity, be like, yeah, sure, okay, 56 00:02:55,540 --> 00:02:56,630 it'll hurt our face, 57 00:02:56,850 --> 00:02:59,610 say in East Asia a little if we send our daughters to the factory. 58 00:02:59,950 --> 00:03:01,410 But when the returns are so great, 59 00:03:01,960 --> 00:03:05,250 when there are labour hungry factories and the recruiters are going into the 60 00:03:05,250 --> 00:03:08,490 rural villages, please give us our daughters. Those Chinese fathers, 61 00:03:08,490 --> 00:03:12,010 they sign the forms, they send their daughters off. And when all the girls go, 62 00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:15,450 then you have a collective action change that you shift the equilibrium and it 63 00:03:15,450 --> 00:03:18,570 becomes normal, totally accepted, and a normal part of adolescence. 64 00:03:18,570 --> 00:03:21,250 And then women go into the cities, they gain careers, 65 00:03:21,250 --> 00:03:25,170 they become journalists and script writers, and they tell their own stories. 66 00:03:25,260 --> 00:03:28,490 And this is a crucial process. It's not just about individual women having jobs, 67 00:03:28,870 --> 00:03:32,570 but about reshaping the script and persuading people at scale and then 68 00:03:32,570 --> 00:03:34,650 mobilising for stronger reforms. 69 00:03:35,360 --> 00:03:37,850 This might be too strange of a subculture, 70 00:03:38,110 --> 00:03:42,970 but the ultra Orthodox Jews or maybe just Orthodox Jews in Israel, 71 00:03:43,710 --> 00:03:47,090 the men basically seem to spend most of their time on religious study, 72 00:03:47,110 --> 00:03:48,370 but the women actually work. 73 00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:51,970 They still seem like they've got a very conservative gendered culture. 74 00:03:52,270 --> 00:03:54,210 Is that actually not the case? 75 00:03:54,310 --> 00:03:58,530 And they are much more liberal in ways that don't fit my understanding of 76 00:03:58,530 --> 00:03:59,190 liberalness? 77 00:03:59,190 --> 00:04:02,410 Or is that actually just one of those exceptions that happens throughout the 78 00:04:02,410 --> 00:04:03,100 world? 79 00:04:03,100 --> 00:04:07,890 Great, great question. I'm very fascinated in Jewish culture. So let me say, 80 00:04:07,890 --> 00:04:10,890 yeah. So ultra orthodox Jews, they tend to have six women per child, 81 00:04:11,390 --> 00:04:14,530 80% of ultra orthodox women work. 82 00:04:14,990 --> 00:04:18,850 And I think there it's important to recognise that high rates of female labour 83 00:04:18,850 --> 00:04:21,850 force participation don't necessarily translate into status. 84 00:04:22,230 --> 00:04:25,520 So across Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women can be toiling in the fields, 85 00:04:25,790 --> 00:04:29,810 but men may still be allowed access to the community governance circle. 86 00:04:29,950 --> 00:04:34,170 So it's still the men who are doing the specific acidic rituals, 87 00:04:34,360 --> 00:04:37,490 only the men who are studying scripture, and that's a high status activity. 88 00:04:37,830 --> 00:04:41,890 So here it's really important to have the qualitative insights to understand 89 00:04:41,890 --> 00:04:44,400 what actually gives status because it may not be work. 90 00:04:44,900 --> 00:04:47,850 And I guess there's also secluded work that women have done throughout history 91 00:04:47,850 --> 00:04:50,850 as well, like grinding wheat or as we talk about, 92 00:04:50,850 --> 00:04:53,810 in a Works in Progress article and stuff like that. 93 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:57,610 Yeah, absolutely. So throughout human history, women have always done work. 94 00:04:57,870 --> 00:05:00,610 So the next question is what actually gives women status? 95 00:05:00,670 --> 00:05:03,490 So women have always been grinding or doing drudgery at home, 96 00:05:03,490 --> 00:05:05,250 and that's important for household survival. 97 00:05:05,790 --> 00:05:10,690 But then we have a separate question about what leads to people being revered, 98 00:05:10,860 --> 00:05:14,850 their words, carrying wisdom, acting as religious authorities, 99 00:05:15,980 --> 00:05:18,890 creating community governance. So that's separate from work. 100 00:05:19,270 --> 00:05:21,520 Okay. Should we get talking about East Asia? 101 00:05:21,750 --> 00:05:22,583 Yes. 102 00:05:22,750 --> 00:05:27,170 So I think the first really interesting thing about East Asia is that 103 00:05:27,710 --> 00:05:31,250 when I see primarily through your work the way people talk about digital 104 00:05:31,290 --> 00:05:32,450 feminism in East Asia, 105 00:05:32,460 --> 00:05:37,400 it actually seems remarkably similar to our online feminism. 106 00:05:38,550 --> 00:05:42,290 You've talked about this on the Chinese Little Red Book, social media, 107 00:05:42,540 --> 00:05:45,610 about how you've got girls support girls hashtags, 108 00:05:45,610 --> 00:05:49,010 which seem very similar to me to the girls-girl TikTok trend. 109 00:05:49,110 --> 00:05:53,810 You've got the #MeToo movement in East Asia as well. All of that seems very, 110 00:05:53,810 --> 00:05:58,130 very similar. And yet actually, when you dive into what their cultures are like, 111 00:05:58,280 --> 00:06:01,210 they seem to be much more misogynistic. 112 00:06:02,460 --> 00:06:07,050 Is that because this feminism is actually much more marginalised than it is over 113 00:06:07,050 --> 00:06:07,630 here? 114 00:06:07,630 --> 00:06:11,450 Or is it just like it's interfacing with a very different kind of culture and 115 00:06:11,670 --> 00:06:14,400 I'm only seeing the bits that are most intelligible to me? 116 00:06:15,330 --> 00:06:19,090 I think everything you said is a hundred percent correct, Aria. So yeah, 117 00:06:19,710 --> 00:06:23,850 over the past 20 years we've seen this acceleration of 118 00:06:24,080 --> 00:06:27,330 technological connectivity. And so let's say the example of China, 119 00:06:27,570 --> 00:06:30,490 because obviously there's heterogeneity within East Asia. In China, 120 00:06:30,630 --> 00:06:35,400 the CCP heavily moderates and suppresses any criticism of the 121 00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:39,050 state, but citizens are still allowed to criticise other Chinese people. 122 00:06:39,070 --> 00:06:43,370 So as long as it's not organised, as long as it's not a threat to the state, 123 00:06:43,550 --> 00:06:44,610 you can still be critical. 124 00:06:44,670 --> 00:06:48,330 So men on Baidu Tieba may bitch about women and call them like tanks or 125 00:06:48,450 --> 00:06:48,530 whatever. 126 00:06:48,530 --> 00:06:52,610 And women on Little Red Book may show solidarity or sympathy with other women. 127 00:06:52,710 --> 00:06:55,400 So when they're posting about about gender-based violence or when they're 128 00:06:55,400 --> 00:06:58,400 postingagainst the idea of selfless sisters, 129 00:06:58,880 --> 00:07:03,090 certainly women can speak out and show empathy and show solidarity. 130 00:07:03,460 --> 00:07:06,930 And that's hugely important because throughout history and our history has 131 00:07:06,930 --> 00:07:11,610 always been very patriarchal. Men ruled the script where that was through state 132 00:07:11,610 --> 00:07:11,890 power, 133 00:07:11,890 --> 00:07:16,530 whether Confucius literature or here in Europe with very patriarchal literature. 134 00:07:16,790 --> 00:07:20,210 But now women can show alternatives and show empathy, 135 00:07:20,350 --> 00:07:24,610 and that shifts people's expectations about the pathways to status or get them 136 00:07:24,610 --> 00:07:28,810 ostracised or actually respected. So online literature's hugely, 137 00:07:28,870 --> 00:07:33,250 hugely important in emboldening people to test out 138 00:07:33,250 --> 00:07:37,770 alternatives in, of changing ideas of prestige. That said, 139 00:07:38,140 --> 00:07:39,610 there are important differences. 140 00:07:39,790 --> 00:07:42,210 So one is that East Asia was always much more patriarchal. 141 00:07:42,210 --> 00:07:45,570 It had strong pronounced patrilineal system, pronounced son bias, 142 00:07:45,790 --> 00:07:50,610 but also hidden elements that people might not recognise unless they've done 143 00:07:50,610 --> 00:07:53,450 qualitative research comparing around the world. So for example, 144 00:07:53,950 --> 00:07:58,210 one thing I was very struck by in my field work in both Korea and Hong Kong and 145 00:07:58,210 --> 00:08:02,690 my many interviews with Chinese people is this idea of collective harmony and 146 00:08:02,690 --> 00:08:07,570 the idea of extreme discomfort from being an individual troublemaker 147 00:08:07,880 --> 00:08:10,010 from speaking out. And so for example, 148 00:08:10,390 --> 00:08:15,010 one time I was sitting down for an interview with a South Korean professional 149 00:08:15,010 --> 00:08:17,010 woman, and she said to me, the first thing she said to me is, 150 00:08:17,550 --> 00:08:21,410 "are you a feminist?" "No, 151 00:08:21,590 --> 00:08:22,890 I'm just a social scientist. 152 00:08:23,110 --> 00:08:25,450 I'm interested in these East Asia." And she was like, good, 153 00:08:25,710 --> 00:08:28,690 but she says "feminists, they're too outspoken, too assertive, 154 00:08:29,070 --> 00:08:33,130 but the gender problems here are very real." And then she proceeded to tell me 155 00:08:33,130 --> 00:08:36,410 these very heartfelt stories about how she'd been discriminated at work, 156 00:08:36,470 --> 00:08:38,250 how she'd been passed over promotion, 157 00:08:38,340 --> 00:08:41,730 about how her male colleagues went to a lap dance club and invited her. 158 00:08:42,030 --> 00:08:45,010 And then another woman, again, they were saying, "oh, 159 00:08:45,010 --> 00:08:49,040 there are these feminist protests here and I don't like them." And I was trying 160 00:08:49,180 --> 00:08:53,770 to understand what's the problem. And again, it was this emphasis on assertion, 161 00:08:53,770 --> 00:08:55,970 this idea that in Japan there's a saying, 162 00:08:56,510 --> 00:09:00,890 the nail that sticks up will be hammered down. And so I thought, 163 00:09:00,890 --> 00:09:04,490 let's do a little role play exercise. And I said to them, okay, 164 00:09:05,120 --> 00:09:09,740 so let's suppose you are uncomfortable with the drinking culture at work. 165 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:13,660 And suppose in your work office you said you put up your hand, you say, 166 00:09:13,880 --> 00:09:17,740 I'd like to propose that we don't have company after work drinks anymore. 167 00:09:18,670 --> 00:09:21,680 And the minute I was trying to be my most diplomatic, 168 00:09:22,090 --> 00:09:23,610 charismatic self to the best of my ability, 169 00:09:24,420 --> 00:09:29,010 and instantly her lips recoiled in horror, and she goes, 170 00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:32,370 well, I think that's very, 171 00:09:32,710 --> 00:09:35,410 she was totally uncomfortable with that kind of self-assertion. 172 00:09:35,670 --> 00:09:38,970 So if you have this, and there's lots of pure value survey data on this, 173 00:09:38,970 --> 00:09:41,410 so if you have this culture that reveres collective harmony, 174 00:09:41,920 --> 00:09:45,210 then any kind of disruption, any kind of self-assertion, 175 00:09:45,260 --> 00:09:48,650 especially if it's twinned with something which is already kind of subversive in 176 00:09:48,650 --> 00:09:52,530 your culture, feminism, it can cause a bit of disruption. 177 00:09:52,530 --> 00:09:55,610 So I think you were a hundred percent correct that there is this online 178 00:09:55,800 --> 00:10:00,570 literature that is tremendously important in pushing for protections 179 00:10:00,570 --> 00:10:03,730 against male violence. For example, in this year, 2025, 180 00:10:03,860 --> 00:10:06,490 South Korea has just announced an anti-harassment law. So that is super, 181 00:10:06,490 --> 00:10:11,410 super important, but people will react in a certain different kind of way. 182 00:10:11,990 --> 00:10:14,290 Are men also less supportive of feminism there? 183 00:10:14,570 --> 00:10:19,330 I guess my perception of the West is that maybe until very recently, 184 00:10:19,550 --> 00:10:21,770 most men were also basically feminists. 185 00:10:21,770 --> 00:10:24,010 And it's potentially only a very recent backlash. 186 00:10:24,010 --> 00:10:26,530 And even then I'm not sure about it. Whereas it seems like 187 00:10:28,150 --> 00:10:31,410 men in East Asia, and this is obviously speaking in major generalities, 188 00:10:31,590 --> 00:10:36,570 are actually very hostile to feminism and a lot of their online culture 189 00:10:36,700 --> 00:10:38,680 seems incell-y in some way. 190 00:10:39,120 --> 00:10:43,130 Okay, brilliant. And I will respond in three parts. First of all, 191 00:10:43,250 --> 00:10:47,610 I think the vast majority of men in Europe and America are very supportive of 192 00:10:47,610 --> 00:10:49,330 gender equality, belief that women should work, 193 00:10:49,330 --> 00:10:50,410 believe that women should be leaders. 194 00:10:50,750 --> 00:10:53,130 And we see that both in surveys and genuine voting. 195 00:10:54,770 --> 00:10:57,170 I would say that's a little bit different from supporting feminism. 196 00:10:57,180 --> 00:11:01,210 So if you look at Pew data or you look at men might say gender equality is fine, 197 00:11:01,210 --> 00:11:02,043 but I don't want feminism. 198 00:11:02,130 --> 00:11:04,730 So that's a pretty normal response in the US that said, 199 00:11:04,730 --> 00:11:09,170 you are a hundred percent that men are more supportive of gender equality in the 200 00:11:09,170 --> 00:11:10,610 West than say East Asia. 201 00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:16,290 East Asia's had a culture of patrilineal whereby men perform the 202 00:11:16,290 --> 00:11:18,610 ancestral rituals. The son is the most prized, 203 00:11:19,030 --> 00:11:22,770 the most prized child and celebrated well girls are just an afterthought who are 204 00:11:22,770 --> 00:11:23,970 going to marry into another family. 205 00:11:24,350 --> 00:11:28,330 So a hundred percent there's that cross-national difference. And I think another 206 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:33,330 fact that's underestimated is that the West got very lucky in the timing 207 00:11:33,510 --> 00:11:34,850 of our feminist revolution. 208 00:11:35,180 --> 00:11:39,930 So it occurred in the 1970s when our media was much more 209 00:11:39,930 --> 00:11:41,210 shared and we had much more in common. 210 00:11:41,910 --> 00:11:46,010 So when there were higher barriers to entry, there were fewer firms, 211 00:11:46,050 --> 00:11:48,890 fewer outputs. We are all watching similar shows, whether it's BBC news, 212 00:11:49,680 --> 00:11:53,680 Friends and The Simpsons. So we're all on that shared cultural journey. 213 00:11:54,180 --> 00:11:56,650 In Sweden, for example, they only allowed private media, 214 00:11:56,650 --> 00:11:59,650 private TV stations in 1989. Before that, 215 00:11:59,930 --> 00:12:03,010 everyone was getting indoctrinated with hardcore egalitarianism. 216 00:12:03,710 --> 00:12:08,010 Now as we see this intense personalization in individualism in social media, 217 00:12:08,010 --> 00:12:10,530 that's what East Asians and Latin Americans are getting right now. 218 00:12:10,990 --> 00:12:14,170 So women of course, will opt into feminist media, right? 219 00:12:14,170 --> 00:12:17,170 Because it gives them everything they want. Yes, status is great, yes, 220 00:12:17,170 --> 00:12:19,410 you can be independent, yes, you can live your own life. 221 00:12:19,470 --> 00:12:22,210 And there are all kinds of female vlogs where they're celebrating their 222 00:12:22,210 --> 00:12:26,800 independence after work, for example. But why would any man want to watch that, 223 00:12:27,100 --> 00:12:27,790 right? 224 00:12:27,790 --> 00:12:32,530 So by virtue of technological backwardness in the 1970s, 225 00:12:32,930 --> 00:12:36,850 a bunch of guys were watching pretty egalitarian stuff or cheers or whatever. 