by Roseann Lake
To test the validity of her theory, Hwang analyzed the results to the following questions from the Japanese General Social Surveys:
1.If a husband has sufficient income, it is better for his wife not to have a job
2.A husband’s job is to earn money; a wife’s job is to look after the home and family
3.A pre-school child is likely to suffer if his/her mother works
She found that the probability a man disagrees with the statements increases by about 5 percentage points if his mother worked when he was young, and by more than 10 percentage points if his mother is a college graduate. In other words, her findings support the idea that a mother’s work experience and education have an impact on her son’s gender attitudes and expectations from marriage, suggesting that men who had working or college-graduate mothers may be more likely to have more egalitarian relationships with their wives. (There was no statistically significant effect based on the father’s educational attainment.)
While it’s encouraging to see how mothers can help shape their sons’ understanding of traditional gender roles, it could also be problematic, argues Hwang. If much of the country’s educated, working female population is not married or having kids, they can’t contribute to producing a new generation of modern males to help break the cycle of marriage-market mismatch.
Fortunately, women like Youna Lee are finding ways to mainstream alternative ways of thinking. As one of the leaders of the Unni Network, an NGO dedicated to feminist cultural activism in South Korea, she works alongside three hundred other members to serve as a support group for women who live outside the traditional marriage system. These include heterosexual Gold Misses, but also lesbian and transgender women. “Women are individuals. Our existence is not limited to playing the role of wife and mother within a nuclear family,” she said. “This is the attitude we’re trying to foster in our society, where unmarried women are still seen as abnormal.”
To promote its message, the group hosts events, festivals, and also pioneered a “Mouths We Want to Sew Up” mock awards ceremony. Past “winners” include Lee Myung-bak, the former president of South Korea, who once said, “I’m against abortion, except when the child is handicapped” and assemblyman Choi Yeon-hee, who earned a dishonorable mention for harassing a female reporter and later trying to justify it by saying, “I was so drunk that I thought she (the reporter) was the hostess of the restaurant.”
In Plan B, a publication published by the Unni Network that was partially funded by the Seoul Metropolitan government, readers are invited to take a quiz measuring their fortitude to survive life outside the traditional confines of marriage. Based on the results, they can either be classified as soft tofu (in need of some stir frying to toughen up their skin); a watermelon (more resilient, but still a work in progress); or a walnut (ready to triumphantly face the world!).
For women who aspire to have a family but have been discouraged by the cost—professional, monetary, or otherwise—it should also be acknowledged that Korea’s government has made earnest attempts to improve work-life balance. It has increased paternity leave—although only a very small percentage of new fathers have taken it—and contributions to public and private childcare. Subsidies per child and tax breaks have also been introduced, although there is room for more.
“The government needs to be more aggressive and focused with policies regarding childcare and work-life balance,” said Hwang. “If they can help ensure that children are taken care of while their parents work, changes in traditional gender roles can follow.”
Although it’s uncertain how long a transition of that magnitude might take, Hwang is hopeful. “My grandmother still can’t believe that parents these days like girls as much as boys,” she said. “But when people saw that girls were doing just as well in school and in the labor market, their thinking changed,” she added. “It can change again.”
It’s National Night
Although governments all over the world have done crazy things to either restrict or boost population growth, Singapore—a tiny island nation of 5.4 million people—has by far been the most creative.
Since 1984 (a very Orwellian year), Singapore’s Social Development Unit (a very Orwellian name for a government institution) has been hard at work trying to get the country’s most well-educated women married and pregnant by similarly well-educated men. This push stems from the notion advanced by Singapore’s former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew: “If you have two white horses, the chances are, you breed white horses.” In a nation as ethnically diverse as Singapore, which is home to a vibrant Chinese, Indian, and Malay population, “white” was a poor word choice, which the prime minister only made worse by adding that, occasionally, two gray horses breed a white one, but that they were “very few.”
At first, the Social Development Unit (SDU) operated under what is now known as the Ministry of Social and Family Development. It was created “to promote marriages and nurture a culture where singles view marriage as one of their top life goals,” in reaction to a 1980 census which revealed that a large number of highly educated Singaporean women above the age of forty were still unmarried. The census also showed that the more educated a woman was, the fewer children she had, which the Singaporean government seems to have interpreted as a plea for help. Prime Minister Yew expressed concerns that a decrease in the number of children born to educated women would lead to a social and economic downturn, and promised that the government would take strong measures to reverse this alarming trend.
In addition to the unfortunate coincidence of having an acronym that could stand for “single, desperate, ugly,” the SDU didn’t get off to a roaring start. The graduate women it targeted were offended that their personal lives had suddenly become the target of public discourse, while non-graduate women—and their parents, in particular—were upset that the government was dissuading graduate men from marrying them. They were especially angry that their tax dollars were being used to fund activities like SDU-sponsored cruises, barbecues, dance lessons, and other matchmaking events, which graduate civil servants sometimes even got extra work leave to attend. A year after the SDU was formed, a sister organization called Social Development Services (SDS) was set up to foster marriages among “gray” or non-graduate singles. Interestingly, this was all happening while Singapore’s neighbors, China and South Korea, were in full-blown population-control mode.
