The restriction of women’s freedom in traditional patrilineal societies emerged from a coordination failure which I call the Patrilineal Trap.
This is not a coordination failure. It is a dysfunctional coercive mechanism. Coordination games can be analysed under the folk theorem of repeated games- i.e. without a coercive mechanism. There is no coordination failure if there is a coercive mechanism preventing convergence to the optimum. Thus, Coercive regimes have to be analyzed differently. Evans sees two growth paths for the economy- one features Industrialization with high female participation (which can be achieved under Patriarchy by fathers sending daughters into factory dorms where they will be strictly supervised) and another features women self-policing their own seclusion under conditions of agricultural involution or precarious cottage industry employment. Women can't themselves coordinate on leaping to the Industrialization option because of the stipulated 'restriction of women's freedom' as well as the fact that the big Industrial employer may face regulatory and other hurdles to match Labor demand to supply.
Clearly, purely by Tardean Mimetics operating at the margin, evil Patriarchs will simply ship off their daughters for ten years of servitude to evil Capitalists, and will only get them released to bear a couple of sons to a pedophile friend or eligible agnate who might either send her back to the factory afterwards or retain her as a cheap source of fertilizer for the farm.
Incidentally, Patriarchs would also want surplus sons enrolled into the Army or bureaucracy and sent off to remote places where they can't spend their pay. This ensures that daddy gets to keep their wages. It also means he has a vested interest in a War which might kill off some of his surplus sons in return for which the Government will give him a bounty of some sort.
On the other hand, if Patriarchy does not exist, but stupid 'activist' Economists and libtard fantasists do exist and get to set policy, then there will be no big factory dormitories waiting to receive docile girls. Nor will there be an effective militarized police to kill or lock up bad actors.
In patrilineal societies, women bear sons to perpetuate their husbands' lineage. This generates a profound anxiety about women's sexuality. Since the paternity of sons must never be in doubt, the slightest hint of sexual activity by a woman outside the confines of marriage constituted a threat to the social order. The entire sense of honour and shame in a patrilineal society is bound up in the sexual propriety of women. Therefore, the whole society is organised around removing any and all doubt about the virginity of unmarried women and the fidelity of wives.
Dr. Evans is British. She may be old enough to remember that Princess Diana had to be a virgin to marry Charles. It was against the law for any man other than Charles to have sex with her because this would endanger the succession. A non-royal baby might end up on the Throne. Further, at an earlier period in British history, a man could sue another man for damages if the latter had sex with his wife. However, there was no 'patrilineal trap' for the UK. Why not? The answer is that men may want some legitimate male heirs but if they can't do the job themselves, they will settle for 'niyogi' insemination- in the UK the classic example would be a guy who gets his younger brother to inseminate his wife so that his son (at that time paternity was legally assigned to the spouse regardless of the wife's sexual history) would cut the younger brother out of the entail! However, once their own 'oikos' is secured, men have no objection at all to a large class of working women providing labor in the fields and the factories or even (in the early Nineteenth Century) down the coal mines.
Patriarchy is perfectly compatible with a helot male class who get the leftovers. Salic primogeniture thrives where the vast mass of ordinary women work hard but receive so little pay that they are obliged to supplement their income by engaging in casual prostitution. A large class of sex workers represents no grave scandal to 'Patriarchy'. Indeed, the Victorian view was that 'an outlet' was desirable for young men of good families who hadn't the capital to embark on matrimony. In France, there was legalized prostitution. A girl from a poor province was welcome to turn tricks in the City till she had accumulated a 'dot'- i.e. enough money to lay out on a small business of her own which would allow her to marry. Bastard children of prostitutes, etc., could be sent to the Foundling hospital where they would either die or, if robust, proceed to enter the army or serve the State in some other way. Rousseau, famously, disposed of all his kids in this manner.
Neither South Asia nor East Asia nor anywhere else was really difficult in this regard. Patriarchy is about one law for patriarchs and another law for everybody else. Dean Jonathan Swift expressed savage indignation when a pair of able bodied Irish beggars had the impertinence to ask him to marry them so they might avoid the sin of fornication! Since when did the lower class gain souls which require the sacrament of marriage?
It is sufficient to 'police' a wife's sexuality for a few months in any year when she is healthy enough to reproduce. Once you have ten sons, diminishing returns set in. After all, sons have been known to bump off daddy to get their hands on his wealth. The safer thing is to have an heir and a couple of legitimate spares and concentrate on raising up a brood of bastards whom you can put to work on your fields or tending your goats or whatever.