226 00:12:37,300 --> 00:12:39,530 But East Asians today can opt out. 227 00:12:40,270 --> 00:12:44,890 I'm not sure if I actually think this, But Korea seems like a quite susceptible 228 00:12:44,890 --> 00:12:49,210 to Western means in a way that I think Japan doesn't. 229 00:12:49,540 --> 00:12:52,770 North Korea is the most communist country the world has ever seen. 230 00:12:53,490 --> 00:12:56,090 Christianity is most popular in South Korea, 231 00:12:57,230 --> 00:12:59,010 and they do it in quite interesting ways. 232 00:12:59,300 --> 00:13:01,970 The Reverend Moon's church and mass weddings and things like that. 233 00:13:02,250 --> 00:13:05,650 Feminism seems to have caught on much more as a sort of ideal. 234 00:13:06,180 --> 00:13:07,490 I'm sure it's not widely accepted, 235 00:13:07,590 --> 00:13:10,250 but there are subcultures of feminism much more there. 236 00:13:10,550 --> 00:13:13,970 And this sort of men's rights MRA thing has sort of caught on. 237 00:13:14,350 --> 00:13:18,930 So is it possible that what's going on in Korea is they have some sort of 238 00:13:19,170 --> 00:13:24,130 cultural openness say to western memes and western ideas in a way that Japan 239 00:13:24,130 --> 00:13:27,370 doesn't China, and these are sort of wrecking havoc. 240 00:13:27,370 --> 00:13:31,970 It's almost like a virus in the new world where they just don't have a kind of 241 00:13:31,970 --> 00:13:34,130 immune system to resist either, 242 00:13:34,400 --> 00:13:37,770 depending on whether you think these things are good or bad. But like inceldom, 243 00:13:38,890 --> 00:13:41,730 feminism, Christianity, communism, whatever it might be, 244 00:13:42,510 --> 00:13:46,570 is it possible that Korea is just very, very vulnerable to weird ideas? 245 00:13:47,490 --> 00:13:49,130 I think that's an interesting hypothesis, 246 00:13:49,510 --> 00:13:53,490 and I will respectively take us back on time travel to the 1870s when Japan had 247 00:13:53,490 --> 00:13:56,450 the Meiji restoration. And so when they were being attacked by 248 00:13:58,160 --> 00:14:00,090 foreign ships, they thought, well, actually no, 249 00:14:00,090 --> 00:14:02,890 we need to rapidly industrialise for our defence. 250 00:14:03,230 --> 00:14:06,090 And so many intellectuals went on tours of the West, they went to Europe, 251 00:14:06,090 --> 00:14:08,570 they went to the us. They're like, no, we've got to bring back these ideas. 252 00:14:08,790 --> 00:14:12,130 And if you go to Japan, you see lots of European style architecture, 253 00:14:12,240 --> 00:14:16,050 massive reforms of education, and many of the leading intellectuals are like, 254 00:14:16,050 --> 00:14:17,930 no, we've got to have these secular scientific projects. 255 00:14:17,930 --> 00:14:20,770 We've got to destroy the Samurai. We've got to have massive reforms. 256 00:14:20,950 --> 00:14:23,730 So certainly within Japan's history, 257 00:14:23,960 --> 00:14:28,850 they've taken on many commercial cultural adoptations of Western culture 258 00:14:28,870 --> 00:14:31,810 in terms of dress, in terms of clothing. So that said, 259 00:14:32,450 --> 00:14:37,210 I think what might be different in Korea today is they 260 00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:40,770 have, they've managed to build, 261 00:14:41,150 --> 00:14:45,210 and this actually goes back to Christianity, a more militant labour movement, 262 00:14:45,210 --> 00:14:46,690 which then gave birth to democracy, 263 00:14:46,740 --> 00:14:48,930 which then gave birth to this feminist activism. 264 00:14:49,510 --> 00:14:52,570 So I would see a slightly different, more contingent story. 265 00:14:52,770 --> 00:14:55,930 I don't think Japan has this necessary immunity to European memes. 266 00:14:56,030 --> 00:14:58,810 But when the Japanese did it, it basically worked really well. 267 00:14:58,890 --> 00:15:01,050 I mean it worked really well until World War II happened, 268 00:15:01,070 --> 00:15:05,730 but it isn't that they went over and just got their brains washed by 269 00:15:06,130 --> 00:15:08,450 Prussian militarism. They thought this one works well. 270 00:15:08,450 --> 00:15:11,330 We like the strength of the army in Prussia or in Germany. 271 00:15:11,870 --> 00:15:14,170 We like the way the English do their schools. 272 00:15:14,270 --> 00:15:16,330 We like the way the French do their financial system. 273 00:15:16,670 --> 00:15:19,890 And they brought these things back in a selective way, like a conscious way. 274 00:15:19,920 --> 00:15:20,500 Totally. 275 00:15:20,500 --> 00:15:21,890 Korea doesn't feel like that. 276 00:15:21,980 --> 00:15:26,970 Korea doesn't feel like they are doing well out of the Western ideas that are 277 00:15:26,970 --> 00:15:28,450 going there and being adopted there. 278 00:15:28,480 --> 00:15:30,090 They feel like they're victims of those ideas. 279 00:15:31,290 --> 00:15:33,420 Well, I think that, like I was saying, 280 00:15:34,420 --> 00:15:38,060 I think I as a social scientist will be careful about normative claims. 281 00:15:38,440 --> 00:15:40,860 So whether something's good or bad, that's not for me to say. 282 00:15:40,860 --> 00:15:44,700 But I would say that the South Korean feminist movement has been very successful 283 00:15:44,700 --> 00:15:49,100 in many ways because as there have been waves of protests and organising 284 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:52,860 in a distinctly Korean way. So for example, one fundemental aside, 285 00:15:53,640 --> 00:15:55,500 if you go to a western feminist protest, 286 00:15:55,560 --> 00:15:59,260 you'll see that often each woman would wear her own style of clothing and she'll 287 00:15:59,260 --> 00:16:00,580 have some groovy slogan, 288 00:16:00,770 --> 00:16:05,100 some hilarious thing like 'Patriarchy sucks but my boyfriend does even more' 289 00:16:05,100 --> 00:16:08,460 It's something a bit quirky, but in South Korea, 290 00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:10,980 all their feminist protests, 291 00:16:11,170 --> 00:16:15,340 they're all totally colour coordinated with all the same banners and all the 292 00:16:15,340 --> 00:16:19,740 same slogans because I think this reflects their strong culture of collective 293 00:16:19,740 --> 00:16:22,620 harmony and strength and unity and no one wanting to stick out. 294 00:16:22,680 --> 00:16:24,940 So certainly they're doing feminism in their own way, 295 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:29,180 but it has been incrementally successful emboldening other women. 296 00:16:29,560 --> 00:16:33,180 And just this year they've got this anti-harassment law, and for example, 297 00:16:33,180 --> 00:16:37,020 and feminists were part of the anti president, anti the military rule thing. 298 00:16:37,020 --> 00:16:42,020 So I think there have been some important strides for women's welfare and 299 00:16:42,020 --> 00:16:46,900 status and protections from male violence as a result of feminism without any 300 00:16:46,900 --> 00:16:47,733 normative claims. 301 00:16:48,250 --> 00:16:51,580 This would explain another strange observation of mine, 302 00:16:51,630 --> 00:16:56,620 which is I think it's so bizarre that K-Pop has groups instead of having 303 00:16:56,880 --> 00:17:01,420 any individual stars. It makes total sense to me that they have special schools 304 00:17:01,420 --> 00:17:04,820 where they train people from their teen years to become celebrities, 305 00:17:04,840 --> 00:17:06,620 and it kind of makes sense that they want to invest. 306 00:17:06,840 --> 00:17:10,420 The companies that do this want to invest across a bunch of different 307 00:17:10,420 --> 00:17:13,210 personality types so they can tap into lots of different audiences. 308 00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:14,273 But the group ... 309 00:17:15,130 --> 00:17:18,860 that seems so strange because obviously over here our biggest celebrities are 310 00:17:19,370 --> 00:17:21,260 basically all solo acts. 311 00:17:21,260 --> 00:17:25,700 Like Beyonce had to leave Destiny's Child ... I think ... 312 00:17:25,700 --> 00:17:26,300 Taylor Swift obviously. 313 00:17:26,300 --> 00:17:27,730 Yeah, Destiny's Child. Come on. 314 00:17:28,050 --> 00:17:28,883 It's before my time. 315 00:17:30,210 --> 00:17:32,020 I think that's a brilliant point, Aria. Absolutely. 316 00:17:32,060 --> 00:17:36,060 I think there is this strong reverence for the group and we can get into the 317 00:17:36,060 --> 00:17:38,620 history about why that might be. I totally agree. 318 00:17:39,650 --> 00:17:44,580 Another thing that I was thinking could be the reason why the feminist backlash 319 00:17:44,630 --> 00:17:49,020 seems quite big in East Asia is their dating markets are so 320 00:17:50,270 --> 00:17:54,240 so skewed. So they've got the history of sex elective abortion, 321 00:17:54,460 --> 00:17:59,240 but what I didn't realise is obviously because you have a norm that men 322 00:17:59,310 --> 00:18:01,010 are older than their girlfriends and wives, 323 00:18:01,080 --> 00:18:02,810 because they've got such a low birth rate, 324 00:18:02,960 --> 00:18:06,650 it's even more enhanced because you've got a smaller generation below, 325 00:18:06,910 --> 00:18:08,770 and then also then you have the queuing effect. 326 00:18:08,790 --> 00:18:13,530 So you'll have groups of 30-year-old men waiting to see if the next set of 327 00:18:13,530 --> 00:18:14,890 younger women want to go out with them. 328 00:18:15,070 --> 00:18:18,450 So that seems like something like 15/20%, 329 00:18:18,450 --> 00:18:21,570 even if you have like a 100% coupling up amongst women, 330 00:18:21,840 --> 00:18:24,370 15/20% of men would be permanently single. 331 00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:29,930 I can see why men in that position are less 332 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:34,530 open towards, I guess, respecting women's complaints. 333 00:18:34,960 --> 00:18:35,690 Could you unpack that a bit? 334 00:18:35,690 --> 00:18:38,930 Why would a hundred percent of women coupling up not lead to a hundred percent 335 00:18:38,930 --> 00:18:39,763 of men coupling up? 336 00:18:39,850 --> 00:18:40,683 You've got more men than women. 337 00:18:41,170 --> 00:18:42,450 Because of sex elective abortion? 338 00:18:42,450 --> 00:18:43,283 Because of sex selection. 339 00:18:43,740 --> 00:18:46,480 So that was, so yeah, a hundred percent. 340 00:18:46,710 --> 00:18:51,530 So South Korea historically had skewed sex ratios because parents 341 00:18:51,530 --> 00:18:53,370 preferred sons, they were going to earn more, 342 00:18:53,460 --> 00:18:55,480 and also they brought prestige and status in the family. 343 00:18:55,480 --> 00:18:59,690 They do the ancestral rituals, though South Korea no longer has that sex ratio, 344 00:18:59,690 --> 00:19:04,090 but yes, certainly for the existing chunk of men in their twenties and thirties, 345 00:19:04,120 --> 00:19:06,770 they face the world's worst dating market. 346 00:19:07,830 --> 00:19:09,770 But here is where culture again is really, 347 00:19:09,770 --> 00:19:14,240 really important because then men go onto online message boards and they vent. 348 00:19:14,640 --> 00:19:18,770 They vent about when you say one is you have that personal experience of being 349 00:19:18,840 --> 00:19:19,770 ghosted ignored, 350 00:19:20,430 --> 00:19:24,930 and you may be in a pretty crappy job and you have pretty low status in a 351 00:19:25,170 --> 00:19:27,370 hierarchical firm where the bosses treat you like crap. 352 00:19:27,390 --> 00:19:28,890 So your life is pretty crap in many, 353 00:19:28,890 --> 00:19:33,570 many ways in a culture that is incredibly status orientated. So in South Korea, 354 00:19:33,870 --> 00:19:38,480 you really have to be in the top decile to feel a much greater degree of 355 00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:39,110 happiness. 356 00:19:39,110 --> 00:19:42,240 So South Koreans are usually pretty miserable unless they're in the top decile. 357 00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:43,960 And Thomas Stahel has shown this brilliantly, 358 00:19:44,110 --> 00:19:48,650 and that's why East Asians are much more unhappy than you predict from their 359 00:19:48,650 --> 00:19:51,770 level of GDP per capita because they're only happy if they're at the top. 360 00:19:52,390 --> 00:19:56,650 And so if you are bottom a man in the lower deciles 361 00:19:57,190 --> 00:20:01,130 one, you are demographically doomed. Women won't give you the time of day. 362 00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:04,650 Your bosses treat you in incredibly inferiorly. 363 00:20:04,650 --> 00:20:06,850 You're constantly bowing and kowtowing and doing all this nunchi. 364 00:20:07,910 --> 00:20:11,530 And then on top of that, you go to these message boards and you say, "oh, 365 00:20:11,820 --> 00:20:15,770 women are awful," and everyone is agreeing with you and everyone because you're 366 00:20:15,770 --> 00:20:19,480 in this very single sex orientated environment everyone is constantly agreeing 367 00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:23,290 with. And that's an important underrated point that South Korea has a very 368 00:20:23,290 --> 00:20:26,960 strong history of single sex education or single sex classes. 369 00:20:27,460 --> 00:20:31,930 So a lot of young men won't spend that much time with women And they don't have 370 00:20:31,930 --> 00:20:35,930 sisters. Great point, great point. So I think this is really, 371 00:20:35,930 --> 00:20:39,850 really important that male female friendships can be a really important part of 372 00:20:40,010 --> 00:20:42,330 building empathy and understanding. Just in this conversation, 373 00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,570 look how Sam is building empathy with this perspective. 374 00:20:44,760 --> 00:20:48,610 He's being transformed in this moment and becoming this radical feminist. 375 00:20:49,030 --> 00:20:53,810 So if we talk and share and discuss ideas that can help 376 00:20:53,940 --> 00:20:57,650 build commonalities and understanding, but if you are just constantly separate, 377 00:20:57,650 --> 00:21:00,370 you're an only son, you're going to a school with other boys, 378 00:21:00,370 --> 00:21:03,960 then you're ranting on a message board with a bunch of other men, 379 00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:08,610 sharing your perspective on those message boards are not just showing 380 00:21:08,620 --> 00:21:10,330 solidarity with you, but also, 381 00:21:11,050 --> 00:21:14,240 I mean you've read Hawon Jung's wonderful book Flowers of Fire, 382 00:21:14,270 --> 00:21:18,850 and it's all about this vitriol and this sense of vengeance in 383 00:21:18,850 --> 00:21:20,610 humiliating and getting revenge of women. 384 00:21:20,630 --> 00:21:25,450 So your whole cultural environment is totally saturated with pretty 385 00:21:25,460 --> 00:21:29,370 steep misogyny. And then you get all these feminists protesting on the street, 386 00:21:29,370 --> 00:21:32,890 which is like this attack to all your ideas of your expectations of how you 387 00:21:32,890 --> 00:21:35,370 should be treated. Then it triggers this counter reaction. 388 00:21:35,870 --> 00:21:37,450 At a personal level how much does this affect the ability of men and women to 389 00:21:37,450 --> 00:21:37,523 couple up? 390 00:21:43,320 --> 00:21:47,090 That kind of thing probably is somewhat relevant in the west, 391 00:21:47,220 --> 00:21:49,370 but I don't think it's deterministic. 392 00:21:49,710 --> 00:21:53,130 You sometimes get misogynists and feminists in relationships together. 393 00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:54,810 It's not the most determining factor. 394 00:21:55,030 --> 00:21:56,930 How big of an issue is that in someone like Korea? 