Works in Progress Podcast

Hi, welcome to the Works in Progress
podcast. My name's Sam Bowman.

I'm one of the editors
at Works in Progress.

My name's Aria. I'm also an
editor at Works in Progress.

Our guest today is Dr. Alice Evans.

Alice is a social scientist
at King's College London,

as she also writes the excellent
substack, The Great Gender Divergence.

And I wanted to start Alice by asking
what is The Great Gender Divergence?

Thank you, Sam.

So The Great Gender Divergence is about
why the entire world has become more

gender equal, and why some societies
are more gender equal than others.

So over the past century, women in some
parts of the world, like Latin America,

East Asia, Europe, have made tremendous
strides in terms of gaining status,

running parliaments,
working at high-end careers,

and also gaining protections from
male violence. But in other places,

women continue to be very much suppressed
and their mobility is limited and they

continue to have low status.
So the question is why?

So what I've been trying to do,

rather ambitiously is study the cultural
evolution of every single society

in the world going about
thousands of years.

And I'm the first person in the world
to do qualitative research pretty much

across all world regions.

So I'm trying to cobble
together this massive jigsaw.

Is there anywhere in the world that is
less gender equal now than it was say a

hundred years ago?

Aria, that's a great question.

I think a hundred years ago before
the event of state institutions and

modern communication technology,

there would've been an enormous
amount of cultural heterogeneity.

So there may well have
been some matrilineal tribe
where women had high status

in their village and maybe
that could have got suffocated,

say by the Iranian Islamic Revolution,
right? So there's lots of heterogeneity,

lots of things moving backwards and
forwards. But I think for the most part,

most parts of the world have
seen improvements in women's
status and protections

from violence.

What counts for that being such a
straightforward trend everywhere?

Economic growth. So economic growth,

job creating economic growth is a powerful
engine of social change because one,

it motivates parents to
invest in education. Two,

when there is contraceptions and other
kind of technology enables women to

reduce their fertility, control their
time, pursue education, pursue careers,

but it's mediated by culture.

So in cultures where male honour
depends on female seclusion,

women don't necessarily seize those jobs.

In authoritarian countries where women
are heavily repressed in terms of what

they can say and organised, it's harder
to mobilise and persuade at scale.

And is your view that growth
both enables empowerment of

women by providing resources
for their education,

but also create incentives for it as
well by basically growth can happen,

so there are returns to
investing in education?

Absolutely.

So I have this theoretical framework
called the honour-income trade off.

So let's suppose in South Asia, East Asia,

they're both concerned about male
honour, but they also value income.

So which one do you value more?
And if you value income at all,

if you value upward mobility and economic
prosperity, be like, yeah, sure, okay,

it'll hurt our face,

say in East Asia a little if we
send our daughters to the factory.

But when the returns are so great,

when there are labour hungry factories
and the recruiters are going into the

rural villages, please give us our
daughters. Those Chinese fathers,

they sign the forms, they send their
daughters off. And when all the girls go,

then you have a collective action change
that you shift the equilibrium and it

becomes normal, totally accepted,
and a normal part of adolescence.

And then women go into the
cities, they gain careers,

they become journalists and script
writers, and they tell their own stories.

And this is a crucial process. It's not
just about individual women having jobs,

but about reshaping the script and
persuading people at scale and then

mobilising for stronger reforms.

This might be too strange of a subculture,

but the ultra Orthodox Jews or
maybe just Orthodox Jews in Israel,

the men basically seem to spend most
of their time on religious study,

but the women actually work.

They still seem like they've got a
very conservative gendered culture.

Is that actually not the case?

And they are much more liberal in ways
that don't fit my understanding of

liberalness?

Or is that actually just one of those
exceptions that happens throughout the

world?

Great, great question. I'm very fascinated
in Jewish culture. So let me say,

yeah. So ultra orthodox Jews, they
tend to have six women per child,

80% of ultra orthodox women work.

And I think there it's important to
recognise that high rates of female labour

force participation don't
necessarily translate into status.

So across Sub-Saharan Africa, for example,
women can be toiling in the fields,

but men may still be allowed access
to the community governance circle.

So it's still the men who are
doing the specific acidic rituals,

only the men who are studying scripture,
and that's a high status activity.

So here it's really important to have
the qualitative insights to understand

what actually gives status
because it may not be work.

And I guess there's also secluded work
that women have done throughout history

as well, like grinding
wheat or as we talk about,

in a Works in Progress
article and stuff like that.

Yeah, absolutely. So throughout human
history, women have always done work.

So the next question is what
actually gives women status?

So women have always been grinding
or doing drudgery at home,

and that's important
for household survival.

But then we have a separate question
about what leads to people being revered,

their words, carrying wisdom,
acting as religious authorities,

creating community governance.
So that's separate from work.

Okay. Should we get
talking about East Asia?

Yes.

So I think the first really interesting
thing about East Asia is that

when I see primarily through your
work the way people talk about digital

feminism in East Asia,

it actually seems remarkably
similar to our online feminism.

You've talked about this on the
Chinese Little Red Book, social media,

about how you've got girls
support girls hashtags,

which seem very similar to me
to the girls-girl TikTok trend.

You've got the #MeToo movement in East
Asia as well. All of that seems very,

very similar. And yet actually, when you
dive into what their cultures are like,

they seem to be much more misogynistic.

Is that because this feminism is actually
much more marginalised than it is over

here?

Or is it just like it's interfacing with
a very different kind of culture and

I'm only seeing the bits that
are most intelligible to me?

I think everything you said is a
hundred percent correct, Aria. So yeah,

over the past 20 years we've
seen this acceleration of

technological connectivity. And
so let's say the example of China,

because obviously there's heterogeneity
within East Asia. In China,

the CCP heavily moderates and
suppresses any criticism of the

state, but citizens are still allowed
to criticise other Chinese people.

So as long as it's not organised, as
long as it's not a threat to the state,

you can still be critical.

So men on Baidu Tieba may bitch about
women and call them like tanks or

whatever.

And women on Little Red Book may show
solidarity or sympathy with other women.

So when they're posting about about
gender-based violence or when they're

postingagainst the idea
of selfless sisters,

certainly women can speak out and
show empathy and show solidarity.

And that's hugely important because
throughout history and our history has

always been very patriarchal. Men ruled
the script where that was through state

power,

whether Confucius literature or here in
Europe with very patriarchal literature.

But now women can show
alternatives and show empathy,

and that shifts people's expectations
about the pathways to status or get them

ostracised or actually respected.
So online literature's hugely,

hugely important in
emboldening people to test out

alternatives in, of changing
ideas of prestige. That said,

there are important differences.

So one is that East Asia was
always much more patriarchal.

It had strong pronounced patrilineal
system, pronounced son bias,

but also hidden elements that people
might not recognise unless they've done

qualitative research comparing
around the world. So for example,

one thing I was very struck by in my
field work in both Korea and Hong Kong and

my many interviews with Chinese people
is this idea of collective harmony and

the idea of extreme discomfort from
being an individual troublemaker

from speaking out. And so for example,

one time I was sitting down for an
interview with a South Korean professional

woman, and she said to me, the
first thing she said to me is,

"are you a feminist?" "No,

I'm just a social scientist.

I'm interested in these East Asia."
And she was like, good,

but she says "feminists, they're
too outspoken, too assertive,

but the gender problems here are very
real." And then she proceeded to tell me

these very heartfelt stories about
how she'd been discriminated at work,

how she'd been passed over promotion,

about how her male colleagues went
to a lap dance club and invited her.

And then another woman,
again, they were saying, "oh,

there are these feminist protests here
and I don't like them." And I was trying

to understand what's the problem. And
again, it was this emphasis on assertion,

this idea that in Japan there's a saying,

the nail that sticks up will be
hammered down. And so I thought,

let's do a little role play
exercise. And I said to them, okay,

so let's suppose you are uncomfortable
with the drinking culture at work.

And suppose in your work office you
said you put up your hand, you say,

I'd like to propose that we don't have
company after work drinks anymore.

And the minute I was trying
to be my most diplomatic,

charismatic self to
the best of my ability,

and instantly her lips recoiled
in horror, and she goes,

well, I think that's very,

she was totally uncomfortable
with that kind of self-assertion.