In its first year of operation, the SDU spent nearly US $300,000, and its efforts resulted in only two weddings. Despite this low conversion rate, as time went by, the numbers of couples introduced through SDU activities began to climb. By the early 2000s, the organization reported that it had facilitated over 30,000 marriages. It’s hard to say how many of these marriages wouldn’t have happened without the SDU, though the numbers helped make the existence of the organization easier to justify.
Realizing the value of shedding its institutional origins, in 2006, the SDU was opened up to the private sector, and instead of organizing dating events, it has since become more of an agency that accredits individual operators. These include “Lunch Actually,” a platform that relies on a team of dating consultants to partner professional singles over a midday meal, and the more explicitly titled, but now defunct, “Get Them Dates.” In a sign that its elitist graduate-only system was eroding, in 2009, the SDU merged with the SDS to become the Social Development Network, or SDN. According to the SDN website, this was done to “reap economies of scale, enlarge the outreach, and provide more opportunities for singles to meet.” Its mission is “to be a credible, leading agency and one-stop resource centre on relationship skills, social interaction opportunities and information.” The SDN website features a seemingly endless list of activities such as leather-crafting lessons, terrarium-making workshops, and whiskey and chocolate pairings. For the more active, it also holds events like “Why Walk When You Can Salsa?” and “Be My Bait”—an outing in which singles go prawning. Most of these activities are subsidized by the SDN, which funds up to 80 per
cent of approved dating projects through “The Partner Connection Fund.” In addition to being abundant, the SDN’s offerings are inexpensive. A weekend getaway to the charming colonial Malaysian town of Malacca that includes transportation, two meals, and a night of shared accommodation—in one of many private villas built on stilts over the water and arrangd in the shape of a giant Hibiscus—costs US $130.
Still, these government-backed efforts to boost marriage and fertility rates haven’t been sufficient to stymie the “silver tsunami,” or the fact that by 2030, one in five Singaporean residents will be over age sixty. The country’s current rate of 1.29 births per woman puts it at just a hair under South Korea and a tenth of a point under Japan. This number is far off track from the government’s desired population of 6.9 million people by 2030, but for a place as geographically small as Singapore, more modest population growth might not necessarily be a bad thing. Already one of the most expensive cities in Asia—especially in terms of housing costs—Singapore would not be able to accommodate another 1 million people without severe overcrowding, and its infrastructure would struggle under the weight of a million more bodies to support and transport. While these concerns are unsettling to the thousands of citizens who expressed their discontent with a government white paper that detailed the country’s plans for growing its population by a million people over the next decade—four thousand Singaporeans even went to Speaker’s Corner, the only place on the island where people can apply for a license to make a speech and “protest”—from an official standpoint, they are secondary to the threat of slowing economic growth. Despite being an important financial center, Singapore is half the size of Greater London. A shrinking workforce and a growing population of dependent citizens—who happen to have among the highest life expectancies in the world—could jeopardize its economic momentum; an outcome that the government is trying to avoid at all costs.
To get a sense of just how fervently the population agenda is being pushed, it’s worth noting that every Singaporean prime minister since Lee Kuan Yew has been a proponent of it. In August 2001, the Straits Times (which has been called a government mouthpiece) published a twelve-page special section on how Singaporeans should “rise to the occasion” and procreate on National Day, a holiday celebrating the country’s independence from Malaysia in 1965. It even included tips on how couples could use newspaper to tape up the windows of their cars for greater privacy while partaking in their national duty. (A more permanent solution would have been to make housing more affordable/abundant so that young couples didn’t have to live with their parents.) This, in a country where chewing gum has been banned since 2004 because officials want to maintain cleanliness and order in public spaces, comes as quite a shock.
Taking things a step further, in 2012, National Day in Singapore was marked by the release of a rap song produced in partnership with Mentos (yes, the mints) that urged married couples to “let their patriotism explode.”
“I’m a patriotic husband, you’re my patriotic wife, so let me book into your camp and manufacture life,” goes one of the more memorable lines of the song, which is reminiscent of something Usher might sing.
Other highlights of the song include “Singapore’s population needs increasing, so forget waving flags, August ninth we be freakin.’ ” After a male voice sings about the appeal of a “baby bonus,” a female voice responds, “I can’t wait to buy a $900 stroller” in a sultry contralto.*
While the entire population of Singapore is often called upon to participate in its “national duty,” women—as the ovens that can bake future buns—are given a bit of extra attention. As part of an SDN sponsored activity, four final-year university students were awarded money to create “The Singaporean Fairy Tale,” or a retelling of fairy-tale classics with slightly more agenda-serving morals.