395 00:21:57,650 --> 00:22:01,970 I think that there are many prior constraints to coupling up. So for example, 396 00:22:01,970 --> 00:22:02,803 this more gender segregated, 397 00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:05,480 this environment where you don't have so many male friends, 398 00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:09,450 this environment of people being much more work orientated. So for example, 399 00:22:09,450 --> 00:22:11,450 if we look at Pew surveys and what people value, 400 00:22:11,450 --> 00:22:14,370 it's all about money and work rather than say family. 401 00:22:14,710 --> 00:22:17,290 So it's certainly a shift in values about what people want. 402 00:22:17,390 --> 00:22:20,890 So when people are left to their own devices and not forced into arrange 403 00:22:21,130 --> 00:22:23,010 marriages, they pursue what makes them happy, 404 00:22:23,010 --> 00:22:25,570 which increasingly seems to be economic advancement. 405 00:22:26,670 --> 00:22:28,130 So those seems to be prior constraints. 406 00:22:28,230 --> 00:22:30,450 When I interviewed Koreans on precisely this point, 407 00:22:30,910 --> 00:22:34,410 they'd often say that the people on the message boards are crazy extremists, 408 00:22:34,710 --> 00:22:37,210 but the people that they meet in ordinary life are not like that. 409 00:22:37,310 --> 00:22:40,210 And that obviously they could be a consumer taste. So I think 410 00:22:42,130 --> 00:22:44,790 the online radicalization might be downstream of other things, 411 00:22:44,790 --> 00:22:48,550 though it's certainly going to be a friction if you internally perceive men as 412 00:22:48,550 --> 00:22:53,070 against you. How do young Asians date do they have dating apps? So 413 00:22:53,370 --> 00:22:54,790 in my interviews in Korea, 414 00:22:54,810 --> 00:22:58,230 people prefer to do blind dates where your friends are setting you up. 415 00:22:58,240 --> 00:23:03,110 And I think that's partly associated with networks of trust and also ideas of 416 00:23:03,110 --> 00:23:06,550 propriety. So East Asia has always had a much stronger culture of idealising, 417 00:23:06,580 --> 00:23:07,550 females, chastity. 418 00:23:07,770 --> 00:23:11,630 So the idea of just meeting up with a man who you've never met and no one in 419 00:23:11,630 --> 00:23:15,470 your network knows, I mean if we can reflect on it, it's a pretty crazy, 420 00:23:15,660 --> 00:23:18,030 it's a pretty crazy radical view. 421 00:23:18,650 --> 00:23:22,910 So you've got this one shot interaction with no motivation to be nice afterwards 422 00:23:22,910 --> 00:23:26,470 because it won't affect your future interactions and a state that sort of allows 423 00:23:26,470 --> 00:23:27,830 impunity for male violence, 424 00:23:28,370 --> 00:23:31,390 that's a risky maybe potentially disreputable thing to do. 425 00:23:31,650 --> 00:23:33,980 So people tend to set their friends up. 426 00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:39,230 I guess if people then have largely, and this might be the core of the problem, 427 00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:42,680 they have largely gender segregated schooling and friendship networks. 428 00:23:42,950 --> 00:23:44,400 Does that mean that, well, 429 00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,200 I guess some people don't have friends of the opposite gender and they're ... 430 00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:49,760 Not, it's going to create some friction. You might have some cousins, 431 00:23:49,790 --> 00:23:52,680 some networks from work, for example, work networks could be an example. 432 00:23:52,860 --> 00:23:54,720 But also another really important thing, 433 00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:56,990 and maybe this is something we want to get onto later, Sam, 434 00:23:57,020 --> 00:24:01,560 is how many of the evening activities heavily involve a lot of alcohol, 435 00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:05,230 which isn't necessarily a fun, conducive, welcoming environment for women. 436 00:24:06,340 --> 00:24:10,680 So if we go out in Britain making social environments more welcoming to women, 437 00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:12,960 women will be more likely to want to socialise with you. 438 00:24:13,260 --> 00:24:15,040 So did they used to do arranged marriages? 439 00:24:15,220 --> 00:24:15,900 Yes. Oh, totally. 440 00:24:15,900 --> 00:24:16,733 So when did that finish? 441 00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:18,920 Great question. So East Asia is patrilineal exogamous 442 00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:23,990 which means that descent is followed through the paternal line, 443 00:24:24,380 --> 00:24:25,560 but you marry out, 444 00:24:25,940 --> 00:24:29,880 so you are not marrying within your immediate circle of relatives, 445 00:24:30,340 --> 00:24:34,880 and instead you are forging business or relations with anyone in anyone. 446 00:24:36,180 --> 00:24:40,230 And so over the 20th century, as we've seen rising education and urbanisation, 447 00:24:40,730 --> 00:24:44,480 young people flock to the factories or to do office clerical work, 448 00:24:44,780 --> 00:24:49,600 and they increasingly mixed mingled built their own networks and families 449 00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:54,280 were more permissive of this because that exogenous culture doesn't motivate you 450 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:55,960 to stay within the group exactly. 451 00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:56,720 The same as in the west. 452 00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,800 Then western Europe has exactly the same kind of tradition right up until, 453 00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:02,200 I mean to the present day, basically. 454 00:25:03,230 --> 00:25:05,230 Western Europe never had arranged marriage though. 455 00:25:05,820 --> 00:25:10,760 But it does have the pattern of descent through the male line and exogamy. 456 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:14,560 So it has not clan-based business relationships, 457 00:25:14,980 --> 00:25:16,160 not clan-based marriage. 458 00:25:16,580 --> 00:25:19,880 You're marrying outside of your family and you're creating businesses outside of 459 00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,520 your family. So it is very, very similar to Western Europe, right? 460 00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:28,040 I wouldn't say so. I'd say the patrilineal emphasis is much, 461 00:25:28,460 --> 00:25:30,760 if you look at clan structures in East Asia, 462 00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:34,200 you might find that only the men are named. Wheras, 463 00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:37,760 I can study my entire family history going back several hundred years and every 464 00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:38,593 woman will be named. 465 00:25:38,860 --> 00:25:43,160 So every woman is recognised as an important part within a family lineage in 466 00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:43,993 South Korea, 467 00:25:44,530 --> 00:25:48,230 maybe a hundred years ago it might be seen as disreputable to say the woman's 468 00:25:48,230 --> 00:25:52,360 name, the wife's name. So this idea is much, much more strong. I mean, 469 00:25:53,100 --> 00:25:56,990 in Europe, women could still inherit property. You might want a male to do it, 470 00:25:56,990 --> 00:25:59,160 but women could still inherit property. 471 00:25:59,680 --> 00:25:59,920 Interesting. 472 00:25:59,920 --> 00:26:04,760 Because it is striking though that it's unlike a lot of patriarchal 473 00:26:04,910 --> 00:26:09,480 traditional societies where they are very clan-based and they are very much 474 00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,880 based on the family as not just the family unit, 475 00:26:14,060 --> 00:26:19,040 but the economic unit and the extended family as being like that's how trust 476 00:26:19,190 --> 00:26:22,080 goes. It's really striking that according to your work, 477 00:26:22,100 --> 00:26:26,360 at least East Asia doesn't rely that much on the extended family or as much as 478 00:26:26,360 --> 00:26:27,320 let's say the Middle East does. 479 00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:30,480 Well, I think this happens in conjunction with economic growth, right? 480 00:26:30,700 --> 00:26:33,960 So if you have low economic growth and everyone is living in their village, 481 00:26:33,980 --> 00:26:38,120 then you have this very strong patrilineal clan structure, 482 00:26:38,220 --> 00:26:42,560 and then you have the ancestral halls in China since 1536, 483 00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:44,770 communists could build their own ancestral halls. 484 00:26:44,830 --> 00:26:46,210 So you have these very strong clans, 485 00:26:46,210 --> 00:26:49,970 especially in the rice growing regions of southern China where you need lots of 486 00:26:49,970 --> 00:26:52,480 people to collaborate, building irrigation, 487 00:26:52,590 --> 00:26:55,010 et cetera. So you are all cooperating within the unit. 488 00:26:55,030 --> 00:26:57,170 You might be building club goods together, you need a bridge, 489 00:26:57,170 --> 00:26:58,290 you build it within your clan. 490 00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,480 There's this wonderful paper by Grief and Tabellini all about how people are 491 00:27:01,890 --> 00:27:03,170 collaborating, building these club groups. 492 00:27:03,190 --> 00:27:05,290 You might even build for defences or something like that. 493 00:27:05,290 --> 00:27:06,450 You do it all within your clan, 494 00:27:07,510 --> 00:27:10,330 but then when you get economic growth, 495 00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:12,530 there's an incentive to go to a city. 496 00:27:12,530 --> 00:27:16,690 There's an incentive to build all these diverse networks and you can build 497 00:27:17,670 --> 00:27:17,890 guanxi, 498 00:27:17,890 --> 00:27:22,890 which is the idea of mutual relationship of reciprocity and trust 499 00:27:22,890 --> 00:27:27,090 and taking care of one another with almost anyone. So it could be a school mate, 500 00:27:27,090 --> 00:27:28,730 it can be a guy you met on the street, 501 00:27:29,470 --> 00:27:31,530 you can build guanxi with anyone in China, 502 00:27:31,870 --> 00:27:36,770 and that's very radical from a more endogamous like cousin or clan marriage 503 00:27:36,770 --> 00:27:37,270 system. 504 00:27:37,270 --> 00:27:40,810 Why do you think that's happened in East Asia, but not in North Africa, 505 00:27:40,910 --> 00:27:42,370 the Middle East, maybe South Asia? 506 00:27:42,900 --> 00:27:44,090 Right. Great question. 507 00:27:44,290 --> 00:27:48,810 I think that could be primarily due to state power and prestige. So 508 00:27:50,990 --> 00:27:52,810 certainly in the Song Dynasty, 509 00:27:52,810 --> 00:27:56,770 it was actually illegal to marry someone within seven relations, 510 00:27:57,390 --> 00:28:01,170 and that's similar to how the Catholic church in Europe banned cousin marriage, 511 00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:06,050 whereas in the Middle East, north Africa as Arab, well, 512 00:28:06,650 --> 00:28:08,850 I should be careful that we don't have genetic data. 513 00:28:08,870 --> 00:28:13,170 So I don't know precisely when the Middle East became adopted cousin marriage. 514 00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:14,393 That said, 515 00:28:15,070 --> 00:28:20,010 one hypothesis is that the Bedouin camel riding 516 00:28:20,380 --> 00:28:25,240 Arabs always idealise cousin marriage because they were lactose tolerant so 517 00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:28,050 they could ride their camels and drink lots of milk without getting sick. 518 00:28:28,350 --> 00:28:31,410 But the camel riding Bedouins were at the top of the social hierarchy. 519 00:28:31,530 --> 00:28:32,970 They've got camels, everyone thinks they're great. 520 00:28:33,110 --> 00:28:37,370 So other Arabs adopted this system because you're getting this special lactose 521 00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:38,353 tolerance. 522 00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:43,370 Then the Arab Islamic armies were incredibly successful in conquering and 523 00:28:43,370 --> 00:28:47,010 they became the ruling group. Then everyone is adopting the Arabic language, 524 00:28:47,010 --> 00:28:49,130 Arabic customs, your Arabic and Arabic patron. 525 00:28:49,470 --> 00:28:54,050 So all those regions that were once under the Umayyad caliphate, 526 00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:57,370 they now have cousin marriage. Is that the coincidence? 527 00:28:57,730 --> 00:29:02,530 I welcome a geneticist who goes back to 400 CE and tells me whether 528 00:29:02,530 --> 00:29:03,370 they've got cousin marriage. 529 00:29:03,510 --> 00:29:07,410 But I'll tell you one little exciting bit of evidence that you would like Aria. 530 00:29:07,830 --> 00:29:12,090 So we do have some genetic data from Central Asia and they find that in, 531 00:29:12,090 --> 00:29:13,930 for example in Uzbekistan, 532 00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:18,170 precisely the time that the Uzbek started settling as converse with being 533 00:29:18,750 --> 00:29:22,450 nomads, that's when they started adopting this more endogamous marriage system. 534 00:29:22,790 --> 00:29:26,690 So it's possible that as they started living in towns when they also 535 00:29:26,690 --> 00:29:29,930 simultaneously adopted a bunch of Arabic practises, they're like, oh, 536 00:29:30,090 --> 00:29:34,130 this is the cool prestigious thing to do. So I think in my analysis of history, 537 00:29:34,130 --> 00:29:37,170 what I do see is this conjunction between state power, the ruling elites, 538 00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:41,930 they use wealth and extraction to create whatever they think is prestigious, 539 00:29:42,150 --> 00:29:43,970 and when they spread you're like, oh yeah, 540 00:29:43,970 --> 00:29:44,610 you have a bit of cousin marriage and then 541 00:29:47,590 --> 00:29:49,730 it becomes culturally celebrated. If you meet someone, 542 00:29:50,110 --> 00:29:51,490 you might say your father's name, 543 00:29:51,510 --> 00:29:55,890 you might be able to recite all the people that was in that lineage or wedding 544 00:29:55,890 --> 00:29:59,050 celebrations. They'll talk about their entire lineage and they'll recite. 545 00:29:59,090 --> 00:30:00,770 I mean, they'll be tremendously proud. 546 00:30:01,110 --> 00:30:05,090 And this idea of being so proud of your clan and wanting to have that loyalty 547 00:30:05,230 --> 00:30:06,770 and rebuild up your clan, 548 00:30:07,150 --> 00:30:10,890 so you get this sort of cultural persistence through pride and children's 549 00:30:10,890 --> 00:30:11,723 socialisation and loyalty. 550 00:30:11,950 --> 00:30:16,450 So the answer might be that those regions have a strong cultural 551 00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:21,810 fashion for a cousin marriage that East Asia doesn't have in by the entire 552 00:30:21,810 --> 00:30:22,430 degree. 553 00:30:22,430 --> 00:30:25,010 Totally. If you ask a Chinese person today, they might say, oh, 554 00:30:25,010 --> 00:30:25,843 it's unlucky to marry someone with your same surname. 555 00:30:26,150 --> 00:30:26,983 Yeah. 556 00:30:28,390 --> 00:30:30,370 So these things can get a bit sticky. 557 00:30:32,170 --> 00:30:34,820 When did East Asia start to become monogamous? 558 00:30:36,430 --> 00:30:37,380 Great question. 559 00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,980 So elites all over the world have always enjoyed a bit on the side, 560 00:30:42,100 --> 00:30:46,020 a bit of sexual variety and concubines and East Asians were no exceptions, 561 00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:52,460 but around I think 1900 you'll see more modernising reform some stipulations 562 00:30:52,460 --> 00:30:55,580 against having concubine stipulations against polygamy. 