So if you have this, and there's lots
of pure value survey data on this,

so if you have this culture
that reveres collective harmony,

then any kind of disruption,
any kind of self-assertion,

especially if it's twinned with something
which is already kind of subversive in

your culture, feminism, it
can cause a bit of disruption.

So I think you were a hundred percent
correct that there is this online

literature that is tremendously
important in pushing for protections

against male violence. For
example, in this year, 2025,

South Korea has just announced an
anti-harassment law. So that is super,

super important, but people will react
in a certain different kind of way.

Are men also less supportive
of feminism there?

I guess my perception of the West
is that maybe until very recently,

most men were also basically feminists.

And it's potentially only
a very recent backlash.

And even then I'm not sure
about it. Whereas it seems like

men in East Asia, and this is obviously
speaking in major generalities,

are actually very hostile to feminism
and a lot of their online culture

seems incell-y in some way.

Okay, brilliant. And I will respond
in three parts. First of all,

I think the vast majority of men in
Europe and America are very supportive of

gender equality, belief
that women should work,

believe that women should be leaders.

And we see that both in
surveys and genuine voting.

I would say that's a little bit
different from supporting feminism.

So if you look at Pew data or you look
at men might say gender equality is fine,

but I don't want feminism.

So that's a pretty normal
response in the US that said,

you are a hundred percent that men are
more supportive of gender equality in the

West than say East Asia.

East Asia's had a culture of
patrilineal whereby men perform the

ancestral rituals. The
son is the most prized,

the most prized child and celebrated well
girls are just an afterthought who are

going to marry into another family.

So a hundred percent
there's that cross-national
difference. And I think another

fact that's underestimated is that
the West got very lucky in the timing

of our feminist revolution.

So it occurred in the 1970s
when our media was much more

shared and we had much more in common.

So when there were higher barriers
to entry, there were fewer firms,

fewer outputs. We are all watching
similar shows, whether it's BBC news,

Friends and The Simpsons. So we're
all on that shared cultural journey.

In Sweden, for example, they
only allowed private media,

private TV stations in 1989. Before that,

everyone was getting indoctrinated
with hardcore egalitarianism.

Now as we see this intense personalization
in individualism in social media,

that's what East Asians and Latin
Americans are getting right now.

So women of course, will opt
into feminist media, right?

Because it gives them everything
they want. Yes, status is great, yes,

you can be independent, yes,
you can live your own life.

And there are all kinds of female
vlogs where they're celebrating their

independence after work, for example.
But why would any man want to watch that,

right?

So by virtue of technological
backwardness in the 1970s,

a bunch of guys were watching pretty
egalitarian stuff or cheers or whatever.

But East Asians today can opt out.

I'm not sure if I actually think this,
But Korea seems like a quite susceptible

to Western means in a way
that I think Japan doesn't.

North Korea is the most communist
country the world has ever seen.

Christianity is most
popular in South Korea,

and they do it in quite interesting ways.

The Reverend Moon's church and
mass weddings and things like that.

Feminism seems to have caught
on much more as a sort of ideal.

I'm sure it's not widely accepted,

but there are subcultures
of feminism much more there.

And this sort of men's rights
MRA thing has sort of caught on.

So is it possible that what's going
on in Korea is they have some sort of

cultural openness say to western memes
and western ideas in a way that Japan

doesn't China, and these
are sort of wrecking havoc.

It's almost like a virus in the new world
where they just don't have a kind of

immune system to resist either,

depending on whether you think these
things are good or bad. But like inceldom,

feminism, Christianity,
communism, whatever it might be,

is it possible that Korea is just
very, very vulnerable to weird ideas?

I think that's an interesting hypothesis,

and I will respectively take us back on
time travel to the 1870s when Japan had

the Meiji restoration. And so
when they were being attacked by

foreign ships, they
thought, well, actually no,

we need to rapidly
industrialise for our defence.

And so many intellectuals went on
tours of the West, they went to Europe,

they went to the us. They're like, no,
we've got to bring back these ideas.

And if you go to Japan, you see
lots of European style architecture,

massive reforms of education, and many
of the leading intellectuals are like,

no, we've got to have these
secular scientific projects.

We've got to destroy the Samurai.
We've got to have massive reforms.

So certainly within Japan's history,

they've taken on many commercial
cultural adoptations of Western culture

in terms of dress, in terms
of clothing. So that said,

I think what might be different
in Korea today is they

have, they've managed to build,

and this actually goes back
to Christianity, a more
militant labour movement,

which then gave birth to democracy,

which then gave birth to
this feminist activism.

So I would see a slightly
different, more contingent story.

I don't think Japan has this
necessary immunity to European memes.

But when the Japanese did it,
it basically worked really well.

I mean it worked really well
until World War II happened,

but it isn't that they went over
and just got their brains washed by

Prussian militarism. They
thought this one works well.

We like the strength of the
army in Prussia or in Germany.

We like the way the
English do their schools.

We like the way the French
do their financial system.

And they brought these things back in
a selective way, like a conscious way.

Totally.

Korea doesn't feel like that.

Korea doesn't feel like they are doing
well out of the Western ideas that are

going there and being adopted there.

They feel like they're
victims of those ideas.

Well, I think that, like I was saying,

I think I as a social scientist will
be careful about normative claims.

So whether something's good or
bad, that's not for me to say.

But I would say that the South Korean
feminist movement has been very successful

in many ways because as there have
been waves of protests and organising

in a distinctly Korean way. So for
example, one fundemental aside,

if you go to a western feminist protest,

you'll see that often each woman would
wear her own style of clothing and she'll

have some groovy slogan,

some hilarious thing like 'Patriarchy
sucks but my boyfriend does even more'

It's something a bit
quirky, but in South Korea,

all their feminist protests,

they're all totally colour coordinated
with all the same banners and all the

same slogans because I think this reflects
their strong culture of collective

harmony and strength and unity
and no one wanting to stick out.

So certainly they're doing
feminism in their own way,

but it has been incrementally
successful emboldening other women.

And just this year they've got this
anti-harassment law, and for example,

and feminists were part of the anti
president, anti the military rule thing.

So I think there have been some
important strides for women's welfare and

status and protections from male violence
as a result of feminism without any

normative claims.

This would explain another
strange observation of mine,

which is I think it's so bizarre that
K-Pop has groups instead of having

any individual stars. It makes total
sense to me that they have special schools

where they train people from their
teen years to become celebrities,

and it kind of makes sense
that they want to invest.

The companies that do this want to
invest across a bunch of different

personality types so they can tap
into lots of different audiences.

But the group ...

that seems so strange because obviously
over here our biggest celebrities are

basically all solo acts.

Like Beyonce had to leave
Destiny's Child ... I think ...

Taylor Swift obviously.

Yeah, Destiny's Child. Come on.

It's before my time.

I think that's a brilliant
point, Aria. Absolutely.

I think there is this strong reverence
for the group and we can get into the

history about why that
might be. I totally agree.

Another thing that I was thinking could
be the reason why the feminist backlash

seems quite big in East Asia
is their dating markets are so

so skewed. So they've got the
history of sex elective abortion,

but what I didn't realise is obviously
because you have a norm that men

are older than their
girlfriends and wives,

because they've got such a low birth rate,

it's even more enhanced because
you've got a smaller generation below,

and then also then you
have the queuing effect.

So you'll have groups of 30-year-old
men waiting to see if the next set of

younger women want to go out with them.

So that seems like something like 15/20%,

even if you have like a 100%
coupling up amongst women,

15/20% of men would be permanently single.

I can see why men in
that position are less

open towards, I guess,
respecting women's complaints.

Could you unpack that a bit?

Why would a hundred percent of women
coupling up not lead to a hundred percent

of men coupling up?

You've got more men than women.

Because of sex elective abortion?

Because of sex selection.

So that was, so yeah, a hundred percent.

So South Korea historically had
skewed sex ratios because parents

preferred sons, they
were going to earn more,

and also they brought prestige
and status in the family.

They do the ancestral rituals, though
South Korea no longer has that sex ratio,

but yes, certainly for the existing chunk
of men in their twenties and thirties,

they face the world's worst dating market.