Evans assumes 'patrilineal' societies are based on a categorical imperative. They aim at implementing a universal moral code. This may be a feature of one or two Revolutionary Islamic, or other such, Polities. But hypocrisy prevails. Patriarchy likes to keep the price of a knee trembler low. In Iran, there is a large class of 'spoiled' women available for 'mu'tah' marriage- which may last all of one hour! Interestingly, some Brotherhood affiliated jurists suggest this expedient even in Egypt for middle class young people who haven't saved enough to get married!
Why does Evans believe that there can be a 'whole society organized around removing any and all doubt about the virginity of unmarried women and the fidelity of wives?' No such thing obtained in her own country even during the puritanical Victorian period or earlier when a pregnant woman might be whipped from parish to parish so as to prevent her child gaining an entitlement to succor in the Poor House.
Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge or Tess or Jude the Obscure gives a more accurate picture of what constraints faced working class women- who were the vast majority- and how those constraints relaxed as their 'transfer earnings' increased. As Saki would later ruefully admit- 'no one can reform a Bermondsey washer-woman. They earn too much'.
In the UK today, there are some communities which may act in the way Evans describes. But those same communities may be accused of running prostitution rings targeting 'at risk' youngsters. Evans must be aware of this. She must know that Patriarchy, like Matriarchy, represents one law for those within the family and a predatory attitude to anyone outside that charmed circle.
The society she envisages is incentive incompatible and too expensive to police. In practice, what obtains is a large class of prostitutes- who may face some extortion and harassement- and a larger class of working women who are vulnerable to attack precisely because any 'Patriarch' they may be linked to is not powerful enough to protect them.
Of course, once such people are paying enough in tax, they gain incentive compatible collective security. This by itself means that no sexual misadventure threatens their dignity or 'honor'. Consider the lady on Graham Norton who confessed that her dog sodomized her as she knelt in the toilet throwing up after a raucous hen night. She was not afraid that people watching this on TV would harass her or stigmatize her in any way. On the other hand, the door to hypergamy may well have been closed to her. The Duke of Westminster does not want to be seen as getting a dog's sloppy seconds. She might have to settle for a Marquess or an Earl. That's how hierarchy works- and Patriarchy is hierarchical. It's fine if cadet branches have lower ability to engage in status competition. 'Policing' of women is rationed. It's one law for the Prince of Wales and another poor old Andrew- whose wife, to be clear, was not the lady on the Graham Norton show- at least, so far as I can recall.
Evans must know that idealized mores diverge substantially from what actually happens. People, even in non-hierarchical societies, have an interest in lying about their degree of gentility. But, even if Evans was wholly unaware of this aspect of Social Reality, on purely economic grounds, she must know she is telling us a fairy story-
Women were tightly policed and their movements restricted.
Policing costs money. Who will pay for policing half of humanity? Why not police the birds in the air which have an unfortunate tendency to crap on my new jacket- which is why I haven't bought a new jacket for many years though all my existing ones stink of guano.
If a woman was seen as moving about too freely, the ensuing gossip would soon circulate through close-knit rural communities, ruin her marriage prospects, and disgrace her family. In South India, such worries were likened to a boil on the chest.
I come from South India. Every fucking thing is compared to boil on the chest except when it is compared to a boil on the backside. Female IFS officers of my caste can wax eloquent on the topic of 'woman 'ware woman' to equally well married female CEOs. Indeed, even Shiela Chandra- who was on Grange Hill!- has a song on this theme. On the other hand, Chandrika Tandon- perhaps out of consideration to her North Indian in-laws- hasn't released an album whining about the shittiness of Tamil gossips. I suppose, that represents progress.
Despite the grinding poverty of village life, women earning wages away from home was rare.
Why? Because those wages were shit. Raise the wages even if this means productivity has to go up and Neo-Liberalism gains.
Few families wanted to stick their neck out and be the first to send their daughter away, because she might be perceived by the village as promiscuous.
Nonsense! Everybody always assumes your daughter is plying a nefarious trade when not actually tied up in the courtyard. But then, a true Tambram, like me, extends this generous suspicion also to men wot dun bin to Oxford. You can't tell me all dem Oxonians wot talk posh aint rent boys.
Few families want to be the first to experiment with the unknown. Thus, Hindus were reluctant to send a son across the 'black water'- indeed, he would lose caste if he did so- and were similarly reluctant to send their daughters to places where, for all they knew, they would end up coated in cum.