563 00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:57,780 So they had concubines but not multiple wives. 564 00:30:58,590 --> 00:31:00,490 So there would've been some variation, 565 00:31:00,550 --> 00:31:04,170 but certainly concubines would be more common. But again, 566 00:31:04,170 --> 00:31:07,530 this is only an elite thing, not so common for the majority. 567 00:31:07,830 --> 00:31:10,930 And when does this begin to fade away or when does this break down? 568 00:31:11,550 --> 00:31:15,530 So over the 20th century, I think we've seen the rise globally of monogamy, 569 00:31:15,530 --> 00:31:17,290 even in the Middle East and Egypt. 570 00:31:17,310 --> 00:31:20,650 It became very uncommon over the 20th century to have multiple wives, 571 00:31:20,790 --> 00:31:23,330 and that may be partly fashion, partly finances. 572 00:31:23,750 --> 00:31:26,210 How do people treat casual sex in East Asia? 573 00:31:26,230 --> 00:31:29,810 So it seems that the average marriage age is about 30, 574 00:31:29,950 --> 00:31:33,130 but from the polling I've seen at the average age of losing your virginity is 575 00:31:33,130 --> 00:31:36,450 like 20 or so. So clearly it's happening somewhat, 576 00:31:36,510 --> 00:31:39,170 but they seem like a much more prudish culture. 577 00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:44,170 Certainly there's always been this very strong ideal of female 578 00:31:44,330 --> 00:31:47,050 chastity in particular. I mean, if we go back to Confucian literature, 579 00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:49,130 it's certainly elevated. I mean, 580 00:31:49,130 --> 00:31:53,010 there are even these stories of exemplary women from the Tang Dynasty, 581 00:31:53,070 --> 00:31:56,890 and there'll be stories about women who threw themselves off a cliff rather than 582 00:31:56,890 --> 00:32:00,290 be raped, the woman who cuts off her nose. So a man does not assault her. 583 00:32:00,630 --> 00:32:01,770 The greatest thing in the world, 584 00:32:01,790 --> 00:32:04,810 the greatest woman in the world is one who preserves her chastity. 585 00:32:04,950 --> 00:32:08,570 So you are elevating it in status and you're saying it's very, 586 00:32:08,570 --> 00:32:10,930 very bad because if you've got a patrilineal system, 587 00:32:10,950 --> 00:32:14,730 you want to retain everything within the male line. And so in marriage markets, 588 00:32:14,910 --> 00:32:17,770 you would seek women who are signalling their chastity. 589 00:32:18,030 --> 00:32:20,010 Fun story in South Korea, 590 00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:24,450 they even had this little game of like a seesaw where women would jump on their 591 00:32:24,510 --> 00:32:29,130 seesaw so they could see over the wall to their house because that's how 592 00:32:29,130 --> 00:32:32,890 secluded some of the Samurai elites were. That's how much they valued seclusion. 593 00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:36,250 Some of those samurai elites even practise a form of veiling. 594 00:32:36,870 --> 00:32:41,530 What's married life like in an East Asian culture like South Korea 595 00:32:41,910 --> 00:32:45,050 for both men and women compared to single life, 596 00:32:45,310 --> 00:32:48,090 if they're not at the bottom of the social pecking order, let's say. 597 00:32:48,500 --> 00:32:53,090 Right? So if we look at nationally representative data, 598 00:32:53,090 --> 00:32:56,970 certainly we might see a big gender gap in terms of share of care, 599 00:32:56,970 --> 00:33:00,490 work like cooking, cleaning, women doing much more. Also, 600 00:33:00,510 --> 00:33:04,570 we might see a sense of women working at high rates, 601 00:33:04,590 --> 00:33:08,450 but often earning less. So you're likely to see a woman on a lower status, 602 00:33:08,540 --> 00:33:09,810 lower rung job in career. 603 00:33:09,810 --> 00:33:13,130 She'll be set for the non managerial track and doing a larger share of care 604 00:33:13,130 --> 00:33:13,670 work. 605 00:33:13,670 --> 00:33:18,290 And I think a really crucial part of East Asian culture is even though 606 00:33:18,290 --> 00:33:22,050 they've increasingly celebrated this idea of female independence and freedom and 607 00:33:22,050 --> 00:33:22,883 careers, 608 00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:28,330 that their ideas of romantic love and emotional compatibility and 609 00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,210 deep devotion to each other are still much weaker. 610 00:33:31,310 --> 00:33:35,730 So Western Europe has had these very strong ideas of romantic love for maybe 611 00:33:35,730 --> 00:33:39,690 250+ years. And if a man does not love his wife, 612 00:33:39,710 --> 00:33:41,810 if he's not devoted to making her happier, 613 00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:46,010 then maybe he doesn't have that sense of empathy that she's at home doing the 614 00:33:46,010 --> 00:33:49,130 washing up while he's out partying with his mates, drinking, 615 00:33:49,190 --> 00:33:52,490 and then he comes back drunk and has expects her to deal with it. So I think 616 00:33:52,770 --> 00:33:55,450 that expectation in terms of a sense of duty, 617 00:33:55,770 --> 00:33:59,130 I do my duty and that's her responsibility is slightly different. 618 00:33:59,310 --> 00:34:01,770 And that sense of a lack ... 619 00:34:01,770 --> 00:34:06,570 of limited care and compassion may actually discourage some people from going 620 00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:07,513 into marriage. 621 00:34:07,550 --> 00:34:10,360 If you don't think you're going to be loved and treated and revered as any that. 622 00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:12,410 That's said, of course there's huge heterogeneity. 623 00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:16,410 I've interviewed Chinese woman, this one young woman. She said, my husband, 624 00:34:16,860 --> 00:34:18,250 he cares about my dreams. 625 00:34:18,510 --> 00:34:21,840 And he was willing to move cities so that she could pursue the job that she 626 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:25,840 wanted. And romantic love is such an important and underrated example, 627 00:34:26,210 --> 00:34:29,490 a driver of gender equality because a man who wants his wife to be happy, 628 00:34:29,670 --> 00:34:33,730 he wants to support all her ambitions, it really makes a huge difference. 629 00:34:33,730 --> 00:34:38,010 Something that's noteworthy to me is that East Asian women in America 630 00:34:38,550 --> 00:34:42,360 are three times more likely to marry a white person than they are another East 631 00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:44,410 Asian. Why? 632 00:34:45,230 --> 00:34:49,840 So my suspicion though I haven't done research on interracial relations in the 633 00:34:49,860 --> 00:34:54,490 US would be that if white American score is much more gender equaled and 634 00:34:55,590 --> 00:34:58,290 with more ideas of romantic love and share and compassion, 635 00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,470 then women will get a better deal out of marrying a white man. 636 00:35:03,210 --> 00:35:04,820 That'd be my instinct as well. I guess. 637 00:35:05,050 --> 00:35:08,430 Does that mean that you're familiar with the concept of, by. 638 00:35:08,430 --> 00:35:09,070 The way, 639 00:35:09,070 --> 00:35:12,150 I should say the reverse could also be true that if men want patriarchy, 640 00:35:12,150 --> 00:35:16,150 then you might get it more for marry and East Asia? So it goes both ways, right? 641 00:35:16,150 --> 00:35:18,550 Yeah. There are happy and sad reasons for it to be happening, I guess. 642 00:35:19,570 --> 00:35:24,230 So one hypothesis I've heard about East Asia's general problem with declining 643 00:35:24,230 --> 00:35:29,030 birth rates, and I'd love you to grade this hypothesis, 644 00:35:29,530 --> 00:35:34,470 is that over time the status and wellbeing of women outside of marriage 645 00:35:34,530 --> 00:35:37,530 has risen. They are more likely to be able to get good jobs. 646 00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,250 They're socially more celebrated. They basically, 647 00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:44,800 it's a much better thing now for a woman to be single than it was 50 years ago 648 00:35:44,950 --> 00:35:47,490 in a lot of East Asian countries, whereas relatively, 649 00:35:47,710 --> 00:35:51,690 the status and wellbeing of women in marriage has not risen at the same rate. 650 00:35:51,860 --> 00:35:55,360 So the trade-off is much larger than it used to be. So women are much, 651 00:35:55,530 --> 00:35:59,650 much more reluctant to give that up and go into a marriage where in some cases, 652 00:35:59,790 --> 00:36:01,930 as the way you've described it, they're kind of almost slaves. 653 00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:05,250 They're toiling away doing housework, they're not getting any support. 654 00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,970 They maybe have to give up their jobs naturally. 655 00:36:08,340 --> 00:36:09,650 Who on earth would want to make that, 656 00:36:09,650 --> 00:36:11,410 especially if there's no romantic love involved, 657 00:36:11,590 --> 00:36:16,010 who on earth would want to make that sacrifice? They defer marriage, 658 00:36:16,090 --> 00:36:19,410 maybe they don't marry at all. And the natural consequence of that, 659 00:36:19,410 --> 00:36:23,840 because very few people have children outside of marriage in those cultures is 660 00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:28,090 you just get far fewer children. How accurate is that story, first of all, 661 00:36:28,150 --> 00:36:29,610 and how compelling do you think that is? 662 00:36:29,790 --> 00:36:32,890 How complete is that as a story about declining birth rates? 663 00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,450 Firstly, I totally agree with this idea of thinking about trade-offs, right? 664 00:36:36,450 --> 00:36:37,110 What are my options? 665 00:36:37,110 --> 00:36:41,290 So 50 years ago there was massive stigma of being left on the shelf as a 666 00:36:41,290 --> 00:36:41,800 spinster, right? 667 00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:46,650 Even the CCP used to demonise and vilify these women 10 years ago as 668 00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,210 leftover women because it was really trying to disparage them. 669 00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:53,010 This is a great example of how state power can be used to change the procedure 670 00:36:53,010 --> 00:36:55,650 of something. And that's clearly changing on Little Red Book. 671 00:36:55,740 --> 00:36:59,970 Women celebrate and glamorise this sort of single life of doing independent 672 00:36:59,970 --> 00:37:03,890 thing and having enjoying their freedom. So a hundred percent, I'm with you. 673 00:37:04,190 --> 00:37:08,890 I'd also add that entertainment now increases the desirability of having fun by 674 00:37:09,090 --> 00:37:13,800 yourself. My only resistance would be not to say that married women are slaves. 675 00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:15,320 I think that would be going too far. Right. 676 00:37:15,340 --> 00:37:18,840 So it's a more gender unequal marriage though. Not at that level. Yeah. 677 00:37:18,910 --> 00:37:21,970 So I broadly agree with that freedom, that framework. Totally. 678 00:37:22,340 --> 00:37:25,450 And in terms of ... as a share of explaining the ... 679 00:37:26,150 --> 00:37:30,490 at least East Asia, the level effect of East Asia, 680 00:37:31,070 --> 00:37:33,840 they have very similar problems in some ways to the western world, 681 00:37:34,150 --> 00:37:38,890 but obviously South Korea has a much worse birth rate problem than most western 682 00:37:39,250 --> 00:37:39,510 countries. 683 00:37:39,510 --> 00:37:40,030 Yes. 684 00:37:40,030 --> 00:37:43,250 As a share of explaining that gap, do you think it's sufficient? 685 00:37:43,270 --> 00:37:44,840 Do you think it's a big part of the story? 686 00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:49,450 Oh Totally. There's a wonderful paper, Jisu Wang, who is genius. 687 00:37:49,910 --> 00:37:53,530 She shows that as South Korea has seen a rise in unmarried women, 688 00:37:53,630 --> 00:37:56,050 it very closely tracks their decline in fertility. 689 00:37:56,430 --> 00:38:01,010 So a lot of the difference is a rise in singles. In fact, 690 00:38:01,010 --> 00:38:04,770 it was reading Jiweon Jun's paper. I read her paper, 691 00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:09,490 I did all my interviews in Hong Kong and Korea, and I was like, wait a minute, 692 00:38:09,700 --> 00:38:11,090 matey, this thing is global. 693 00:38:11,510 --> 00:38:14,250 And it was by looking to study in East Asia that I came up. 694 00:38:14,250 --> 00:38:16,770 Then I started putting all the dots together. I'm like, wait, 695 00:38:17,250 --> 00:38:19,890 marriage is declining in Turkey and Iran and the us. I was like. 696 00:38:20,670 --> 00:38:21,690 So talk about this a bit more. 697 00:38:21,950 --> 00:38:23,050 Oh, right, yes. So 698 00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:28,130 everyone is talking about why is fertility plummeting all over the world in the 699 00:38:28,130 --> 00:38:29,010 past 15 years, 700 00:38:29,230 --> 00:38:34,050 and many people on the left will blame house prices, cost of living, 701 00:38:34,110 --> 00:38:36,130 and all those things are true, right? 702 00:38:36,190 --> 00:38:39,610 As we all migrate to primary productive cities, housing's very expensive. 703 00:38:39,610 --> 00:38:41,610 That's a problem that policymakers should address. 704 00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:47,020 But is it the primary reason why people aren't having kids 705 00:38:47,820 --> 00:38:51,570 there? I'm sceptical because people have always done things that cross money. 706 00:38:51,570 --> 00:38:53,500 It really just depends on their priorities. 707 00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:56,460 And then when I looked into the data more, 708 00:38:57,140 --> 00:39:01,340 I found that it's not just about people remaining as couples and not having 709 00:39:01,610 --> 00:39:02,320 children. 710 00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:07,260 It's primarily about that marriage rates are just dropping pretty much all over 711 00:39:07,260 --> 00:39:09,780 the world, with the exception of say, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, 712 00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:12,820 and it's this rise in the us. 713 00:39:13,550 --> 00:39:16,660 55% of people under 35 are still unmarried, 714 00:39:16,660 --> 00:39:20,340 uncoupled. And this is happening across Latin America. The rise ... 715 00:39:20,340 --> 00:39:22,860 I was in this year, I was doing a month's field work in Brazil, 716 00:39:22,860 --> 00:39:25,980 then I was over in Costa Rica two years ago. I did a month in Mexico. 717 00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:30,220 It's happening all over the world that many people are staying single. 718 00:39:30,220 --> 00:39:33,460 So people are putting the cart before the horse when they're talking about baby 719 00:39:33,490 --> 00:39:35,820 bonuses. So let's look at Sweden, 720 00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,660 fantastically glorious social democracy, 721 00:39:38,930 --> 00:39:41,820 wonderful supports for working mothers and nurseries, 722 00:39:42,240 --> 00:39:45,420 but 60% of Swedish households are single adults. 723 00:39:45,420 --> 00:39:47,860 You're not going to get many babies if people live by themselves. 