But here is where culture again is really,

really important because then men go
onto online message boards and they vent.

They vent about when you say one is you
have that personal experience of being

ghosted ignored,

and you may be in a pretty crappy job
and you have pretty low status in a

hierarchical firm where the
bosses treat you like crap.

So your life is pretty crap in many,

many ways in a culture that is incredibly
status orientated. So in South Korea,

you really have to be in the top
decile to feel a much greater degree of

happiness.

So South Koreans are usually
pretty miserable unless
they're in the top decile.

And Thomas Stahel has
shown this brilliantly,

and that's why East Asians are much
more unhappy than you predict from their

level of GDP per capita because they're
only happy if they're at the top.

And so if you are bottom
a man in the lower deciles

one, you are demographically doomed.
Women won't give you the time of day.

Your bosses treat you in
incredibly inferiorly.

You're constantly bowing and
kowtowing and doing all this nunchi.

And then on top of that, you go to
these message boards and you say, "oh,

women are awful," and everyone is agreeing
with you and everyone because you're

in this very single sex
orientated environment everyone
is constantly agreeing

with. And that's an important underrated
point that South Korea has a very

strong history of single sex
education or single sex classes.

So a lot of young men won't spend that
much time with women And they don't have

sisters. Great point, great
point. So I think this is really,

really important that male
female friendships can be
a really important part of

building empathy and understanding.
Just in this conversation,

look how Sam is building
empathy with this perspective.

He's being transformed in this moment
and becoming this radical feminist.

So if we talk and share and
discuss ideas that can help

build commonalities and understanding,
but if you are just constantly separate,

you're an only son, you're going
to a school with other boys,

then you're ranting on a message
board with a bunch of other men,

sharing your perspective on those
message boards are not just showing

solidarity with you, but also,

I mean you've read Hawon Jung's
wonderful book Flowers of Fire,

and it's all about this vitriol
and this sense of vengeance in

humiliating and getting revenge of women.

So your whole cultural environment
is totally saturated with pretty

steep misogyny. And then you get all
these feminists protesting on the street,

which is like this attack to all your
ideas of your expectations of how you

should be treated. Then it
triggers this counter reaction.

At a personal level how much does this
affect the ability of men and women to

couple up?

That kind of thing probably is
somewhat relevant in the west,

but I don't think it's deterministic.

You sometimes get misogynists and
feminists in relationships together.

It's not the most determining factor.

How big of an issue is
that in someone like Korea?

I think that there are
many prior constraints to
coupling up. So for example,

this more gender segregated,

this environment where you
don't have so many male friends,

this environment of people being much
more work orientated. So for example,

if we look at Pew surveys
and what people value,

it's all about money and
work rather than say family.

So it's certainly a shift in
values about what people want.

So when people are left to their own
devices and not forced into arrange

marriages, they pursue
what makes them happy,

which increasingly seems
to be economic advancement.

So those seems to be prior constraints.

When I interviewed Koreans
on precisely this point,

they'd often say that the people on the
message boards are crazy extremists,

but the people that they meet in
ordinary life are not like that.

And that obviously they could
be a consumer taste. So I think

the online radicalization might
be downstream of other things,

though it's certainly going to be a
friction if you internally perceive men as

against you. How do young Asians
date do they have dating apps? So

in my interviews in Korea,

people prefer to do blind dates where
your friends are setting you up.

And I think that's partly associated
with networks of trust and also ideas of

propriety. So East Asia has always had
a much stronger culture of idealising,

females, chastity.

So the idea of just meeting up with a
man who you've never met and no one in

your network knows, I mean if we can
reflect on it, it's a pretty crazy,

it's a pretty crazy radical view.

So you've got this one shot interaction
with no motivation to be nice afterwards

because it won't affect your
future interactions and a
state that sort of allows

impunity for male violence,

that's a risky maybe potentially
disreputable thing to do.

So people tend to set their friends up.

I guess if people then have largely, and
this might be the core of the problem,

they have largely gender segregated
schooling and friendship networks.

Does that mean that, well,

I guess some people don't have friends
of the opposite gender and they're ...

Not, it's going to create some
friction. You might have some cousins,

some networks from work, for example,
work networks could be an example.

But also another really important thing,

and maybe this is something we
want to get onto later, Sam,

is how many of the evening activities
heavily involve a lot of alcohol,

which isn't necessarily a fun, conducive,
welcoming environment for women.

So if we go out in Britain making social
environments more welcoming to women,

women will be more likely to
want to socialise with you.

So did they used to do arranged marriages?

Yes. Oh, totally.

So when did that finish?

Great question. So East Asia
is patrilineal exogamous

which means that descent is
followed through the paternal line,

but you marry out,

so you are not marrying within
your immediate circle of relatives,

and instead you are forging business
or relations with anyone in anyone.

And so over the 20th century, as we've
seen rising education and urbanisation,

young people flock to the factories
or to do office clerical work,

and they increasingly mixed mingled
built their own networks and families

were more permissive of this because that
exogenous culture doesn't motivate you

to stay within the group exactly.

The same as in the west.

Then western Europe has exactly the
same kind of tradition right up until,

I mean to the present day, basically.

Western Europe never had
arranged marriage though.

But it does have the pattern of descent
through the male line and exogamy.

So it has not clan-based
business relationships,

not clan-based marriage.

You're marrying outside of your family
and you're creating businesses outside of

your family. So it is very, very
similar to Western Europe, right?

I wouldn't say so. I'd say the
patrilineal emphasis is much,

if you look at clan
structures in East Asia,

you might find that only
the men are named. Wheras,

I can study my entire family history
going back several hundred years and every

woman will be named.

So every woman is recognised as an
important part within a family lineage in

South Korea,

maybe a hundred years ago it might be
seen as disreputable to say the woman's

name, the wife's name. So this idea
is much, much more strong. I mean,

in Europe, women could still inherit
property. You might want a male to do it,

but women could still inherit property.

Interesting.

Because it is striking though that
it's unlike a lot of patriarchal

traditional societies where they are
very clan-based and they are very much

based on the family as
not just the family unit,

but the economic unit and the extended
family as being like that's how trust

goes. It's really striking
that according to your work,

at least East Asia doesn't rely that
much on the extended family or as much as

let's say the Middle East does.

Well, I think this happens in
conjunction with economic growth, right?

So if you have low economic growth and
everyone is living in their village,

then you have this very strong
patrilineal clan structure,

and then you have the ancestral
halls in China since 1536,

communists could build
their own ancestral halls.

So you have these very strong clans,

especially in the rice growing regions
of southern China where you need lots of

people to collaborate,
building irrigation,

et cetera. So you are all
cooperating within the unit.

You might be building club goods
together, you need a bridge,

you build it within your clan.

There's this wonderful paper by Grief
and Tabellini all about how people are

collaborating, building these club groups.

You might even build for
defences or something like that.

You do it all within your clan,

but then when you get economic growth,

there's an incentive to go to a city.

There's an incentive to build all these
diverse networks and you can build

guanxi,

which is the idea of mutual
relationship of reciprocity and trust

and taking care of one another with almost
anyone. So it could be a school mate,

it can be a guy you met on the street,

you can build guanxi with anyone in China,

and that's very radical from a more
endogamous like cousin or clan marriage

system.

Why do you think that's happened in
East Asia, but not in North Africa,

the Middle East, maybe South Asia?

Right. Great question.

I think that could be primarily
due to state power and prestige. So

certainly in the Song Dynasty,

it was actually illegal to marry
someone within seven relations,

and that's similar to how the Catholic
church in Europe banned cousin marriage,

whereas in the Middle East,
north Africa as Arab, well,

I should be careful that
we don't have genetic data.

So I don't know precisely when the Middle
East became adopted cousin marriage.

That said,

one hypothesis is that
the Bedouin camel riding

Arabs always idealise cousin marriage
because they were lactose tolerant so

they could ride their camels and drink
lots of milk without getting sick.

But the camel riding Bedouins were
at the top of the social hierarchy.

They've got camels, everyone
thinks they're great.

So other Arabs adopted this system because
you're getting this special lactose

tolerance.