The retelling of Snow White reads as follows:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall
Who in this land is the richest of all?
Snow-White, beyond the mountains with her seven children
Who learn, play and give her kisses every day.
Snow-White is the richest of all.
The fairy tale is accompanied by an image of a resplendent Snow White surrounded by her dwarfs (who seem to have magically morphed into charming, non-grumpy, sneezy, sleepy, or dopey little blond boys in matching pink short-sets) and the following caption:
“Sperm cells can live in your reproductive tract for 3–4 days, so having sex two to three times a week would mean that when an egg is released there will be sperm waiting!”
The retelling of “The Golden Goose” is also worth a mention:
The Golden Goose was prized for her eggs
That shone light in brilliant gold
But there soon came a time she could make them no more
Because her egg-making device was rusty and old.
These tales, along with Cinderella, the Three Little Pigs, and Rapunzel, were distributed as leaflets to university students in the hope that they would become educated on “what it takes to start, live, and be a family in Singapore,” as Chan Luo Er, the project manager of the series, told the Guardian.
Instead of assailing its population with directives on how to live, Singapore might be better served by making it easier to live there. Government records indicate that in 2012, over half of the abortions performed in Singapore—where abortion is legal—were on married women. The majority were college-educated women who didn’t want a child because they were still climbing career ladders and were concerned that taking time away to care for a child would derail their professional ambitions. There were also women who already had a child, but decided to terminate their pregnancies because they didn’t feel they could afford another one.
It’s also worth noting that more than 80 percent of Singaporeans live in public housing, which is more abundant, but still not plentiful enough to go around. In addition to being controlled by race—if an Indian family moves out of their housing unit, for example, they will likely be replaced by another Indian family, to ensure a certain degree of balance and avoid racial ghettos—public housing is granted based on marital status. Unmarried citizens under the age of thirty-five are not eligible for public housing subsidies; they must purchase in the private sector, where housing costs are at least double. For this reason, many Singaporean couples joke that being able to apply for public housing is one of the biggest perks of getting engaged.
To further discourage those tempted to live on their own, the Singaporean government offers a segment of build-to-order (BTO) flats. BTOs are priced much more cheaply than public flats on the market—up to $100,000 cheaper—but singles are restricted to buying only the smallest two-room model of them. Likewise, the Urban Redevelopment Authority recently required property developers to limit the number of “shoebox” apartments they build. At less than 500 square feet, these apartments are popular and sell quickly, but as reported by the BBC, new guidelines have been released that require developers to build a greater proportion of larger, family-friendly apartments, in the hopes that a shortage of other options will inspire people to require them.
“You can’t just badger people into having children—they need support,” said Jolene Tan, head of advocacy and research at Singapore’s Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). She explains that although there is growing recognition among local politicians that costs and care are going to be huge factors in people’s reproductive decisions going forward, there is still a very embryonic understanding of gender equality in Singapore. “It is a value that needs to be actively and explicitly promoted from a young age,” she said. “Instituting compulsory paternity leave is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough to change entrenched traditional norms and attitudes.”
Mandy Li, a professional matchmaker from China who is based in Singapore, agrees. “Men in Singapore struggle to find Singaporean women who correspond to the type of wife they’re looking for,” she explains, a problem she
has managed to turn into a lucrative business. Specialized in pairing Southern Chinese women with Singaporean men, Li explained that since street food and takeaway in Singapore is very cheap, clean, and accessible, barely anyone cooks at home. Unlike in China, where moneyed men must always eat in private VIP rooms in upscale establishments, men of all socioeconomic classes in Singapore can eat at the same curbside stalls. “They don’t need homemaker wives who will cook for them,” she said. “They want partners—women who will help out with their businesses and support whatever industry they happen to be in.” But many Singaporean women don’t want this—“they have businesses or careers of their own that they prefer to pursue,” added Li, which is where Chinese women come in.
Generally speaking, Chinese women are more willing copilots to their husbands’ careers, and when the added bonus of immigration to Singapore is factored in (along with the prospect of cleaner air, safer food, and better social benefits), according to Li, many a happy match can be made. “They’re just more compatible,” she said. As a native of China’s Fujian province, she herself is a testament to the success of the Chinese female/Singaporean male marriage model, and has been in the business of matchmaking from her home office in a well-manicured suburb of Singapore for over twenty years. “The men are happy because they have a wife more willing to follow their lead, and the women are happy because they have a husband who is more likely to treat them as an equal,” she said, seated on a salmon-colored couch in her living room, surrounded by photos of beaming couples. “Everyone wins.”
* It should be noted that faced with a similar population problem, Vladimir Putin invited Boys II Men to perform in Russia ahead of Valentine’s Day in 2013. This was an addition to previously held “Day of Conception” festivities, which gave couples time off from work to procreate. Couples that gave birth to baby patriots exactly nine months from Russia’s national day became eligible to win refrigerators, cars, cash, and other prizes.