724 00:39:48,860 --> 00:39:53,820 I will disagree on the baby bonuses point to some extent for two reasons. One, 725 00:39:53,820 --> 00:39:57,980 there's not very much opportunity costs between that kind of policy and let's 726 00:39:57,980 --> 00:39:58,980 say a coupling policy. 727 00:39:59,110 --> 00:40:03,140 Maybe there is if we have a fixed amount of spending and we could spend it on 728 00:40:03,140 --> 00:40:07,820 getting married, we could give marriage tax breaks or things like that. But two, 729 00:40:08,340 --> 00:40:12,050 I think actually the best way of spending money personally is on marginal 730 00:40:12,050 --> 00:40:12,883 babies. 731 00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:17,460 And I would not spend money on giving people money for their first baby. 732 00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:19,940 And my interest here is I have one baby, so 733 00:40:22,300 --> 00:40:23,940 I would be the beneficiary of that. 734 00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:29,540 But I think it's looking at where are people most likely to have an extra 735 00:40:29,540 --> 00:40:31,500 baby but not having an extra baby. 736 00:40:32,530 --> 00:40:35,820 That way you can take a given amount of money and concentrate on a much smaller 737 00:40:35,820 --> 00:40:39,340 number of babies. Because the big problem is for any baby bonus, 738 00:40:39,390 --> 00:40:42,540 we're spending a lot of money on existing babies who will be born anyway. 739 00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,820 And what we care about is babies who will not be born if we don't. 740 00:40:45,970 --> 00:40:46,720 Totally ... totally. 741 00:40:46,720 --> 00:40:48,090 So effectively, 742 00:40:48,090 --> 00:40:52,900 where is the most elastic baby to use a very strange bit of terminology 743 00:40:53,210 --> 00:40:56,260 . Yeah, they're very elastic, very rubbery. 744 00:40:57,700 --> 00:41:00,900 I think that is third or fourth babies. So I think that probably what, 745 00:41:01,110 --> 00:41:05,780 and luckily, or maybe unluckily third or fourth babies account for a tiny share, 746 00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:10,090 like one sixth or one tenth of total babies. 747 00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:15,260 So we can give six times more for just rewarding the third baby you have, 748 00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:19,860 or ten times more for just rewarding the fourth baby you have than if we were 749 00:41:19,860 --> 00:41:24,300 giving you money for the first baby you have. That's basically it. 750 00:41:24,540 --> 00:41:26,660 I just want to make a defence of baby bonuses. 751 00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:29,020 Let me clarify. I apologise. 752 00:41:30,590 --> 00:41:35,410 My resistance to the baby bonus is only the status quo 753 00:41:35,410 --> 00:41:36,243 current amount. 754 00:41:36,630 --> 00:41:41,360 All I'm saying is a descriptive claim that currently the amount of money offered 755 00:41:41,720 --> 00:41:44,840 doesn't seem sufficient to increase Finland's. 756 00:41:45,020 --> 00:41:47,450 China just this year has announced that they're going to give the equivalent to 757 00:41:47,450 --> 00:41:49,800 like £500 per couple, per baby per year. 758 00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:54,730 That's not enough. So I'm sure macro economists can work out what 759 00:41:54,730 --> 00:41:58,650 is the best way to increase, and I think economists would ... 760 00:41:58,820 --> 00:42:03,490 We can think about babies as a positive externality that parents hugely invest 761 00:42:03,490 --> 00:42:06,290 in the child's care and education, and in return, 762 00:42:06,290 --> 00:42:10,800 we give this future future worker that the rest gives the rest of us pensions 763 00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:13,890 and that's great. And so we should work out as economists, 764 00:42:13,910 --> 00:42:16,930 how do you internalise this externality? How do you incentivize parents? 765 00:42:17,300 --> 00:42:21,530 And then this could feed into marriages because if there is a greater economic 766 00:42:21,530 --> 00:42:22,570 incentive to have babies, 767 00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:27,170 then you might be more likely to want to couple up. So the only way to 768 00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:32,840 potentially rethink your ideas, if we see male loneliness as a problem, 769 00:42:32,990 --> 00:42:34,650 you might want to motivate marriage, 770 00:42:34,910 --> 00:42:37,650 and you might not do that by motivating the fourth baby. 771 00:42:37,670 --> 00:42:40,210 You might also want to give people a reason to get married in the first place. 772 00:42:40,340 --> 00:42:41,800 So there could be different things to think about. 773 00:42:42,070 --> 00:42:43,890 And I leave that to the macro economists to work out. 774 00:42:44,490 --> 00:42:47,170 I also mean, sorry, we're now getting onto what I love talking about, 775 00:42:47,170 --> 00:42:48,050 which is tax. But 776 00:42:49,720 --> 00:42:54,320 another thing you can do is joint filing, right? Is to basically allow, 777 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,380 most married couples treat their income as a single pot. 778 00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,660 Most married couples probably do keep some separate income, 779 00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:06,780 but they mostly pay the same mortgage. They pool their income when they need to. 780 00:43:06,780 --> 00:43:08,380 They maybe pool their income permanently. 781 00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:13,420 So it's very economically irrational to not treat them as a single economic 782 00:43:13,420 --> 00:43:15,820 unit. It's very economically irrational, for example, 783 00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:20,820 to say the man has a personal allowance of this much and 784 00:43:20,900 --> 00:43:22,420 a standard allowance of this much. 785 00:43:23,360 --> 00:43:26,220 You as a woman have this much and this much because they're not acting in that 786 00:43:26,220 --> 00:43:28,540 way and they're not making any economic decisions in that way. 787 00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:31,570 And then when they make decisions about who should work and how long they should 788 00:43:31,570 --> 00:43:32,090 work for, 789 00:43:32,090 --> 00:43:35,500 they're not thinking in terms of themselves as individuals. They're thinking in 790 00:43:35,500 --> 00:43:38,300 terms of a single economic unit, the sort of tax system. 791 00:43:38,550 --> 00:43:42,780 If you wanted to be more in line with the way people actually act and the way 792 00:43:42,780 --> 00:43:46,140 people actually think about their finances when they're in a married couple, 793 00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:50,740 and this is actually I think a really significant reason that marriage should be 794 00:43:50,740 --> 00:43:54,860 the way you do this and not long-term unmarried relationships. 795 00:43:55,140 --> 00:43:57,460 They often don't pool their resources. 796 00:43:57,460 --> 00:43:59,420 Marriage is often the trigger because marriage is legally, 797 00:43:59,730 --> 00:44:02,610 basically legally you do pool your money when you're married, 798 00:44:03,660 --> 00:44:08,460 allowing joint filing and allowing for single pooled tax allowances, 799 00:44:08,460 --> 00:44:12,020 single pooled benefits and things like that would be a, 800 00:44:12,300 --> 00:44:13,660 I think economically efficient. 801 00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,060 It wouldn't be a subsidy in the sense I consider a subsidy. 802 00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:20,980 It wouldn't be about bribing people to do anything or rewarding people for doing 803 00:44:21,180 --> 00:44:21,520 anything. 804 00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:26,500 It would be about removing what is currently an irrationality in the tax system 805 00:44:26,730 --> 00:44:27,820 that basically says, 806 00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:32,210 do this thing that you would never do normally if you were able to just ignore 807 00:44:32,210 --> 00:44:35,970 the tax system. So allowing joint filing would be, I think a really, 808 00:44:35,970 --> 00:44:39,090 really significant way of going with the grain. It wouldn't be distorted, 809 00:44:39,090 --> 00:44:41,610 it wouldn't be a big subsidy. It probably would cost a bit, 810 00:44:41,610 --> 00:44:42,770 but it wouldn't cost that much, 811 00:44:43,190 --> 00:44:47,730 and it would recognise the way people act in marriage with their finances. 812 00:44:47,990 --> 00:44:52,490 So I think... I know what you're going to say. 813 00:44:53,290 --> 00:44:54,450 Swedish 1970s tax reform. 814 00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:57,210 Okay, great. We'll get onto their ... 815 00:44:57,210 --> 00:45:01,770 we can get onto their transaction tax after this. There's so much. 816 00:45:01,770 --> 00:45:04,050 Swedish tax hist history is surprisingly interesting. 817 00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:05,840 They did a wealth tax that they got rid of. 818 00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:07,930 They did a transaction tax that they got rid of. 819 00:45:08,390 --> 00:45:11,890 So this book that I would really recommend is the Swedish Theory of Love, 820 00:45:12,340 --> 00:45:16,330 and it's basically about the cultural evolution of Swedish values. 821 00:45:16,430 --> 00:45:20,770 And one of their arguments is that Swedes have this strong culture of priding 822 00:45:20,770 --> 00:45:24,690 independence. And as the social Democrats did in it over the 20th century, 823 00:45:24,710 --> 00:45:28,730 was a state enabled independence. And in the 1970s, 824 00:45:29,010 --> 00:45:32,490 feminists really pushed for individual taxation and they said this is very, 825 00:45:32,490 --> 00:45:35,570 very important that each person should be in control of their own income in 826 00:45:35,570 --> 00:45:35,890 charge of it. 827 00:45:35,890 --> 00:45:39,570 So I just want to push back and say there is a huge amount of cultural variation 828 00:45:39,590 --> 00:45:42,770 and the way that we understand our incomes even after marriage could vary 829 00:45:43,050 --> 00:45:44,210 globally. So that's just ... 830 00:45:44,210 --> 00:45:46,690 Yeah, I'm talking about the UK and the US. 831 00:45:47,730 --> 00:45:49,170 I don't know how it is in other countries. 832 00:45:49,240 --> 00:45:50,930 It's a bit more extreme. Actually. In Britain, 833 00:45:50,990 --> 00:45:54,810 we have two stages where you are penalised for getting into a stronger 834 00:45:54,810 --> 00:45:57,170 relationship. So if you're receiving any kind of benefit, 835 00:45:57,340 --> 00:45:58,490 if you move in with your partner, 836 00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,250 that means that your benefits will be assessed totally and they'll probably be 837 00:46:02,540 --> 00:46:03,310 taken back. 838 00:46:03,310 --> 00:46:07,360 So that's probably one way in which some people are stopped from getting into 839 00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:09,010 relationships with each other. And then. 840 00:46:09,490 --> 00:46:11,090 Although I think that is how it should be. 841 00:46:11,670 --> 00:46:13,570 So my argument is that once you move in with somebody, 842 00:46:13,590 --> 00:46:15,930 you are in fact a single economic unit. But keep going. 843 00:46:15,930 --> 00:46:18,490 Yeah, that's fair. I guess. Yes, we do do that. 844 00:46:18,490 --> 00:46:22,090 And the other case we do that is also the same problem where at the upper end of 845 00:46:22,090 --> 00:46:26,170 the income distribution, if you are two property owning people who get married, 846 00:46:26,550 --> 00:46:31,530 you then have to pay capital gains tax on one of your homes if you sell them. 847 00:46:31,530 --> 00:46:34,290 So I've got one friend who's getting penalised for this. He owned a flat, 848 00:46:34,390 --> 00:46:36,170 his wife owned a flat, they moved in together, 849 00:46:36,170 --> 00:46:38,890 and now he has to pay capital gains tax on his original flat. 850 00:46:39,510 --> 00:46:40,130 So in fact, 851 00:46:40,130 --> 00:46:43,840 you're completely right about this benefits point certainly in Britain, 852 00:46:44,030 --> 00:46:46,930 and I think the US does have some joint filing. 853 00:46:47,390 --> 00:46:48,840 It doesn't have full joint filing. 854 00:46:49,190 --> 00:46:51,610 My understanding is this is actually much more extreme in the US, 855 00:46:51,610 --> 00:46:54,840 but it's harder to tell a coherent story because they've got so much variation 856 00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:55,673 state by state. 857 00:46:55,750 --> 00:46:59,810 But you can have very severe penalties for moving in or marrying someone. 858 00:47:00,270 --> 00:47:00,910 So in Britain, 859 00:47:00,910 --> 00:47:05,010 we treat benefits on a household basis including things like childcare 860 00:47:05,010 --> 00:47:06,570 subsidies. So for example, 861 00:47:06,790 --> 00:47:11,650 if you are an unmarried woman with a child and you move in with 862 00:47:12,270 --> 00:47:15,840 the father of your child, your collective income, 863 00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:17,810 or in this case, 864 00:47:18,670 --> 00:47:22,730 if one of you earns over let's say £100,000, your childcare subsidies go away, 865 00:47:22,950 --> 00:47:27,930 all of the childcare benefits we calculate on the basis of you or your live-in 866 00:47:27,930 --> 00:47:30,610 partner, we don't do anything like that for tax. 867 00:47:30,860 --> 00:47:33,770 So all the money we give to people we calculate on a household basis, 868 00:47:34,130 --> 00:47:35,650 I think that's correct. I think that's rational. 869 00:47:35,890 --> 00:47:38,530 I think that actually reflects how people are and act. 870 00:47:39,250 --> 00:47:43,250 Although I disagree with some of the specific applications that I've mentioned, 871 00:47:43,990 --> 00:47:47,570 the facts that we don't do that for taking money away. I mean, 872 00:47:47,590 --> 00:47:51,170 it's really just a revenue raising thing, right? There's no rationale for that. 873 00:47:51,170 --> 00:47:52,890 There's no economic rationale for that at all. 874 00:47:53,540 --> 00:47:58,160 So I think there's an interesting question about how big a financial incentive 875 00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:01,880 would need to be in order to motivate marriage and fertility. 876 00:48:02,420 --> 00:48:05,360 And I think it's important to go back to your previous framework, Sam, 877 00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:07,800 of these trade-offs, right? What are people's options today? 878 00:48:08,300 --> 00:48:13,000 And clearly many women are willing to take a pretty mighty 879 00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:17,880 economic hit if you just move in together, you're saving on rent or mortgage. 880 00:48:18,460 --> 00:48:21,040 So people are already willing to take a huge, 881 00:48:21,430 --> 00:48:24,680 huge hit to their incomes in order just to stay single. 882 00:48:25,810 --> 00:48:28,110 So whatever your tax incentive would need to be, 883 00:48:28,210 --> 00:48:32,470 it would need to grapple with that reality that people are so 884 00:48:32,540 --> 00:48:36,390 entertained, amused that they're willing to go with it alone. 885 00:48:36,730 --> 00:48:41,190 I'm interested in what the potential cultural counter 886 00:48:41,190 --> 00:48:43,190 currents to what we're talking about are. 887 00:48:43,950 --> 00:48:48,270 I think that there is a very, very, Scott Alexander has written about this, 888 00:48:48,290 --> 00:48:50,590 others have written about this. There is a very, 889 00:48:50,590 --> 00:48:55,190 very persistent trend where whatever becomes fashionable among 890 00:48:56,090 --> 00:49:00,550 middle classes becomes unfashionable among the most high status people. 