Then the Arab Islamic armies were
incredibly successful in conquering and

they became the ruling group. Then
everyone is adopting the Arabic language,

Arabic customs, your
Arabic and Arabic patron.

So all those regions that were
once under the Umayyad caliphate,

they now have cousin marriage.
Is that the coincidence?

I welcome a geneticist who goes
back to 400 CE and tells me whether

they've got cousin marriage.

But I'll tell you one little exciting
bit of evidence that you would like Aria.

So we do have some genetic data from
Central Asia and they find that in,

for example in Uzbekistan,

precisely the time that the Uzbek
started settling as converse with being

nomads, that's when they started adopting
this more endogamous marriage system.

So it's possible that as they started
living in towns when they also

simultaneously adopted a bunch of
Arabic practises, they're like, oh,

this is the cool prestigious thing to
do. So I think in my analysis of history,

what I do see is this conjunction
between state power, the ruling elites,

they use wealth and extraction to create
whatever they think is prestigious,

and when they spread you're like, oh yeah,

you have a bit of cousin marriage and then

it becomes culturally
celebrated. If you meet someone,

you might say your father's name,

you might be able to recite all the
people that was in that lineage or wedding

celebrations. They'll talk about their
entire lineage and they'll recite.

I mean, they'll be tremendously proud.

And this idea of being so proud of your
clan and wanting to have that loyalty

and rebuild up your clan,

so you get this sort of cultural
persistence through pride and children's

socialisation and loyalty.

So the answer might be that those
regions have a strong cultural

fashion for a cousin marriage that
East Asia doesn't have in by the entire

degree.

Totally. If you ask a Chinese
person today, they might say, oh,

it's unlucky to marry someone
with your same surname.

Yeah.

So these things can get a bit sticky.

When did East Asia start
to become monogamous?

Great question.

So elites all over the world have
always enjoyed a bit on the side,

a bit of sexual variety and concubines
and East Asians were no exceptions,

but around I think 1900 you'll see more
modernising reform some stipulations

against having concubine
stipulations against polygamy.

So they had concubines
but not multiple wives.

So there would've been some variation,

but certainly concubines would
be more common. But again,

this is only an elite thing,
not so common for the majority.

And when does this begin to fade
away or when does this break down?

So over the 20th century, I think we've
seen the rise globally of monogamy,

even in the Middle East and Egypt.

It became very uncommon over the
20th century to have multiple wives,

and that may be partly
fashion, partly finances.

How do people treat
casual sex in East Asia?

So it seems that the average
marriage age is about 30,

but from the polling I've seen at the
average age of losing your virginity is

like 20 or so. So clearly
it's happening somewhat,

but they seem like a much
more prudish culture.

Certainly there's always been
this very strong ideal of female

chastity in particular. I mean, if
we go back to Confucian literature,

it's certainly elevated. I mean,

there are even these stories of
exemplary women from the Tang Dynasty,

and there'll be stories about women who
threw themselves off a cliff rather than

be raped, the woman who cuts off her
nose. So a man does not assault her.

The greatest thing in the world,

the greatest woman in the world
is one who preserves her chastity.

So you are elevating it in status
and you're saying it's very,

very bad because if you've
got a patrilineal system,

you want to retain everything within the
male line. And so in marriage markets,

you would seek women who are
signalling their chastity.

Fun story in South Korea,

they even had this little game of like
a seesaw where women would jump on their

seesaw so they could see over the
wall to their house because that's how

secluded some of the Samurai elites were.
That's how much they valued seclusion.

Some of those samurai elites
even practise a form of veiling.

What's married life like in an
East Asian culture like South Korea

for both men and women
compared to single life,

if they're not at the bottom of the
social pecking order, let's say.

Right? So if we look at
nationally representative data,

certainly we might see a big gender
gap in terms of share of care,

work like cooking, cleaning,
women doing much more. Also,

we might see a sense of
women working at high rates,

but often earning less. So you're
likely to see a woman on a lower status,

lower rung job in career.

She'll be set for the non managerial
track and doing a larger share of care

work.

And I think a really crucial part
of East Asian culture is even though

they've increasingly celebrated this idea
of female independence and freedom and

careers,

that their ideas of romantic love
and emotional compatibility and

deep devotion to each other
are still much weaker.

So Western Europe has had these very
strong ideas of romantic love for maybe

250+ years. And if a man
does not love his wife,

if he's not devoted to making her happier,

then maybe he doesn't have that sense
of empathy that she's at home doing the

washing up while he's out
partying with his mates, drinking,

and then he comes back drunk and has
expects her to deal with it. So I think

that expectation in
terms of a sense of duty,

I do my duty and that's her
responsibility is slightly different.

And that sense of a lack ...

of limited care and compassion may
actually discourage some people from going

into marriage.

If you don't think you're going to be
loved and treated and revered as any that.

That's said, of course
there's huge heterogeneity.

I've interviewed Chinese woman, this
one young woman. She said, my husband,

he cares about my dreams.

And he was willing to move cities so
that she could pursue the job that she

wanted. And romantic love is such
an important and underrated example,

a driver of gender equality because
a man who wants his wife to be happy,

he wants to support all her ambitions,
it really makes a huge difference.

Something that's noteworthy to me
is that East Asian women in America

are three times more likely to marry a
white person than they are another East

Asian. Why?

So my suspicion though I haven't done
research on interracial relations in the

US would be that if white American
score is much more gender equaled and

with more ideas of romantic
love and share and compassion,

then women will get a better
deal out of marrying a white man.

That'd be my instinct as well. I guess.

Does that mean that you're
familiar with the concept of, by.

The way,

I should say the reverse could also
be true that if men want patriarchy,

then you might get it more for marry and
East Asia? So it goes both ways, right?

Yeah. There are happy and sad reasons
for it to be happening, I guess.

So one hypothesis I've heard about East
Asia's general problem with declining

birth rates, and I'd love
you to grade this hypothesis,

is that over time the status and
wellbeing of women outside of marriage

has risen. They are more likely
to be able to get good jobs.

They're socially more
celebrated. They basically,

it's a much better thing now for a woman
to be single than it was 50 years ago

in a lot of East Asian
countries, whereas relatively,

the status and wellbeing of women in
marriage has not risen at the same rate.

So the trade-off is much larger than
it used to be. So women are much,

much more reluctant to give that up and
go into a marriage where in some cases,

as the way you've described it,
they're kind of almost slaves.

They're toiling away doing housework,
they're not getting any support.

They maybe have to give
up their jobs naturally.

Who on earth would want to make that,

especially if there's no
romantic love involved,

who on earth would want to make
that sacrifice? They defer marriage,

maybe they don't marry at all. And
the natural consequence of that,

because very few people have children
outside of marriage in those cultures is

you just get far fewer children. How
accurate is that story, first of all,

and how compelling do you think that is?

How complete is that as a story
about declining birth rates?

Firstly, I totally agree with this idea
of thinking about trade-offs, right?

What are my options?

So 50 years ago there was massive
stigma of being left on the shelf as a

spinster, right?

Even the CCP used to demonise and
vilify these women 10 years ago as

leftover women because it was
really trying to disparage them.

This is a great example of how state
power can be used to change the procedure

of something. And that's clearly
changing on Little Red Book.

Women celebrate and glamorise this sort
of single life of doing independent

thing and having enjoying their freedom.
So a hundred percent, I'm with you.

I'd also add that
entertainment now increases the
desirability of having fun by

yourself. My only resistance would be
not to say that married women are slaves.

I think that would be
going too far. Right.

So it's a more gender unequal marriage
though. Not at that level. Yeah.

So I broadly agree with that
freedom, that framework. Totally.

And in terms of ... as a
share of explaining the ...

at least East Asia, the
level effect of East Asia,

they have very similar problems
in some ways to the western world,

but obviously South Korea has a much
worse birth rate problem than most western

countries.

Yes.

As a share of explaining that
gap, do you think it's sufficient?

Do you think it's a big part of the story?

Oh Totally. There's a wonderful
paper, Jisu Wang, who is genius.

She shows that as South Korea has
seen a rise in unmarried women,

it very closely tracks
their decline in fertility.

So a lot of the difference is
a rise in singles. In fact,

it was reading Jiweon Jun's
paper. I read her paper,

I did all my interviews in Hong Kong and
Korea, and I was like, wait a minute,

matey, this thing is global.