Dr. Evans awards higher marks to the Indians for their less mercenary treatment of women. But, is her view of China charitable, or justified by the historical record?
In northern and southwestern China, rural girls had their feet bound by their families undertaking textile handwork in order to keep them working intensely at the spinning wheel. There was no compunction about treating them like mules or chattel slaves. But when railways brought cheaper industrial goods, families ceased to bind their daughters’ feet, so they could move into new productive activities.
If Evans is right (she isn't. Foot-binding was a strategy for hypergamy) then working class Chinese people were stupid. They should not have bound the feet of their daughters. Instead they should have used manacles and blinkers. This is because, after the girl's arms had become exhausted, they could beat her while she used her feet to power an oil press. Furthermore, they could milk her regularly so as to be able to provide a cheap source of protein to the animals. The hair on her head would of course be harvested regularly- Chinese hair is still in high demand for 'weaves'- while her excreta could be used as fertilizer. I may mention that in the colder parts of northern China, the cost of policing female sexuality could be considerably reduced by yoking up young girls to sleighs used by magistrates and other local dignitaries. Properly whipped, girls can perform just as well as huskies or other sled dogs. Where such girls break a leg or go mad, their carcass can form a good source of protein and animal fat for domestic pigs. Furthermore their skin can be peeled to make decorative lanterns.
Why would rational Chinese peasants maim the feet of their daughters when they could use them in all the delightful ways I have described? Evans, rather meanly, won't tell us. Perhaps Evans is wrong. The traditional explanation for the spread of an elite practice to the working class is the correct one. This was a hypergamy strategy. Sociobiology tells us that a low status family gains disproportionately, in terms of the Price equation, from a daughter marrying up. Thus sons sacrifice so one girl can rise and her mtDNA can spread more widely by hitching a ride on a high status, Genghis Khan type, male gene.
Evans raises the question as to why Indian women fell behind Japanese and Chinese women in gaining factory employment. She thinks it was about 'honor'- though very few in India had any such thing. The truth is known to all Indians with a business background. The Brits weren't that keen on India industrializing and we had a vast cast of 'activists' who would clamor for labor regulations and so forth. Also our Capitalists were somewhat shit and tended to listen to nutters like Gandhi. What this meant was that they couldn't get their hands on vast numbers of 15 year old girls from the Countryside (when I say 15, I obviously mean 'looks like she could be 15 in a couple of years) to work in gigantic factories. They didn't want to hire men because Indian men tend to be bolshie and always want to go the bathroom or have a smoke or get into a fight with a guy from another caste. The Employers wanted girls. They didn't get girls. So industrialization stalled.
The fact is a really big factory is one where the girls are safe. It is in the employer's interest that they don't get preggers and start vomiting all over the place. Once a little money starts trickling home, everybody gets in on the act. A tipping point has been crossed. The better off send their girls to the industrial centers to teach or work in offices. But a class of supervisors will spontaneously arise amongst the laboring girls. They represent a step forward. What happens next is 'dis-integration'- i.e. niche suppliers of parts and ancillary services such that external economies accrue. When this happens you start to get Zhou Qunfei type, rags-to-riches, billionaires. India's Kalpana Saroj- a Dalit with a worse family background than Qunfei- is only worth 100 million dollars. The 'activists' are very angry with her. Kalpana took a small loan from the Government to get started. This means she is a COMPRADOR CAPITALIST! OMG! She is killing us! Neo-Liberalism is raping our children and pooping on our head! Now there is Ram Mandir! This proves the whole thing is a plot! Hinduism was invented in Twentieth Century by Wall Street Jews hand in glove with birds which are pooping on our heads!
Evans may write paranoid shite- after all, she is female, and an academic, and 'Women's Studies' is a branch of 'Grievance Studies'- but she comes to the right conclusion. Letting Industrial Capitalists exploit the fuck out of vast numbers of young girls is the only way forward. Boys should be sent into the Army or paramilitary or be employed as security guards. East Asia rose above South Asia only because it had to be much more militarized. But don't let boys do anything productive or they will turn Bolshie. First get them used to being part of a hierarchy. If they are utterly spiritless- i.e. resemble me- then, by all means, give them the sort of shitty, deeply boring, jobs that people like me excel at. However, 'policing of women's sexuality' must be properly performed otherwise them factory girls may rape me. This is the only sort of gender policing, genuine men- like me- ask for.
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