891 00:49:00,900 --> 00:49:04,910 They want to show that they're not middle classes economically, 892 00:49:04,910 --> 00:49:09,430 but people I call upper normies people who like Radiohead and people who go to 893 00:49:09,430 --> 00:49:10,790 small plates, restaurants and things like that. 894 00:49:11,530 --> 00:49:14,390 If you are more sophisticated socially than those people, 895 00:49:14,660 --> 00:49:18,510 then you want to show that you're not like them. Right now what we have is among 896 00:49:18,510 --> 00:49:21,340 that kind of the lump end elite right now, 897 00:49:21,340 --> 00:49:25,150 among people who have superficially sophisticated views, 898 00:49:25,150 --> 00:49:28,860 but actually not sophisticated views like Radiohead is the sort of pinnacle 899 00:49:28,860 --> 00:49:33,590 there. Or maybe they think like Drake or Kendrick Lamar, 900 00:49:34,020 --> 00:49:35,990 they think Kendrick Lamar is really, really cool or something like that. 901 00:49:36,490 --> 00:49:39,630 The people who are more sophisticated than them who want to show off that 902 00:49:39,630 --> 00:49:43,150 they're different to them will want something. So right now, among that group, 903 00:49:43,490 --> 00:49:46,150 not having children is very, very, very popular. Right now, 904 00:49:46,700 --> 00:49:50,630 your average university graduate is going to have children very late if they 905 00:49:50,630 --> 00:49:53,230 live in a big city, if they're culturally conscious, 906 00:49:53,230 --> 00:49:56,990 they're going to have children late. The people who are above them, 907 00:49:56,990 --> 00:50:00,830 the people who are genuinely cutting edge and genuinely trying to show off that 908 00:50:00,830 --> 00:50:05,390 they're really, really sophisticated now, I think have some kind of desire. 909 00:50:05,390 --> 00:50:07,310 And I actually do perceive this to be happening, 910 00:50:07,610 --> 00:50:10,830 to show off that they will have loads of children and to show off that they are 911 00:50:10,910 --> 00:50:12,430 a very pro-family and that they have big families. 912 00:50:12,530 --> 00:50:17,390 And I perceive the kind of nascent green shoots of it is becoming high 913 00:50:17,390 --> 00:50:19,190 status now to have a big family. 914 00:50:19,330 --> 00:50:22,310 And if you're rich and if you're culturally elite and culturally sophisticated, 915 00:50:24,030 --> 00:50:27,330 and I wonder if that might be something that is a countervailing trend to 916 00:50:27,330 --> 00:50:28,163 everything we're talking about. 917 00:50:28,490 --> 00:50:29,200 I would push back, 918 00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:32,610 name me one Hollywood film that features a family in the past 10 years, 919 00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:33,730 past five years. 920 00:50:33,730 --> 00:50:35,570 Hollywood is downstream of what I'm talking about. 921 00:50:36,270 --> 00:50:39,650 But in terms of what we culturally celebrate, what we give proceed, 922 00:50:39,650 --> 00:50:44,530 where do we see families being celebrated? I can't. 923 00:50:44,690 --> 00:50:48,650 I see a lot of mommy blogger type content on TikTok. 924 00:50:48,890 --> 00:50:53,650 I think you see a lot of, I don't think this is particularly culturally elite, 925 00:50:53,650 --> 00:50:56,090 but there are subcultures, 926 00:50:56,090 --> 00:50:58,410 there's the whole kind of weird trad-wifey type stuff. 927 00:50:58,610 --> 00:51:01,010 I don't want to say that's weird. There's the whole trad-wifey stuff. 928 00:51:01,270 --> 00:51:05,530 So there are some very charismatic people who make bread. I totally agree. 929 00:51:05,790 --> 00:51:08,930 But that hasn't led to any, 930 00:51:09,790 --> 00:51:13,010 no labour market data seems to be suggesting that's actually a trend. 931 00:51:14,550 --> 00:51:16,450 You couldn't find anything in the world. 932 00:51:17,010 --> 00:51:19,890 There'll be a couple of people who are very charismatic at doing it, 933 00:51:19,890 --> 00:51:22,730 whether it's dancing with orangutans or whatever. 934 00:51:23,310 --> 00:51:25,250 But as a social scientist, 935 00:51:25,330 --> 00:51:28,330 I want to look at the data and see if there's any evidence of it. 936 00:51:28,860 --> 00:51:31,450 And that doesn't seem to be catching on. 937 00:51:31,470 --> 00:51:35,890 Now if large families become more popular, no, 938 00:51:36,030 --> 00:51:36,890 that's all for the good. 939 00:51:37,070 --> 00:51:40,530 But I think that the question is going back to this framing of 940 00:51:41,770 --> 00:51:45,080 trade-offs. Now, in a world where women have reproductive freedoms, 941 00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:46,480 which we all strongly support, 942 00:51:48,820 --> 00:51:52,640 how can you make it for men and women that that's a more desirable, attainable, 943 00:51:52,930 --> 00:51:55,040 ideal compared to the alternatives? 944 00:51:55,220 --> 00:51:59,000 And so there macro economists need to work out what are the right economic 945 00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:01,560 incentives. And this could be through the tax system. 946 00:52:01,610 --> 00:52:05,560 So some countries are experimenting with ideas that give people a tax rebate for 947 00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:08,680 having more children because then that's one way of ensuring that you're 948 00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:12,000 motivated to earn money, not keep a secluded housewife, 949 00:52:13,420 --> 00:52:14,320 and also have more children. 950 00:52:14,420 --> 00:52:17,320 And how can you make sure that schools are much more family friendly? 951 00:52:17,590 --> 00:52:21,320 I do work in Brazil, in Indonesia and Malaysia, 952 00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:23,800 and all these people are suffering from the fertility crisis, 953 00:52:23,900 --> 00:52:27,320 but their schools are running from eight till one, 954 00:52:27,810 --> 00:52:30,720 which no woman in the world is going to say, yeah, sure, 955 00:52:31,110 --> 00:52:34,400 I'll have the afternoon of having to manage my kid because then I can't get a 956 00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:38,320 job. I can't do fun things. I can't have a pathway to status. 957 00:52:38,940 --> 00:52:43,200 So we just need to make that our entire society is much more family friendly. 958 00:52:43,740 --> 00:52:48,110 If it's true that the job child trade off is important, do we see 959 00:52:49,640 --> 00:52:52,000 maternity leave and flexible working? 960 00:52:52,460 --> 00:52:55,480 Do we see any of those policies having any effect on child rearing? 961 00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:59,590 I just want to go back to one more thing before I move into the maternity leave. 962 00:52:59,920 --> 00:53:04,040 I was in Indonesia for a month and I did this one interview with this woman, 963 00:53:04,380 --> 00:53:06,280 and I'm always, 964 00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:12,280 I start my interviews with very innocuous questions and she tells me that she's 965 00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:16,000 married. And I say, oh, do you have children? And she says, yes, 966 00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:20,740 I have two children. And immediately started crying and I was like, oh, 967 00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:21,760 I'm so sorry. 968 00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:26,570 And I tried to console her and she just really shared this very strong sense 969 00:53:26,570 --> 00:53:29,290 of fomo. And she was like, on social media, 970 00:53:29,530 --> 00:53:34,210 I see all my friends who are doing much more exciting things and I'm just stuck 971 00:53:34,210 --> 00:53:39,090 at home with these kids and it's so boring and tedious and I have no life 972 00:53:39,270 --> 00:53:43,570 and I have no friends. And one kid was like two, another was five. 973 00:53:43,630 --> 00:53:46,930 And in Indonesia they only really start school at age seven, 974 00:53:47,270 --> 00:53:51,610 and even then it's only the morning and she just felt that her entire life is 975 00:53:51,610 --> 00:53:52,690 now just drudgery. 976 00:53:52,710 --> 00:53:57,050 So Betty Friedan famously wrote about this in the 1960s saying the problem that 977 00:53:57,050 --> 00:53:57,490 has no name, 978 00:53:57,490 --> 00:54:02,490 that all these baby boomer mothers were trapped in drudgery and 979 00:54:02,490 --> 00:54:05,250 they were being schooled into thinking this is fulfilment and glory, 980 00:54:05,270 --> 00:54:10,090 but actually it was mind blowingly boring And she herself is having this sort of 981 00:54:10,090 --> 00:54:14,250 Betty freedom moment that it's just grim. It's just totally grim. 982 00:54:14,250 --> 00:54:17,770 When you see on social media that people are posting their pictures and they're 983 00:54:18,010 --> 00:54:21,570 adventuring and they go into the city and they're being glamorous and she just 984 00:54:21,570 --> 00:54:25,130 feels like an unglamorous loser supported by a husband that doesn't really care. 985 00:54:26,110 --> 00:54:31,050 So I feel that we need to empathise with men and 986 00:54:31,050 --> 00:54:31,790 women's perspective. 987 00:54:31,790 --> 00:54:36,610 And here I think we should be very careful to recognise that it's also men who 988 00:54:36,610 --> 00:54:40,570 are stepping back from marriage and family. And so often the discussion is, oh, 989 00:54:40,590 --> 00:54:41,730 why aren't women having more babies? 990 00:54:41,830 --> 00:54:45,210 That's always the complaint from the far right. And I'm like, wait a minute, 991 00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:50,010 mate. When I do my interviews in Brazil, in Latin America, 992 00:54:50,070 --> 00:54:52,970 and even in the US, there are lots of, if you look at Pew survey data, 993 00:54:53,590 --> 00:54:56,650 half of us singles saying, I can't really be bothered to date. 994 00:54:56,950 --> 00:55:00,250 And lots of Latin American guys don't want the responsibility of the family. 995 00:55:00,590 --> 00:55:04,450 If you think of it, marriage is a big responsibility for men. 996 00:55:04,450 --> 00:55:07,210 The idea that they're supposed to hand over their income and get all these kids 997 00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:09,610 when now they too have these trade-offs. 998 00:55:09,860 --> 00:55:12,330 Men too have these alternative ways of spending your time. 999 00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:13,690 Call of duty is pretty fun. 1000 00:55:14,470 --> 00:55:17,450 So you've got all these fun things you should be doing with your time. 1001 00:55:18,090 --> 00:55:20,970 And also, of course, men don't have the biological clock, 1002 00:55:21,710 --> 00:55:25,530 so they have much less pressure to have children young. 1003 00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:28,730 They have much less pressure to couple up with women their own age. 1004 00:55:28,950 --> 00:55:30,890 So there's much, much, much more freedom. 1005 00:55:31,110 --> 00:55:33,050 And the downside risk for men is much lower. 1006 00:55:33,050 --> 00:55:36,130 They can leave it until they're fourty and then change their mind and say they 1007 00:55:36,130 --> 00:55:39,050 do want to have kids, which women find it much, much more difficult to do. 1008 00:55:39,310 --> 00:55:42,090 And there's also a collective element, and I think this is really important. 1009 00:55:42,270 --> 00:55:46,090 So if you are a group of friends, if they all have kids, 1010 00:55:46,090 --> 00:55:49,250 then it could be great fun to be a dad because you all go to the seaside 1011 00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:52,730 together, you'll have a picnic, you all have fun and you share the care work. 1012 00:55:53,210 --> 00:55:58,170 Everyone makes a dish of sausages or whatever, but if no one else, yeah, Aria, 1013 00:55:58,170 --> 00:56:01,840 if no one else is, if no one else has a kid, then what do you do? 1014 00:56:02,330 --> 00:56:05,450 I was just laughing at your idea of men hanging out, making sausages together, 1015 00:56:06,000 --> 00:56:07,210 like the default activity. 1016 00:56:07,900 --> 00:56:09,530 Oh, Let me tell you, wait a second. 1017 00:56:09,690 --> 00:56:12,770 I want to defend my men and sausages thing because actually, 1018 00:56:13,230 --> 00:56:17,890 so I did field work in small town Alabama and in small town Alabama. No, 1019 00:56:17,930 --> 00:56:18,610 I want to take you there. 1020 00:56:18,610 --> 00:56:22,840 So in small town Alabama where I have my little green bicycle and I'm cycling up 1021 00:56:22,840 --> 00:56:27,650 all these hills and I'm going to Baptist Bible study and I'm hanging out with 1022 00:56:27,650 --> 00:56:31,290 all these families and they do a lot of barbecues and all the other families 1023 00:56:31,290 --> 00:56:32,810 come round and it's great fun, 1024 00:56:32,860 --> 00:56:37,130 and they do all these layers upon layers of different dips and 1025 00:56:37,690 --> 00:56:41,290 barbecues and everyone brings their kids and dads are bringing up and talking 1026 00:56:41,410 --> 00:56:42,243 about trucks. 1027 00:56:42,630 --> 00:56:45,890 That's true abundance by the way, when I talk about abundance, 1028 00:56:45,890 --> 00:56:46,730 that's what I'm talking about. 1029 00:56:48,210 --> 00:56:49,530 Sausages, babies, right? 1030 00:56:49,560 --> 00:56:50,150 Yeah. 1031 00:56:50,150 --> 00:56:54,490 So everyone's having great fun and it's a normal part of the community that 1032 00:56:54,770 --> 00:56:58,130 everyone enjoys, but if you are not in that kind of community, 1033 00:56:58,190 --> 00:57:01,490 if you don't have those kind of club goods, then one, 1034 00:57:01,490 --> 00:57:05,170 there's less fun to have in your own baby. Two, you don't feel like a loser. 1035 00:57:05,190 --> 00:57:08,050 Now, do you want to talk about being a loser? 1036 00:57:08,490 --> 00:57:12,050 I want to talk about what you've just said because I think this is where housing 1037 00:57:12,050 --> 00:57:13,010 constraints are important. 1038 00:57:13,390 --> 00:57:16,650 So housing constraints are important in one way because they drive up costs, 1039 00:57:17,070 --> 00:57:20,930 but with my housing theory of everything hat on I'll say is they're much more 1040 00:57:20,930 --> 00:57:25,050 important because they constrain and limit agglomeration people's ability to 1041 00:57:25,050 --> 00:57:26,050 locate around each other. 1042 00:57:26,770 --> 00:57:30,050 Normally we think of agglomeration in terms of economics and what jobs you But 1043 00:57:30,130 --> 00:57:33,370 agglomeration is hugely important when it comes to living near your friends, 1044 00:57:33,430 --> 00:57:34,930 living your people your own age, 1045 00:57:34,930 --> 00:57:37,370 living your people in similar life places as you, 1046 00:57:37,830 --> 00:57:41,170 the more constrained housing supply is, the more difficult that it comes, 1047 00:57:41,190 --> 00:57:42,850 the harder it is to coordinate with each other. 