And it was by looking to study
in East Asia that I came up.

Then I started putting all the
dots together. I'm like, wait,

marriage is declining in Turkey
and Iran and the us. I was like.

So talk about this a bit more.

Oh, right, yes. So

everyone is talking about why is fertility
plummeting all over the world in the

past 15 years,

and many people on the left will
blame house prices, cost of living,

and all those things are true, right?

As we all migrate to primary productive
cities, housing's very expensive.

That's a problem that
policymakers should address.

But is it the primary reason
why people aren't having kids

there? I'm sceptical because people have
always done things that cross money.

It really just depends
on their priorities.

And then when I looked into the data more,

I found that it's not just about people
remaining as couples and not having

children.

It's primarily about that marriage rates
are just dropping pretty much all over

the world, with the exception of say,
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia,

and it's this rise in the us.

55% of people under 35
are still unmarried,

uncoupled. And this is happening
across Latin America. The rise ...

I was in this year, I was doing
a month's field work in Brazil,

then I was over in Costa Rica two
years ago. I did a month in Mexico.

It's happening all over the world
that many people are staying single.

So people are putting the cart before
the horse when they're talking about baby

bonuses. So let's look at Sweden,

fantastically glorious social democracy,

wonderful supports for
working mothers and nurseries,

but 60% of Swedish
households are single adults.

You're not going to get many babies
if people live by themselves.

I will disagree on the baby bonuses point
to some extent for two reasons. One,

there's not very much opportunity costs
between that kind of policy and let's

say a coupling policy.

Maybe there is if we have a fixed amount
of spending and we could spend it on

getting married, we could give marriage
tax breaks or things like that. But two,

I think actually the best way of
spending money personally is on marginal

babies.

And I would not spend money on giving
people money for their first baby.

And my interest here
is I have one baby, so

I would be the beneficiary of that.

But I think it's looking at where are
people most likely to have an extra

baby but not having an extra baby.

That way you can take a given amount of
money and concentrate on a much smaller

number of babies. Because the big
problem is for any baby bonus,

we're spending a lot of money on
existing babies who will be born anyway.

And what we care about is babies
who will not be born if we don't.

Totally ... totally.

So effectively,

where is the most elastic baby to
use a very strange bit of terminology

. Yeah, they're very
elastic, very rubbery.

I think that is third or fourth
babies. So I think that probably what,

and luckily, or maybe unluckily third or
fourth babies account for a tiny share,

like one sixth or one
tenth of total babies.

So we can give six times more for just
rewarding the third baby you have,

or ten times more for just rewarding
the fourth baby you have than if we were

giving you money for the first
baby you have. That's basically it.

I just want to make a
defence of baby bonuses.

Let me clarify. I apologise.

My resistance to the baby
bonus is only the status quo

current amount.

All I'm saying is a descriptive claim
that currently the amount of money offered

doesn't seem sufficient
to increase Finland's.

China just this year has announced that
they're going to give the equivalent to

like £500 per couple, per baby per year.

That's not enough. So I'm sure
macro economists can work out what

is the best way to increase,
and I think economists would ...

We can think about babies as a positive
externality that parents hugely invest

in the child's care and
education, and in return,

we give this future future worker that
the rest gives the rest of us pensions

and that's great. And so we
should work out as economists,

how do you internalise this externality?
How do you incentivize parents?

And then this could feed into marriages
because if there is a greater economic

incentive to have babies,

then you might be more likely to
want to couple up. So the only way to

potentially rethink your ideas, if
we see male loneliness as a problem,

you might want to motivate marriage,

and you might not do that by
motivating the fourth baby.

You might also want to give people a
reason to get married in the first place.

So there could be different
things to think about.

And I leave that to the
macro economists to work out.

I also mean, sorry, we're now getting
onto what I love talking about,

which is tax. But

another thing you can do is joint
filing, right? Is to basically allow,

most married couples treat
their income as a single pot.

Most married couples probably
do keep some separate income,

but they mostly pay the same mortgage.
They pool their income when they need to.

They maybe pool their income permanently.

So it's very economically irrational
to not treat them as a single economic

unit. It's very economically
irrational, for example,

to say the man has a personal
allowance of this much and

a standard allowance of this much.

You as a woman have this much and this
much because they're not acting in that

way and they're not making any
economic decisions in that way.

And then when they make decisions about
who should work and how long they should

work for,

they're not thinking in
terms of themselves as
individuals. They're thinking in

terms of a single economic
unit, the sort of tax system.

If you wanted to be more in line with
the way people actually act and the way

people actually think about their
finances when they're in a married couple,

and this is actually I think a really
significant reason that marriage should be

the way you do this and not
long-term unmarried relationships.

They often don't pool their resources.

Marriage is often the trigger
because marriage is legally,

basically legally you do pool
your money when you're married,

allowing joint filing and allowing
for single pooled tax allowances,

single pooled benefits and
things like that would be a,

I think economically efficient.

It wouldn't be a subsidy in
the sense I consider a subsidy.

It wouldn't be about bribing people to
do anything or rewarding people for doing

anything.

It would be about removing
what is currently an
irrationality in the tax system

that basically says,

do this thing that you would never do
normally if you were able to just ignore

the tax system. So allowing joint
filing would be, I think a really,

really significant way of going with
the grain. It wouldn't be distorted,

it wouldn't be a big subsidy.
It probably would cost a bit,

but it wouldn't cost that much,

and it would recognise the way people
act in marriage with their finances.

So I think... I know
what you're going to say.

Swedish 1970s tax reform.

Okay, great. We'll get onto their ...

we can get onto their transaction
tax after this. There's so much.

Swedish tax hist history is
surprisingly interesting.

They did a wealth tax
that they got rid of.

They did a transaction
tax that they got rid of.

So this book that I would really
recommend is the Swedish Theory of Love,

and it's basically about the
cultural evolution of Swedish values.

And one of their arguments is that Swedes
have this strong culture of priding

independence. And as the social Democrats
did in it over the 20th century,

was a state enabled
independence. And in the 1970s,

feminists really pushed for individual
taxation and they said this is very,

very important that each person should
be in control of their own income in

charge of it.

So I just want to push back and say there
is a huge amount of cultural variation

and the way that we understand our
incomes even after marriage could vary

globally. So that's just ...

Yeah, I'm talking about the UK and the US.

I don't know how it is in other countries.

It's a bit more extreme.
Actually. In Britain,

we have two stages where you are
penalised for getting into a stronger

relationship. So if you're
receiving any kind of benefit,

if you move in with your partner,

that means that your benefits will be
assessed totally and they'll probably be

taken back.

So that's probably one way in which some
people are stopped from getting into

relationships with each other. And then.

Although I think that is how it should be.

So my argument is that once
you move in with somebody,

you are in fact a single
economic unit. But keep going.

Yeah, that's fair. I
guess. Yes, we do do that.

And the other case we do that is also the
same problem where at the upper end of

the income distribution, if you are two
property owning people who get married,

you then have to pay capital gains tax
on one of your homes if you sell them.

So I've got one friend who's getting
penalised for this. He owned a flat,

his wife owned a flat,
they moved in together,

and now he has to pay capital
gains tax on his original flat.

So in fact,

you're completely right about this
benefits point certainly in Britain,

and I think the US does
have some joint filing.

It doesn't have full joint filing.

My understanding is this is actually
much more extreme in the US,

but it's harder to tell a coherent story
because they've got so much variation

state by state.

But you can have very severe penalties
for moving in or marrying someone.

So in Britain,

we treat benefits on a household
basis including things like childcare

subsidies. So for example,

if you are an unmarried woman
with a child and you move in with

the father of your child,
your collective income,

or in this case,

if one of you earns over
let's say £100,000, your
childcare subsidies go away,

all of the childcare benefits we calculate
on the basis of you or your live-in

partner, we don't do
anything like that for tax.

So all the money we give to people
we calculate on a household basis,

I think that's correct.
I think that's rational.

I think that actually reflects
how people are and act.

Although I disagree with some of the
specific applications that I've mentioned,

the facts that we don't do that
for taking money away. I mean,

it's really just a revenue raising thing,
right? There's no rationale for that.

