in other words, do they have a situation in upper castes where there are not enough women of the right caste to go about? Can we expect upper castes to become more mixed e.g. with women from lower ones marrying into the upper ones to offset shortages?
Yes. Apparently, the practice is more widespread in more affluent families who can better afford ultrasounds. In some high castes, there are only 300 girls born for every 1000 boys.
Some men are turning to lower caste brides far away from their homes to find wives, but it’s feared that this practice will lower, not raise, the esteem women are held in.
I would like to see a cite for that 300 girls to 1000 boys figure. I mean, yes, I know that the ratio is very skewed these days, but I question that particular statistic.
It’s in the article I linked, first page about half way down:
(bolding mine)
Ian MacDonald’s excellent SF novel, River of the Gods, shows us the India of 2047. Sexual imbalance is one of the features of the society that is depicted.
ETA: I removed the link to Wikipedia, since it’s a bit spoilery.
I keep expecting the women in India and China to begin to realize the power they hold. I keep thinking they’re going to communicate, and organize, and make a difference for themselves.
It keeps on not happening, and I don’t understand. If only 1 in 3 men has an opportunity to marry - surely the women can choose to marry only those men who support their education and careers?!?
When they get a choice.
Or her parents can choose the man who will take her without a dowry, no matter what he thinks of her as a person or his attitude on women and education or political office.
ETA: Also from the article linked above:
That requires having parents that will let you choose who to marry, seeing yourself as more than the attachments to an uterus, and as you say realizing that you do have power. It’s not easy.
I realize the gut answer for many Americans will be “if your parents don’t let you choose who to marry, fuck them”, but these are family-centric societies, not individualist ones. You are expected, and expect yourself, to do what is good for your family; whether it pleases you is a secondary consideration.
If I may suggest reading Virginia Woolf’s “Three Guineas”, it includes items like a description of what “the educated man’s sister” gets and is expected to do which rang quite a few bells for me; I think a lot of it would ring true for Indian and Chinese women as well… or at least, for those who wouldn’t just say “but of course that’s how it is and how it has to be!”
Strictly on an operational level re supply and demand if the male to female ratio is 3-1 you’d expect women to have far more selection power in choosing mates.
Except there are still two parents, four grandparents, and a dozen aunties and uncles who may hold the real power in the family. A young woman can’t have “more” selection power when you’re multiplying by zero.
A saying I’ve heard often in China is “A boy is China Construction Bank, a girl is China Commercial Bank.” The implication is that a baby boy can eventually build wealth for you, and a baby girl can negotiate (through marriage) wealth for you. Children are expected to support their parents in old age, and in many ways children are seen as investments that are absolutely expected to provide a certain return. The pressure on young people to “pay back” their parents is enormous. Many of the young (and even not-so-young) people I know defer most of their their choices- where they live, what they major in, where they work, who they marry- to their parents.
And for young women, especially with the older generation making the decisions, that means marrying the richest guy you can land. When I asked my students about their ideal husband, wealth was the absolute number one factor. They consider their marriage to be their single shot at giving their parents the “better life” that they feel massive guilt and duty to provide for them. Personal happiness comes way further down the line.
Furthermore, standards of femininity (and in my opinion male insecurity) means that women who make more money than men are basically not marriageable- remember, it’s still the older generation making the decisions and the husband’s parents will probably live with them. They want a daughter in law that will be completely devoted to the grandkids, deferential to their husband and his family and not prone to getting too many modern ideas in her head. So it is a marriage handicap to be too successful.
Finally, plenty of young women (like people everywhere) are simply lazy and unambitious. They feel like they have no reason to work towards their education and career when they could marry a rich man and spend their lives as pampered housewives. If they can easily get a guy to support them for the rest of their lives, why should they work hard?
Frankly, I suspect the reliability of that article. It cites no particular studies or reports or experts. All the references to trends are vague. In general, the credibility of the Christian Science Monitor has been steadily declining since the 1990s.
On top of that, it fails to take into account the profound diversity of Indian society. For example, almost none of what that article says applies to upper class, educated Bengali society.
It may take some time, but extreme shortage of women in society will inevitably result in greater social power in the hands of those women.
In the hands of whoever controls those women. It might be the women themselves, or it might not.
I was just looking here, thinking about this, I notice India and China have 107 and 108 men for every hundred women. The Uk and the US have 96 and 97, presumably meaning about 103 or 104 women for every hundred men, give or take. Given the heavier majorities of women in, for example, university graduating classes, you could gain some insight by looking at our own culture, albeit class and educational or wealth distinctions would be the nearest analogy for the caste system.
Holy mackerel, what’s going on in Qatar?
Qatar has a LOT of foreign workers…as in, only about 20% of the population is native Qatari. And pretty much all of those foreign workers are men.
That 1:3 ratio is a relatively recent thing; there’s only been about one and a half generations born since selective abortion became a noticeable phenomenon. In any case, even in the sticks, intercaste marriages are becoming more and more common, and that birthrate figure is based on a very limited subset of the population.
Not “pretty much all”, but an awful lot. There are plenty of Western female nurses and Eastern female maids, and so on.
Holy mackerel, what’s going on in Qatar?
Lots and lots of construction.