1048 00:57:43,190 --> 00:57:45,730 So what you're talking about I think is completely true. 1049 00:57:45,830 --> 00:57:49,930 People are much more likely to have children if other people physically close to 1050 00:57:49,930 --> 00:57:52,170 them have children. Remote work by the way, doesn't change this. 1051 00:57:52,170 --> 00:57:55,170 People often think remote work will eliminate housing shortages. It won't. 1052 00:57:56,310 --> 00:57:58,890 If you can locate, as people in Alabama can, 1053 00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:01,370 cheaply and comfortably around 1054 00:58:03,650 --> 00:58:06,930 people like you, the same age as you with similar interests to you, 1055 00:58:07,150 --> 00:58:10,730 who also have kids or are also sort of on the brinkof having kids is so much 1056 00:58:10,730 --> 00:58:14,930 easier to collectively share the cost of having kids and kind of collectively 1057 00:58:14,930 --> 00:58:18,090 raise the kids there is how I think by the way, 1058 00:58:18,090 --> 00:58:22,930 housing shortages drive the shortage of children much more than I think 1059 00:58:22,930 --> 00:58:24,370 housing costs by themselves do. 1060 00:58:25,390 --> 00:58:29,010 In the town where I was doing my field work actually had seen a growth in 1061 00:58:29,010 --> 00:58:29,550 population. 1062 00:58:29,550 --> 00:58:32,770 People were coming in because they thought it was a fantastic place for 1063 00:58:33,050 --> 00:58:33,690 families. 1064 00:58:33,690 --> 00:58:36,610 You can buy a house and everyone else has kids and it's a wonderful safe 1065 00:58:36,610 --> 00:58:38,370 environment, which is great for everyone. 1066 00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:42,930 Yeah, people Aria and I know have talked about can they find a town 1067 00:58:43,980 --> 00:58:47,930 accessible to London but far away enough that it's cheap for them all to move 1068 00:58:47,930 --> 00:58:48,280 to. 1069 00:58:48,280 --> 00:58:52,690 It's so difficult to coordinate and do that. First mover disadvantages enormous. 1070 00:58:53,110 --> 00:58:55,130 If three of you go and everybody else says, you know what? 1071 00:58:55,290 --> 00:58:57,450 Actually I decided I didn't want to do that, you're screwed. Right? 1072 00:58:57,470 --> 00:58:57,840 Yes. 1073 00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:02,130 It's incredibly hard to fix that problem. It's a coordination problem above all. 1074 00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:06,970 It's really easy if everywhere in London where basically if the cost of going 1075 00:59:06,970 --> 00:59:11,770 there and other people not following you is low because you're centrally 1076 00:59:11,770 --> 00:59:15,010 located, you can get to your job easy. This is true in all major cities. 1077 00:59:15,170 --> 00:59:16,690 I think, and I think this is one really, 1078 00:59:16,690 --> 00:59:20,210 really big and underrated reason that housing constraints do, 1079 00:59:20,410 --> 00:59:24,850 I think affect people's ability to have kids and the drudgery of having kids. 1080 00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:28,890 When you have kids alone in a big city, it's very, very difficult. 1081 00:59:28,890 --> 00:59:31,130 You don't have parents nearby, you don't have grandparents, 1082 00:59:31,470 --> 00:59:35,770 you don't have people your own age. So you are completely correct. By the way, 1083 00:59:35,930 --> 00:59:36,930 I completely agree in. 1084 00:59:36,930 --> 00:59:37,410 All things, the. 1085 00:59:37,410 --> 00:59:41,170 Housing shortages are not the determining factor by any means, 1086 00:59:41,310 --> 00:59:44,810 but I think they are underrated as a factor by people who have thought about 1087 00:59:44,810 --> 00:59:47,890 this a lot and who have a lot of understanding because I think they think on the 1088 00:59:48,050 --> 00:59:50,530 economic margin, but they don't think on the agglomeration margin. 1089 00:59:51,050 --> 00:59:54,370 I want to slightly, and if you've got more questions in this vein, that's fine, 1090 00:59:54,550 --> 00:59:58,770 but I really want to get onto this question of business relationships and 1091 01:00:00,160 --> 01:00:01,010 both how different, 1092 01:00:01,010 --> 01:00:05,770 but also how similar in many ways contemporary 1093 01:00:06,120 --> 01:00:09,490 East Asian gender norms are within businesses. 1094 01:00:09,990 --> 01:00:14,010 You've already talked about women being invited to strip clubs with their male 1095 01:00:14,010 --> 01:00:17,450 colleagues and being humiliated for not enjoying that. 1096 01:00:17,590 --> 01:00:18,120 Yes. 1097 01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:21,650 Obviously we know that the kind of drinking culture of going out really late, 1098 01:00:21,930 --> 01:00:23,970 drinking ridiculous amounts, maybe staying out all night, 1099 01:00:24,370 --> 01:00:26,090 sleeping on the side of the road and stuff like that. 1100 01:00:27,270 --> 01:00:28,330 Can you talk about that a bit? 1101 01:00:28,910 --> 01:00:33,730 I'm also kind of interested in how similar it feels to me to Western norms up 1102 01:00:33,740 --> 01:00:35,450 until the sixties or seventies. 1103 01:00:35,710 --> 01:00:36,610 Yes. Okay, 1104 01:00:36,630 --> 01:00:40,010 so I'm going to rattle off a couple of books which I think are really fabulous. 1105 01:00:40,070 --> 01:00:42,850 So Ed Slingerland, he's got a wonderful book called Drunk, 1106 01:00:43,230 --> 01:00:47,330 and it's all about how feasting banqueting drinking, 1107 01:00:47,630 --> 01:00:51,690 it lubricates social relationships. We all relax, we have a good time, 1108 01:00:52,150 --> 01:00:56,890 we build these bonds and I think especially in business cultures like 1109 01:00:57,060 --> 01:01:00,690 Japan or South Korea where everyone has to be incredibly reserved, 1110 01:01:00,860 --> 01:01:03,010 incredibly careful about what they say, 1111 01:01:03,680 --> 01:01:08,650 then businesses actually value an opportunity where everyone can loosen up 1112 01:01:08,790 --> 01:01:12,730 and say what they really feel because that's what does this person really think? 1113 01:01:12,830 --> 01:01:15,010 If all day you're so guarded, you need to know, well, 1114 01:01:15,010 --> 01:01:18,210 can I trust this other person? Another important element, 1115 01:01:18,350 --> 01:01:21,250 and I've done so many interviews with this with Chinese businessmen, 1116 01:01:21,670 --> 01:01:26,490 is if the state is a primary party of economy with 1117 01:01:26,490 --> 01:01:27,610 state owned enterprises, 1118 01:01:27,940 --> 01:01:32,810 their products are not necessarily the most competitive on price or quality. So 1119 01:01:32,870 --> 01:01:36,930 how do you get other people to buy your products? You send them little gifts, 1120 01:01:37,030 --> 01:01:40,130 you take them out on evenings to build up social trust and rapport. 1121 01:01:40,810 --> 01:01:43,010 It is so interesting. 1122 01:01:43,250 --> 01:01:46,930 I interviewed this guy who worked for a major car company and you say, yeah, 1123 01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:49,650 when I was working at the state, state-owned enterprise, 1124 01:01:49,750 --> 01:01:53,290 having to go for drinking every single night because it's like you're applying 1125 01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:58,010 your clients with more and more, a more and more drink to build up that rapport. 1126 01:01:58,390 --> 01:02:01,490 So yeah, so there are a bunch of reasons why it goes, aren't you? We enjoy it, 1127 01:02:01,520 --> 01:02:03,610 it's fun. You give these gifts, you build up rapport. 1128 01:02:04,190 --> 01:02:08,530 And going back to the 1960s and 70s, we built up this institution, 1129 01:02:08,670 --> 01:02:12,290 we built up this resistance against it, and people started complaining about it, 1130 01:02:12,600 --> 01:02:17,370 ruining your weekends and evening Sam. And then we decided as a culture, no, 1131 01:02:17,370 --> 01:02:19,840 we should try to reduce this. So for example, at universities, 1132 01:02:19,840 --> 01:02:23,650 it would now be uncommon for academics and students to go out drinking together 1133 01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:27,730 because we might see that as a dangerous environment that people do things they 1134 01:02:27,730 --> 01:02:29,970 don't really mean. There's also lawsuit potential. 1135 01:02:30,300 --> 01:02:35,170 South Korea hasn't developed that resistance and institutional reform. So yeah, 1136 01:02:35,370 --> 01:02:37,850 there's been an institutional divergence certainly. 1137 01:02:38,230 --> 01:02:41,930 But I do wonder how much is lost. Actually, 1138 01:02:42,130 --> 01:02:45,130 I think it's clearly what you're describing is excessive. 1139 01:02:46,250 --> 01:02:49,610 Everybody knows that feeling when you're on a work trip and you go back to a 1140 01:02:49,610 --> 01:02:50,610 hotel room for like five minutes, 1141 01:02:50,610 --> 01:02:53,290 so then you have to go back out or go drinking with your colleagues who maybe be 1142 01:02:53,290 --> 01:02:55,850 wonderful, but you're just tired. You just really wish you could sleep. 1143 01:02:56,520 --> 01:02:58,090 Everybody knows that feeling I'm sure, 1144 01:03:00,110 --> 01:03:03,290 but there is a lot of value to that, right? There is a huge amount of value to, 1145 01:03:03,310 --> 01:03:06,810 as you've mentioned, maybe not getting drunk, not blackout drunk, 1146 01:03:06,870 --> 01:03:09,970 not getting completely shitfaced, but losing your inhibitions, 1147 01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:13,770 showing that you are willing to lose your inhibitions with each other. 1148 01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:16,490 There's a lot of trust building there. It's fun. 1149 01:03:16,510 --> 01:03:18,050 You get to share in a fun experience, 1150 01:03:18,590 --> 01:03:23,370 and I am kind of interested in how much is lost 1151 01:03:23,790 --> 01:03:27,130 by that kind of culture becoming riskier and riskier, 1152 01:03:27,430 --> 01:03:30,690 not through any individual's fault, but for example, 1153 01:03:31,430 --> 01:03:36,250 for men on a night out there is just much less risk of them assaulting each 1154 01:03:36,250 --> 01:03:36,390 other, 1155 01:03:36,390 --> 01:03:39,690 for example. There's much less risk of them having extramarital affairs with 1156 01:03:39,690 --> 01:03:41,010 each other depending on who they are. 1157 01:03:41,030 --> 01:03:45,250 But probably there is less risk than if it was two women and two men of the same 1158 01:03:45,250 --> 01:03:46,083 age, let's say. 1159 01:03:46,590 --> 01:03:49,610 Not because any of them is a bad person necessarily unless assault is taking 1160 01:03:49,610 --> 01:03:54,530 place, but once one of the costs or one of the downsides 1161 01:03:56,390 --> 01:04:01,330 of a much more gender equal workplace is that that kind of interaction is much 1162 01:04:01,330 --> 01:04:02,170 more difficult to have. 1163 01:04:02,510 --> 01:04:07,050 And I'm curious about whether there are benefits to the East Asian approach 1164 01:04:07,840 --> 01:04:10,730 that maybe we neglect or maybe we ignore. 1165 01:04:11,310 --> 01:04:14,890 That's a great question. I will apply threefold. So first of all, 1166 01:04:15,090 --> 01:04:17,530 I make no normative claims about which culture is best or worse, 1167 01:04:17,830 --> 01:04:21,810 and I a hundred percent agree that opportunities for men to spend time 1168 01:04:21,810 --> 01:04:25,610 socialising together, enjoying relaxing, building bonds, hugely important. 1169 01:04:25,610 --> 01:04:28,130 Richard Reeves makes this point that male bonding super, 1170 01:04:28,130 --> 01:04:32,610 super important and we all want to combat let male loneliness because that has 1171 01:04:32,610 --> 01:04:36,990 massive, massive ill effects. That said, 1172 01:04:37,780 --> 01:04:40,390 many of the men I interviewed like the one I previously mentioned, 1173 01:04:40,740 --> 01:04:41,630 it's just excessive. 1174 01:04:42,130 --> 01:04:46,470 If you combine this with a hierarchical firm where it's the boss saying that 1175 01:04:46,470 --> 01:04:47,303 you've brought to drinks, 1176 01:04:47,540 --> 01:04:51,950 it's not that necessarily people are going on these work trips for fun. 1177 01:04:52,220 --> 01:04:54,790 They go in there because the boss is encouraging you to drink. 1178 01:04:55,940 --> 01:04:58,030 It's a hierarchically ordained thing. 1179 01:04:58,030 --> 01:05:00,710 It's not a fun thing that people are doing for their own enjoyment. 1180 01:05:01,140 --> 01:05:04,550 It's a pressure coming from the top in an incredibly hierarchal environment. 1181 01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:09,830 South Korea and Japan, people bow in Japan, you bow to your company bosses. 1182 01:05:10,230 --> 01:05:11,070 I interviewed one guy, 1183 01:05:11,070 --> 01:05:15,550 he said his Japanese firm people had different coloured lanyards, 1184 01:05:15,770 --> 01:05:17,930 and if you don't have the right coloured lanyard, 1185 01:05:17,930 --> 01:05:22,010 you're not allowed to speak at a work meeting. Very, very hierarchical systems. 1186 01:05:22,110 --> 01:05:24,770 You can't just suppose one person doesn't want to drink. 1187 01:05:25,250 --> 01:05:28,010 I gave the example earlier of having the work meeting and saying, 1188 01:05:28,570 --> 01:05:32,450 I think we should stop that. You can't resist individually. 1189 01:05:33,230 --> 01:05:37,850 So one that's it's not the men are necessarily doing this for their own fund, 1190 01:05:37,850 --> 01:05:40,250 for their own leisure on top of this, 1191 01:05:40,670 --> 01:05:44,570 it actually creates a number of gender inequalities in the workplace. 1192 01:05:44,790 --> 01:05:47,090 And this is something I think is totally underexplored, 1193 01:05:47,090 --> 01:05:48,890 but I certainly see it in my own interviews. 1194 01:05:49,550 --> 01:05:52,410 The companies of course select when it's sales work, 1195 01:05:52,930 --> 01:05:56,530 strictly business to business interfacing. You select for the guys, 1196 01:05:56,910 --> 01:05:58,890 for the people who are going to be able to drink the most, 1197 01:05:58,900 --> 01:06:00,930 right? And who is that men. 1198 01:06:01,110 --> 01:06:04,050 But it's the sales jobs which are often paying more because that's how you're 1199 01:06:04,130 --> 01:06:05,490 bringing home the bacon and for the company. 1200 01:06:06,070 --> 01:06:09,810 So the companies are often advertising these sales jobs specifically for men. 1201 01:06:09,910 --> 01:06:11,690 And even if women are in those environments, 1202 01:06:11,690 --> 01:06:16,450 imagine it's a 90% male environment where they're drinking very heavily. 1203 01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:18,810 It's not a nice environment for any women. 1204 01:06:18,830 --> 01:06:21,690 And many women gave me these terrible horror stories about how they were being 1205 01:06:21,990 --> 01:06:23,010 groped by their bosses. 1206 01:06:23,550 --> 01:06:27,730 But then in a culture whereby there's impunity for male sexual assault and 1207 01:06:27,730 --> 01:06:32,290 harassment and whereby individual self-assertion is strongly 1208 01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:35,050 condemned and a woman wouldn't feel that she's supported, 1209 01:06:35,240 --> 01:06:36,530 it's very difficult to speak out. 1210 01:06:36,530 --> 01:06:39,730 So then of course these men feel they can do it with impunity and add to that 1211 01:06:39,730 --> 01:06:42,490 the people are drunk, so they're not really thinking rationally about it anyway. 1212 01:06:42,830 --> 01:06:47,810 So it creates a very toxic workplace in terms of gender inequality and I 1213 01:06:47,810 --> 01:06:49,410 don't think that many men enjoy it. 1214 01:06:49,750 --> 01:06:53,650 So actually the Chinese government sees this as a problem and over recent years, 1215 01:06:53,650 --> 01:06:56,050 especially since COVID, they've massively, 1216 01:06:56,050 --> 01:06:59,570 massively cracked down on it really trying to reduce the drinking. 1217 01:06:59,930 --> 01:07:04,010 They think it's excessive. So while I'm with you that male bonding is great, 1218 01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:08,410 many East Asian governments think of this as a little bit excessive now. 1219 01:07:08,710 --> 01:07:11,050 So I'm not really saying that male bonding is great, by the way. 1220 01:07:11,910 --> 01:07:13,810 I'm also not saying that this is good because it's fun. 1221 01:07:14,990 --> 01:07:16,850 So if I was running a company, 1222 01:07:17,550 --> 01:07:20,650 all I cared about was if I was a pure profit maximizer, 1223 01:07:20,790 --> 01:07:23,010 didn't care about the wellbeing of my employees or anything like that, 1224 01:07:23,490 --> 01:07:27,450 I would want my employees to have very trusting relationship with each other. 