There's no economic
rationale for that at all.

So I think there's an interesting question
about how big a financial incentive

would need to be in order to
motivate marriage and fertility.

And I think it's important to go
back to your previous framework, Sam,

of these trade-offs, right?
What are people's options today?

And clearly many women are
willing to take a pretty mighty

economic hit if you just move in together,
you're saving on rent or mortgage.

So people are already
willing to take a huge,

huge hit to their incomes in
order just to stay single.

So whatever your tax
incentive would need to be,

it would need to grapple with
that reality that people are so

entertained, amused that they're
willing to go with it alone.

I'm interested in what the
potential cultural counter

currents to what we're talking about are.

I think that there is a very, very,
Scott Alexander has written about this,

others have written about
this. There is a very,

very persistent trend where
whatever becomes fashionable among

middle classes becomes unfashionable
among the most high status people.

They want to show that they're
not middle classes economically,

but people I call upper normies people
who like Radiohead and people who go to

small plates, restaurants
and things like that.

If you are more sophisticated
socially than those people,

then you want to show that you're not
like them. Right now what we have is among

that kind of the lump end elite right now,

among people who have
superficially sophisticated views,

but actually not sophisticated views
like Radiohead is the sort of pinnacle

there. Or maybe they think
like Drake or Kendrick Lamar,

they think Kendrick Lamar is really,
really cool or something like that.

The people who are more sophisticated
than them who want to show off that

they're different to them will want
something. So right now, among that group,

not having children is very,
very, very popular. Right now,

your average university graduate is
going to have children very late if they

live in a big city, if
they're culturally conscious,

they're going to have children
late. The people who are above them,

the people who are genuinely cutting edge
and genuinely trying to show off that

they're really, really sophisticated
now, I think have some kind of desire.

And I actually do perceive
this to be happening,

to show off that they will have loads of
children and to show off that they are

a very pro-family and that
they have big families.

And I perceive the kind of nascent
green shoots of it is becoming high

status now to have a big family.

And if you're rich and if
you're culturally elite and
culturally sophisticated,

and I wonder if that might be something
that is a countervailing trend to

everything we're talking about.

I would push back,

name me one Hollywood film that
features a family in the past 10 years,

past five years.

Hollywood is downstream
of what I'm talking about.

But in terms of what we culturally
celebrate, what we give proceed,

where do we see families
being celebrated? I can't.

I see a lot of mommy blogger
type content on TikTok.

I think you see a lot of, I don't think
this is particularly culturally elite,

but there are subcultures,

there's the whole kind of
weird trad-wifey type stuff.

I don't want to say that's weird.
There's the whole trad-wifey stuff.

So there are some very charismatic
people who make bread. I totally agree.

But that hasn't led to any,

no labour market data seems to be
suggesting that's actually a trend.

You couldn't find anything in the world.

There'll be a couple of people who
are very charismatic at doing it,

whether it's dancing with
orangutans or whatever.

But as a social scientist,

I want to look at the data and
see if there's any evidence of it.

And that doesn't seem to be catching on.

Now if large families
become more popular, no,

that's all for the good.

But I think that the question
is going back to this framing of

trade-offs. Now, in a world where
women have reproductive freedoms,

which we all strongly support,

how can you make it for men and women
that that's a more desirable, attainable,

ideal compared to the alternatives?

And so there macro economists need to
work out what are the right economic

incentives. And this could
be through the tax system.

So some countries are experimenting with
ideas that give people a tax rebate for

having more children because then
that's one way of ensuring that you're

motivated to earn money, not
keep a secluded housewife,

and also have more children.

And how can you make sure that
schools are much more family friendly?

I do work in Brazil, in
Indonesia and Malaysia,

and all these people are suffering
from the fertility crisis,

but their schools are
running from eight till one,

which no woman in the world
is going to say, yeah, sure,

I'll have the afternoon of having to
manage my kid because then I can't get a

job. I can't do fun things. I
can't have a pathway to status.

So we just need to make that our entire
society is much more family friendly.

If it's true that the job child
trade off is important, do we see

maternity leave and flexible working?

Do we see any of those policies
having any effect on child rearing?

I just want to go back to one more thing
before I move into the maternity leave.

I was in Indonesia for a month and I
did this one interview with this woman,

and I'm always,

I start my interviews with very innocuous
questions and she tells me that she's

married. And I say, oh, do you
have children? And she says, yes,

I have two children. And immediately
started crying and I was like, oh,

I'm so sorry.

And I tried to console her and she just
really shared this very strong sense

of fomo. And she was
like, on social media,

I see all my friends who are doing much
more exciting things and I'm just stuck

at home with these kids and it's so
boring and tedious and I have no life

and I have no friends. And one kid
was like two, another was five.

And in Indonesia they only
really start school at age seven,

and even then it's only the morning and
she just felt that her entire life is

now just drudgery.

So Betty Friedan famously wrote about
this in the 1960s saying the problem that

has no name,

that all these baby boomer mothers
were trapped in drudgery and

they were being schooled into
thinking this is fulfilment and glory,

but actually it was mind blowingly boring
And she herself is having this sort of

Betty freedom moment that it's
just grim. It's just totally grim.

When you see on social media that people
are posting their pictures and they're

adventuring and they go into the city
and they're being glamorous and she just

feels like an unglamorous loser supported
by a husband that doesn't really care.

So I feel that we need
to empathise with men and

women's perspective.

And here I think we should be very careful
to recognise that it's also men who

are stepping back from
marriage and family. And so
often the discussion is, oh,

why aren't women having more babies?

That's always the complaint from the
far right. And I'm like, wait a minute,

mate. When I do my interviews
in Brazil, in Latin America,

and even in the US, there are lots
of, if you look at Pew survey data,

half of us singles saying, I
can't really be bothered to date.

And lots of Latin American guys don't
want the responsibility of the family.

If you think of it, marriage is
a big responsibility for men.

The idea that they're supposed to hand
over their income and get all these kids

when now they too have these trade-offs.

Men too have these alternative
ways of spending your time.

Call of duty is pretty fun.

So you've got all these fun things
you should be doing with your time.

And also, of course, men don't
have the biological clock,

so they have much less pressure
to have children young.

They have much less pressure to
couple up with women their own age.

So there's much, much, much more freedom.

And the downside risk
for men is much lower.

They can leave it until they're fourty
and then change their mind and say they

do want to have kids, which women find
it much, much more difficult to do.

And there's also a collective element,
and I think this is really important.

So if you are a group of
friends, if they all have kids,

then it could be great fun to be a
dad because you all go to the seaside

together, you'll have a picnic, you all
have fun and you share the care work.

Everyone makes a dish of sausages or
whatever, but if no one else, yeah, Aria,

if no one else is, if no one else
has a kid, then what do you do?

I was just laughing at your idea of men
hanging out, making sausages together,

like the default activity.

Oh, Let me tell you, wait a second.

I want to defend my men and
sausages thing because actually,

so I did field work in small town
Alabama and in small town Alabama. No,

I want to take you there.

So in small town Alabama where I have my
little green bicycle and I'm cycling up

all these hills and I'm going to Baptist
Bible study and I'm hanging out with

all these families and they do a lot
of barbecues and all the other families

come round and it's great fun,

and they do all these layers
upon layers of different dips and

barbecues and everyone brings their kids
and dads are bringing up and talking

about trucks.

That's true abundance by the
way, when I talk about abundance,

that's what I'm talking about.

Sausages, babies, right?

Yeah.

So everyone's having great fun and it's
a normal part of the community that

everyone enjoys, but if you are
not in that kind of community,

if you don't have those kind
of club goods, then one,

there's less fun to have in your own
baby. Two, you don't feel like a loser.

Now, do you want to talk
about being a loser?

I want to talk about what you've just
said because I think this is where housing

constraints are important.

So housing constraints are important
in one way because they drive up costs,

but with my housing theory of everything
hat on I'll say is they're much more

important because they constrain and
limit agglomeration people's ability to

locate around each other.

Normally we think of agglomeration in
terms of economics and what jobs you But

agglomeration is hugely important when
it comes to living near your friends,

living your people your own age,

living your people in
similar life places as you,

the more constrained housing supply
is, the more difficult that it comes,

the harder it is to
coordinate with each other.