1225 01:07:28,190 --> 01:07:32,010 And I think one way of getting those trusting relationships is these kinds of 1226 01:07:32,240 --> 01:07:34,330 drunken experiences together, perhaps. Anyway, 1227 01:07:34,490 --> 01:07:36,650 I don't know if this is actually true, but it's possible. 1228 01:07:37,290 --> 01:07:40,090 I don't think it would be possible for them to have those kinds of experiences 1229 01:07:40,470 --> 01:07:43,170 in a mixed gender environment. I think it would be, as you say, 1230 01:07:43,170 --> 01:07:45,650 it would immediately lead to harassment or assault, 1231 01:07:46,620 --> 01:07:48,610 which would be unacceptable for a number of reasons, 1232 01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:51,210 even as a pure profit maximizer. 1233 01:07:51,670 --> 01:07:53,850 So if that's right, 1234 01:07:54,080 --> 01:07:58,210 then one of the costs of a gender mixed workplace is that you cannot 1235 01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:02,130 sustain those kinds of very, very close bonding experiences. 1236 01:08:02,430 --> 01:08:05,170 And so you lose that kind of workplace trust building, 1237 01:08:06,350 --> 01:08:09,890 not because the women are making anything less trustworthy, 1238 01:08:10,190 --> 01:08:15,010 but because you just can't have that kind of experience. It leads to assault, 1239 01:08:15,310 --> 01:08:16,690 it leads to extramarital affairs, 1240 01:08:16,750 --> 01:08:21,560 it leads to drama basically. That feels to me like I think basically true or 1241 01:08:21,560 --> 01:08:26,130 that feels to me like that rings really true to me. And it seems like, 1242 01:08:26,130 --> 01:08:28,330 and we don't need to get too normative, say one is better than the other, 1243 01:08:28,510 --> 01:08:33,370 but it seems like maybe an underrated advantage of the East Asian approach 1244 01:08:34,130 --> 01:08:38,090 relative to Western approaches. I also kind of wonder if 1245 01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:43,170 this doesn't need to be a male thing. I wonder if this, 1246 01:08:43,370 --> 01:08:45,410 I mean you could have nights out of women together. 1247 01:08:45,770 --> 01:08:48,330 There's no particular reason. It has to be men going out drinking together. 1248 01:08:48,560 --> 01:08:51,770 It's just once you add men to that, to that, 1249 01:08:53,550 --> 01:08:56,480 it basically becomes a completely different dynamic and one that no workplace 1250 01:08:56,480 --> 01:09:00,560 wants to encourage. Yeah, I think it's hard to measure. 1251 01:09:00,890 --> 01:09:02,290 I think it's probably difficult to, 1252 01:09:02,710 --> 01:09:07,170 I'm certainly not saying that that cost outweighs the benefits of genix 1253 01:09:07,170 --> 01:09:10,850 workplaces, but it does feel like maybe a cost that people don't recognise. 1254 01:09:11,600 --> 01:09:16,250 Okay, I will refer to a wonderful book by my friend Robin Dunbar, 1255 01:09:16,470 --> 01:09:20,930 the evolution of religion, and let's go back to chimps. So chimps, 1256 01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:25,970 they build their strength as a group by having more chimps. 1257 01:09:26,210 --> 01:09:29,170 You want as many chimps as possible so that if you are attacked by a predator, 1258 01:09:29,430 --> 01:09:31,330 you can be big strong chimps and attack them. 1259 01:09:31,590 --> 01:09:34,810 Now the problem is as your group of chimps gets bigger and bigger, 1260 01:09:35,100 --> 01:09:38,370 you have a problem of mistrust because who is that chimp over there? 1261 01:09:38,370 --> 01:09:39,810 What are they up to? I don't really know them. 1262 01:09:39,930 --> 01:09:40,850 I don't really hang out with them. 1263 01:09:41,150 --> 01:09:45,560 So what they do is they build trust and reciprocity through grooming, very calm, 1264 01:09:45,670 --> 01:09:50,010 lovely grooming, like one stroke for three seconds, 1265 01:09:50,510 --> 01:09:53,170 and the sensual activity bonds the group. 1266 01:09:53,510 --> 01:09:55,970 And Robin Dunbar argues that throughout human history, 1267 01:09:55,980 --> 01:09:57,730 maybe going back 200,000 years, 1268 01:09:58,140 --> 01:10:02,600 we've always developed these collective synchronous rituals as a way of building 1269 01:10:02,660 --> 01:10:05,890 trust within a community. So it could be choral singing, 1270 01:10:06,100 --> 01:10:10,050 it could be religious trances, it could be shamens doing their thing, 1271 01:10:10,050 --> 01:10:12,560 getting groovy. It could be going to church, 1272 01:10:12,790 --> 01:10:17,050 it could be some kind of away a day thing that maybe you do at Works in 1273 01:10:17,250 --> 01:10:18,450 Progress. I dunno what you get up to. 1274 01:10:18,650 --> 01:10:20,170 Women still groom each other as well, right? 1275 01:10:20,410 --> 01:10:23,730 That's actually quite common bit of female bonding that you will do each other's 1276 01:10:23,730 --> 01:10:24,770 hair or something like that. 1277 01:10:25,000 --> 01:10:29,450 Yeah, so there's been very cruel experiments where they look at people 1278 01:10:30,160 --> 01:10:34,130 both on a rowing bike and they measure their exertion and they find that if you 1279 01:10:34,130 --> 01:10:38,370 do the rowing bike together, you actually are much happier and higher dopamine. 1280 01:10:38,540 --> 01:10:39,730 Check out people's brains, 1281 01:10:39,730 --> 01:10:42,970 check out their biceps and find out that we love doing sports activities. 1282 01:10:43,730 --> 01:10:48,050 When people play sports together, there's sense of the sense of team spirit. 1283 01:10:48,510 --> 01:10:53,210 So there are other ways send people out for a game of cricket, Sam. 1284 01:10:54,310 --> 01:10:58,810 So I think there are alternative ways that humans have always built a strong 1285 01:10:58,810 --> 01:11:02,730 sense of whether that's national pride, local pride, 1286 01:11:03,920 --> 01:11:06,050 without necessarily involving alcohol. 1287 01:11:06,050 --> 01:11:10,010 Alcohol is just one means of building something that we all value. 1288 01:11:11,250 --> 01:11:15,450 I would definitely rather drink with my colleagues than groom or 1289 01:11:16,020 --> 01:11:17,970 ritualistically dance with them. 1290 01:11:19,480 --> 01:11:21,010 I think there are, but that is, 1291 01:11:22,060 --> 01:11:25,730 we're talking about the median company and I'm really kind interested in this 1292 01:11:25,730 --> 01:11:26,650 from a historical perspective. 1293 01:11:27,090 --> 01:11:32,010 I think comparing Chinese steel companies with western tech 1294 01:11:32,210 --> 01:11:33,410 companies doesn't really tell us very much. 1295 01:11:33,890 --> 01:11:38,370 I am curious though about what has been lost or what is lost 1296 01:11:38,840 --> 01:11:40,730 when workplaces generally, 1297 01:11:41,290 --> 01:11:44,450 I mean the point of Mad Men is that this is not a good world. 1298 01:11:44,790 --> 01:11:47,650 The point of Mad Men is superficially nice, but actually it's miserable. 1299 01:11:47,650 --> 01:11:49,090 Everybody hates each other and themselves, 1300 01:11:50,390 --> 01:11:54,520 and yet there are elements of that world and there are elements of the world of 1301 01:11:54,520 --> 01:11:56,370 a hundred years ago where you had much, much, 1302 01:11:56,370 --> 01:12:00,130 much more basically gender segregated socialising and gender segregated 1303 01:12:02,050 --> 01:12:06,330 business dealings that facilitated trust building, 1304 01:12:06,680 --> 01:12:10,560 facilitated maybe disagreeableness among men for example. 1305 01:12:10,920 --> 01:12:14,170 That seems to have been lost and isn't really recognised as such. 1306 01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:19,250 It's not widely accepted that disagreeableness within companies I think is 1307 01:12:19,600 --> 01:12:20,130 much, much, 1308 01:12:20,130 --> 01:12:24,410 much lower now or it's much less tolerated than it was even 30 years ago. 1309 01:12:24,870 --> 01:12:26,770 And I don't really have a strong, 1310 01:12:26,850 --> 01:12:28,810 I don't think there's a strong policy conclusion there. 1311 01:12:28,930 --> 01:12:31,560 I think the benefits almost certainly outweigh the costs there, 1312 01:12:31,630 --> 01:12:34,010 but it is interesting that those costs maybe are there. 1313 01:12:35,170 --> 01:12:38,480 I think that any form of creative disruption has costs though my only caveat on 1314 01:12:38,480 --> 01:12:39,850 your claim would be that a hundred years ago, 1315 01:12:39,850 --> 01:12:41,450 it wasn't so much as gender segregated, 1316 01:12:41,450 --> 01:12:45,050 as very patriarchal in that all the ways of gaining prestige, 1317 01:12:45,050 --> 01:12:47,450 whether it's through work or politics or religion, 1318 01:12:47,480 --> 01:12:52,090 were dominated by men Women were left to the lower status grunt work of raising 1319 01:12:52,090 --> 01:12:52,923 your family. 1320 01:12:53,410 --> 01:12:55,930 I have two slightly contradictory thoughts on this. 1321 01:12:56,020 --> 01:12:56,853 Go for it. 1322 01:12:56,980 --> 01:12:58,600 The first is that I definitely agree, 1323 01:12:58,850 --> 01:13:02,730 there are certain things that I feel like you can only really say if you've been 1324 01:13:02,890 --> 01:13:05,130 drinking that could be helpful in a workplace. 1325 01:13:05,630 --> 01:13:09,410 Did I actually do that well or were you just being nice to me or am I actually a 1326 01:13:09,410 --> 01:13:10,520 good manager? Things like that. 1327 01:13:10,520 --> 01:13:13,930 Where it's much more comfortable to ask those questions I think when you've got 1328 01:13:13,930 --> 01:13:14,970 your inhibitions lowered. 1329 01:13:15,390 --> 01:13:20,130 But the other thought is if they have this really hierarchical structure where 1330 01:13:20,130 --> 01:13:22,970 it's actually quite difficult to be candid with your boss, 1331 01:13:23,270 --> 01:13:26,650 then it seems like maybe they lose a bunch of those advantages that you might 1332 01:13:26,650 --> 01:13:27,483 get from the drinking. 1333 01:13:28,390 --> 01:13:33,050 So what I would say is that if we want a work environment where 1334 01:13:33,050 --> 01:13:35,850 people are open, where Aria can say to Sam, Sam, 1335 01:13:35,980 --> 01:13:37,850 I'm really not sure about this business decision. 1336 01:13:38,230 --> 01:13:41,050 Or if our goal is to have a situation where Ari can say, Sam, 1337 01:13:41,390 --> 01:13:42,560 I'm not sure about this decision. 1338 01:13:43,100 --> 01:13:46,410 There are ways of way making workplaces more inclusive liberal. 1339 01:13:46,470 --> 01:13:50,600 And here I think that liberalism is incredibly important that we show tolerant 1340 01:13:50,600 --> 01:13:53,850 for dissent and for example in Scandinavia, 1341 01:13:53,850 --> 01:13:58,130 which is incredibly egalitarian and a consensus oriented culture where the boss 1342 01:13:58,130 --> 01:14:00,850 might be cycling to work not in a corner office, 1343 01:14:00,870 --> 01:14:02,250 but hot their skin with everyone else. 1344 01:14:02,590 --> 01:14:06,810 If you create a more open egalitarian environment and you signal willingness 1345 01:14:09,390 --> 01:14:13,210 for dissent, et cetera, then I think then you are able to hear from all voices. 1346 01:14:13,790 --> 01:14:17,970 So many company leaders will want dissent because they want to identify those 1347 01:14:17,970 --> 01:14:19,480 problems. They want to know what's working. 1348 01:14:19,870 --> 01:14:21,850 So you can signal that you at the top, 1349 01:14:22,430 --> 01:14:24,370 let me hear from all these kind of critical people. 1350 01:14:25,080 --> 01:14:30,050 It's very important to recognise these trade-offs and for liberals to 1351 01:14:30,050 --> 01:14:32,130 be seen as recognised in these trade-offs. Right? 1352 01:14:32,420 --> 01:14:34,480 Going back to your point about disagree ability. 1353 01:14:34,870 --> 01:14:37,330 If I was sat here as a feminist and said, no, Sam, 1354 01:14:37,330 --> 01:14:39,210 you are outrageous and you should never say that, 1355 01:14:39,210 --> 01:14:40,890 then we can't have those conversations. 1356 01:14:41,310 --> 01:14:45,480 But any kind of process of social change does come with of course some 1357 01:14:45,810 --> 01:14:46,690 disadvantages. 1358 01:14:46,710 --> 01:14:51,010 And then you want people to express them openly so that we can think, okay, 1359 01:14:51,550 --> 01:14:54,090 Sam does have a point that we do. Any business, 1360 01:14:54,150 --> 01:14:57,810 any organisation wants people to share their concerns, share their frustrations. 1361 01:14:58,310 --> 01:15:01,480 So if you've got some people who are very sensitive to that level of 1362 01:15:01,690 --> 01:15:03,090 disagreement and might could take it badly, 1363 01:15:03,480 --> 01:15:08,480 what can we do to have the best of both worlds? Is it to encourage 1364 01:15:08,590 --> 01:15:11,730 the more disagreeable men to express themselves more carefully? 1365 01:15:12,800 --> 01:15:14,600 Some of us can just be very diplomatic. 1366 01:15:14,850 --> 01:15:17,370 So this is something that I try to learn, 1367 01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:20,810 express some of my criticism in a more measured way, 1368 01:15:20,810 --> 01:15:24,970 but also for the people who are much more sensitive not to take it to heart. 1369 01:15:25,270 --> 01:15:28,170 So if your colleague says this, run it through one of the llm, 1370 01:15:28,190 --> 01:15:29,690 see if that's passive aggressive or not. 1371 01:15:30,230 --> 01:15:35,210 So I am fully here for having open expressions of dissent and that's 1372 01:15:35,270 --> 01:15:38,600 how we build a better society not to sound sort of. Yeah. 1373 01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:42,210 Okay. People often say that's one of my real strengths of the workforce. 1374 01:15:43,210 --> 01:15:43,590 Incidentally, 1375 01:15:43,590 --> 01:15:47,650 I'm often praised for my ability to disagree with somebody without them 1376 01:15:47,650 --> 01:15:49,370 realising that I'm disagreeing with them at work. 1377 01:15:50,720 --> 01:15:52,370 It's said to be a real strength of mine. 1378 01:15:53,310 --> 01:15:54,050 Oh no, maybe. 1379 01:15:54,050 --> 01:15:54,883 You wouldn't agree with that. 1380 01:15:54,960 --> 01:15:58,370 Well, I haven't observed it, but I'm worried now that I'm being manipulated. 1381 01:15:58,630 --> 01:16:02,210 No, no, no. Works in Progress operates in a much, 1382 01:16:02,210 --> 01:16:05,050 much more open way than we don't have the disagreeability problem. 1383 01:16:05,170 --> 01:16:06,003 I don't think. 1384 01:16:06,450 --> 01:16:09,450 We're all a little bit disagreeable probably is basically it. Yeah. 1385 01:16:10,230 --> 01:16:11,690 But when you're in a large organisation, 1386 01:16:12,150 --> 01:16:16,850 you obviously are dealing with people who don't have that culture and who are 1387 01:16:16,950 --> 01:16:19,090 in fact from a different culture. They're from California, 1388 01:16:19,950 --> 01:16:24,650 one of the most alien cultures like west of the Tiber. 1389 01:16:24,980 --> 01:16:29,290 And you have to be as respectful of that culture as you would be of any other. 1390 01:16:29,560 --> 01:16:34,250 Well, that was very, very interesting and luckily if you want to read more, 1391 01:16:34,510 --> 01:16:38,370 you can go to Alice's Substack at The Great Gender Divergence on Substack, 1392 01:16:38,710 --> 01:16:43,520 or you can wait until 2027 and read her book, The Great Gender Divergence, 1393 01:16:43,520 --> 01:16:46,410 which is coming out. Then if you want to hear more from us, 1394 01:16:46,750 --> 01:16:49,770 go to worksinprogress.co and thanks for listening.