So what you're talking about
I think is completely true.

People are much more likely
to have children if other
people physically close to

them have children. Remote work
by the way, doesn't change this.

People often think remote work will
eliminate housing shortages. It won't.

If you can locate, as
people in Alabama can,

cheaply and comfortably around

people like you, the same age as
you with similar interests to you,

who also have kids or are also sort of
on the brinkof having kids is so much

easier to collectively share the cost
of having kids and kind of collectively

raise the kids there is
how I think by the way,

housing shortages drive the shortage
of children much more than I think

housing costs by themselves do.

In the town where I was doing my field
work actually had seen a growth in

population.

People were coming in because they
thought it was a fantastic place for

families.

You can buy a house and everyone else
has kids and it's a wonderful safe

environment, which is great for everyone.

Yeah, people Aria and I know have
talked about can they find a town

accessible to London but far away enough
that it's cheap for them all to move

to.

It's so difficult to coordinate and do
that. First mover disadvantages enormous.

If three of you go and everybody
else says, you know what?

Actually I decided I didn't want
to do that, you're screwed. Right?

Yes.

It's incredibly hard to fix that problem.
It's a coordination problem above all.

It's really easy if everywhere in London
where basically if the cost of going

there and other people not following
you is low because you're centrally

located, you can get to your job easy.
This is true in all major cities.

I think, and I think this is one really,

really big and underrated reason
that housing constraints do,

I think affect people's ability to have
kids and the drudgery of having kids.

When you have kids alone in a big
city, it's very, very difficult.

You don't have parents nearby,
you don't have grandparents,

you don't have people your own age. So
you are completely correct. By the way,

I completely agree in.

All things, the.

Housing shortages are not the
determining factor by any means,

but I think they are underrated as a
factor by people who have thought about

this a lot and who have a
lot of understanding because
I think they think on the

economic margin, but they don't
think on the agglomeration margin.

I want to slightly, and if you've got
more questions in this vein, that's fine,

but I really want to get onto this
question of business relationships and

both how different,

but also how similar in
many ways contemporary

East Asian gender norms
are within businesses.

You've already talked about women being
invited to strip clubs with their male

colleagues and being humiliated
for not enjoying that.

Yes.

Obviously we know that the kind of
drinking culture of going out really late,

drinking ridiculous amounts,
maybe staying out all night,

sleeping on the side of the
road and stuff like that.

Can you talk about that a bit?

I'm also kind of interested in how
similar it feels to me to Western norms up

until the sixties or seventies.

Yes. Okay,

so I'm going to rattle off a couple of
books which I think are really fabulous.

So Ed Slingerland, he's got a
wonderful book called Drunk,

and it's all about how
feasting banqueting drinking,

it lubricates social relationships.
We all relax, we have a good time,

we build these bonds and I think
especially in business cultures like

Japan or South Korea where everyone
has to be incredibly reserved,

incredibly careful about what they say,

then businesses actually value an
opportunity where everyone can loosen up

and say what they really feel because
that's what does this person really think?

If all day you're so guarded,
you need to know, well,

can I trust this other person?
Another important element,

and I've done so many interviews
with this with Chinese businessmen,

is if the state is a primary
party of economy with

state owned enterprises,

their products are not necessarily the
most competitive on price or quality. So

how do you get other people to buy your
products? You send them little gifts,

you take them out on evenings to
build up social trust and rapport.

It is so interesting.

I interviewed this guy who worked for
a major car company and you say, yeah,

when I was working at the
state, state-owned enterprise,

having to go for drinking every single
night because it's like you're applying

your clients with more and more, a more
and more drink to build up that rapport.

So yeah, so there are a bunch of reasons
why it goes, aren't you? We enjoy it,

it's fun. You give these
gifts, you build up rapport.

And going back to the 1960s and
70s, we built up this institution,

we built up this resistance against it,
and people started complaining about it,

ruining your weekends and evening Sam.
And then we decided as a culture, no,

we should try to reduce this.
So for example, at universities,

it would now be uncommon for academics
and students to go out drinking together

because we might see that as a dangerous
environment that people do things they

don't really mean. There's
also lawsuit potential.

South Korea hasn't developed
that resistance and
institutional reform. So yeah,

there's been an institutional
divergence certainly.

But I do wonder how
much is lost. Actually,

I think it's clearly what
you're describing is excessive.

Everybody knows that feeling when you're
on a work trip and you go back to a

hotel room for like five minutes,

so then you have to go back out or go
drinking with your colleagues who maybe be

wonderful, but you're just tired.
You just really wish you could sleep.

Everybody knows that feeling I'm sure,

but there is a lot of value to that,
right? There is a huge amount of value to,

as you've mentioned, maybe not
getting drunk, not blackout drunk,

not getting completely shitfaced,
but losing your inhibitions,

showing that you are willing to lose
your inhibitions with each other.

There's a lot of trust
building there. It's fun.

You get to share in a fun experience,

and I am kind of interested
in how much is lost

by that kind of culture
becoming riskier and riskier,

not through any individual's
fault, but for example,

for men on a night out there is just
much less risk of them assaulting each

other,

for example. There's much less risk of
them having extramarital affairs with

each other depending on who they are.

But probably there is less risk than if
it was two women and two men of the same

age, let's say.

Not because any of them is a bad person
necessarily unless assault is taking

place, but once one of the
costs or one of the downsides

of a much more gender equal workplace
is that that kind of interaction is much

more difficult to have.

And I'm curious about whether there
are benefits to the East Asian approach

that maybe we neglect or maybe we ignore.

That's a great question. I will
apply threefold. So first of all,

I make no normative claims about
which culture is best or worse,

and I a hundred percent agree that
opportunities for men to spend time

socialising together, enjoying relaxing,
building bonds, hugely important.

Richard Reeves makes this
point that male bonding super,

super important and we all want to combat
let male loneliness because that has

massive, massive ill effects. That said,

many of the men I interviewed like
the one I previously mentioned,

it's just excessive.

If you combine this with a hierarchical
firm where it's the boss saying that

you've brought to drinks,

it's not that necessarily people are
going on these work trips for fun.

They go in there because the
boss is encouraging you to drink.

It's a hierarchically ordained thing.

It's not a fun thing that people
are doing for their own enjoyment.

It's a pressure coming from the top in
an incredibly hierarchal environment.

South Korea and Japan, people bow in
Japan, you bow to your company bosses.

I interviewed one guy,

he said his Japanese firm people
had different coloured lanyards,

and if you don't have the
right coloured lanyard,

you're not allowed to speak at a work
meeting. Very, very hierarchical systems.

You can't just suppose one
person doesn't want to drink.

I gave the example earlier of
having the work meeting and saying,

I think we should stop that.
You can't resist individually.

So one that's it's not the men are
necessarily doing this for their own fund,

for their own leisure on top of this,

it actually creates a number of
gender inequalities in the workplace.

And this is something I think
is totally underexplored,

but I certainly see it
in my own interviews.

The companies of course
select when it's sales work,

strictly business to business
interfacing. You select for the guys,

for the people who are going
to be able to drink the most,

right?
And who is that men.

But it's the sales jobs which are often
paying more because that's how you're

bringing home the bacon
and for the company.

So the companies are often advertising
these sales jobs specifically for men.

And even if women are
in those environments,

imagine it's a 90% male environment
where they're drinking very heavily.

It's not a nice environment for any women.

And many women gave me these terrible
horror stories about how they were being

groped by their bosses.

But then in a culture whereby there's
impunity for male sexual assault and

harassment and whereby individual
self-assertion is strongly

condemned and a woman wouldn't
feel that she's supported,

it's very difficult to speak out.

So then of course these men feel they
can do it with impunity and add to that

the people are drunk, so
they're not really thinking
rationally about it anyway.

So it creates a very toxic workplace
in terms of gender inequality and I

don't think that many men enjoy it.

So actually the Chinese government sees
this as a problem and over recent years,

especially since COVID, they've massively,

massively cracked down on it really
trying to reduce the drinking.

They think it's excessive. So while I'm
with you that male bonding is great,

many East Asian governments think of
this as a little bit excessive now.

So I'm not really saying that
male bonding is great, by the way.

I'm also not saying that this
is good because it's fun.

So if I was running a company,

all I cared about was if I
was a pure profit maximizer,

didn't care about the wellbeing of
my employees or anything like that,

I would want my employees to have very
trusting relationship with each other.

And I think one way of getting those
trusting relationships is these kinds of

drunken experiences
together, perhaps. Anyway,

I don't know if this is actually
true, but it's possible.

I don't think it would be possible for
them to have those kinds of experiences

in a mixed gender environment.
I think it would be, as you say,

it would immediately lead
to harassment or assault,

which would be unacceptable
for a number of reasons,

even as a pure profit maximizer.

So if that's right,

then one of the costs of a gender
mixed workplace is that you cannot

sustain those kinds of very,
very close bonding experiences.

And so you lose that kind
of workplace trust building,

not because the women are making
anything less trustworthy,

but because you just can't have that
kind of experience. It leads to assault,

it leads to extramarital affairs,

it leads to drama basically. That feels
to me like I think basically true or

that feels to me like that rings
really true to me. And it seems like,

and we don't need to get too normative,
say one is better than the other,

but it seems like maybe an underrated
advantage of the East Asian approach

relative to Western approaches.
I also kind of wonder if

this doesn't need to be a
male thing. I wonder if this,

I mean you could have nights
out of women together.

There's no particular reason. It has
to be men going out drinking together.

It's just once you add
men to that, to that,

it basically becomes a
completely different dynamic
and one that no workplace

wants to encourage. Yeah, I
think it's hard to measure.

I think it's probably difficult to,

I'm certainly not saying that that
cost outweighs the benefits of genix

workplaces, but it does feel like maybe
a cost that people don't recognise.

Okay, I will refer to a wonderful
book by my friend Robin Dunbar,

the evolution of religion, and
let's go back to chimps. So chimps,

they build their strength as
a group by having more chimps.

You want as many chimps as possible so
that if you are attacked by a predator,

you can be big strong
chimps and attack them.

Now the problem is as your group
of chimps gets bigger and bigger,

you have a problem of mistrust
because who is that chimp over there?

What are they up to? I
don't really know them.

I don't really hang out with them.

So what they do is they build trust and
reciprocity through grooming, very calm,

lovely grooming, like one
stroke for three seconds,

and the sensual activity bonds the group.

And Robin Dunbar argues that
throughout human history,

maybe going back 200,000 years,

we've always developed these collective
synchronous rituals as a way of building

trust within a community. So
it could be choral singing,

it could be religious trances, it
could be shamens doing their thing,

getting groovy. It could
be going to church,

it could be some kind of away a day
thing that maybe you do at Works in

Progress. I dunno what you get up to.

Women still groom each
other as well, right?

That's actually quite common bit of female
bonding that you will do each other's

hair or something like that.

Yeah, so there's been very cruel
experiments where they look at people

both on a rowing bike and they measure
their exertion and they find that if you

do the rowing bike together, you actually
are much happier and higher dopamine.

Check out people's brains,

check out their biceps and find out
that we love doing sports activities.

When people play sports together, there's
sense of the sense of team spirit.

So there are other ways send people
out for a game of cricket, Sam.

So I think there are alternative ways
that humans have always built a strong

sense of whether that's
national pride, local pride,

without necessarily involving alcohol.

Alcohol is just one means of
building something that we all value.

I would definitely rather drink
with my colleagues than groom or

ritualistically dance with them.

I think there are, but that is,

we're talking about the median company
and I'm really kind interested in this

from a historical perspective.

I think comparing Chinese steel
companies with western tech

companies doesn't really
tell us very much.

I am curious though about what
has been lost or what is lost

when workplaces generally,

I mean the point of Mad Men is
that this is not a good world.

The point of Mad Men is superficially
nice, but actually it's miserable.

Everybody hates each other and themselves,

and yet there are elements of that world
and there are elements of the world of

a hundred years ago
where you had much, much,

much more basically gender segregated
socialising and gender segregated

business dealings that
facilitated trust building,

facilitated maybe disagreeableness
among men for example.

That seems to have been lost and
isn't really recognised as such.

It's not widely accepted
that disagreeableness
within companies I think is

much, much,

much lower now or it's much less
tolerated than it was even 30 years ago.

And I don't really have a strong,

I don't think there's a strong
policy conclusion there.

I think the benefits almost
certainly outweigh the costs there,

but it is interesting that
those costs maybe are there.

I think that any form of
creative disruption has costs
though my only caveat on

your claim would be that
a hundred years ago,

it wasn't so much as gender segregated,

as very patriarchal in that all
the ways of gaining prestige,

whether it's through work
or politics or religion,

were dominated by men Women were left to
the lower status grunt work of raising

your family.

I have two slightly
contradictory thoughts on this.

Go for it.

The first is that I definitely agree,

there are certain things that I feel like
you can only really say if you've been

drinking that could be
helpful in a workplace.

Did I actually do that well or were you
just being nice to me or am I actually a

good manager? Things like that.

Where it's much more comfortable to ask
those questions I think when you've got

your inhibitions lowered.

But the other thought is if they have
this really hierarchical structure where

it's actually quite difficult
to be candid with your boss,

then it seems like maybe they lose a
bunch of those advantages that you might

get from the drinking.

So what I would say is that if
we want a work environment where

people are open, where
Aria can say to Sam, Sam,

I'm really not sure about
this business decision.

Or if our goal is to have a
situation where Ari can say, Sam,

I'm not sure about this decision.

There are ways of way making
workplaces more inclusive liberal.

And here I think that liberalism is
incredibly important that we show tolerant

for dissent and for
example in Scandinavia,

which is incredibly egalitarian and a
consensus oriented culture where the boss

might be cycling to work
not in a corner office,

but hot their skin with everyone else.

If you create a more open egalitarian
environment and you signal willingness

for dissent, et cetera, then I think then
you are able to hear from all voices.

So many company leaders will want dissent
because they want to identify those

problems.
They want to know what's working.

So you can signal that you at the top,

let me hear from all these
kind of critical people.

It's very important to recognise
these trade-offs and for liberals to

be seen as recognised in
these trade-offs. Right?

Going back to your point
about disagree ability.

If I was sat here as a
feminist and said, no, Sam,

you are outrageous and
you should never say that,

then we can't have those conversations.

But any kind of process of social
change does come with of course some

disadvantages.

And then you want people to express
them openly so that we can think, okay,

Sam does have a point
that we do. Any business,

any organisation wants people to share
their concerns, share their frustrations.

So if you've got some people who
are very sensitive to that level of

disagreement and might
could take it badly,

what can we do to have the best
of both worlds? Is it to encourage

the more disagreeable men to
express themselves more carefully?

Some of us can just be very diplomatic.

So this is something that I try to learn,

express some of my criticism
in a more measured way,

but also for the people who are much
more sensitive not to take it to heart.

So if your colleague says this,
run it through one of the llm,

see if that's passive aggressive or not.

So I am fully here for having open
expressions of dissent and that's

how we build a better society
not to sound sort of. Yeah.

Okay. People often say that's one of
my real strengths of the workforce.

Incidentally,

I'm often praised for my ability to
disagree with somebody without them

realising that I'm
disagreeing with them at work.

It's said to be a real strength of mine.

Oh no, maybe.

You wouldn't agree with that.

Well, I haven't observed it, but I'm
worried now that I'm being manipulated.

No, no, no. Works in
Progress operates in a much,

much more open way than we don't
have the disagreeability problem.

I don't think.

We're all a little bit disagreeable
probably is basically it. Yeah.

But when you're in a large organisation,

you obviously are dealing with people
who don't have that culture and who are

in fact from a different
culture. They're from California,

one of the most alien cultures
like west of the Tiber.

And you have to be as respectful of that
culture as you would be of any other.

Well, that was very, very interesting
and luckily if you want to read more,

you can go to Alice's Substack at The
Great Gender Divergence on Substack,

or you can wait until 2027 and read
her book, The Great Gender Divergence,

which is coming out. Then if
you want to hear more from us,

go to worksinprogress.co
and thanks for listening.