Consider the sex ratio
There’s this article from a few days ago at RT. I’m very wary of RT as a source, seeing as how it’s owned by the Russian government, but with that said – it’s still an interesting article.
‘Male-dominant migrant wave threatens Europe’s gender equality’
As European nations continue to accept thousands of refugees, officials are failing to consider that most young adults entering are males, a fact that could have a huge impact on gender equality, says Valerie Hudson, professor at Texas A&M University.Critics of Europe’s loose and liberal policy towards refugees flooding its shores were galvanized by the harrowing news out of Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve.
I don’t think “loose and liberal” is the right description, especially not for all of Europe, since most European countries are quite cautious (to put it tactfully) about accepting refugees, and some are downright harsh. But, moving on…
RT spoke with Professor Valerie Hudson on a subject that European leaders are apparently ignoring as they continue to open the door to thousands of migrants from North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East with little or no concern for the sex-ratio makeup of the arrivals.
RT:The majority of migrants arriving in Europe are young unmarried males. How could that affect the overall social and cultural landscape on the continent?
Valerie Hudson: Over two-thirds of the migrants in this wave are male. As far as Sweden is concerned, I put to one side adult males because one never knows if adult males may be bringing a family subsequently. I looked primarily at older teens – 16-17 years old – and what I found is that most of these are unaccompanied and over 90 percent are male and that means a significant alteration in the sex ratios for Sweden for that age group. My calculations show that there are now approximately 125 boys aged 16-17 for every 100 girls aged 16-17 in Sweden. That is highly abnormal. It is significantly more abnormal than China, whose sex ratio for this age group – due to the problems of the one-child policy – is only 117 boys for every 100 girls aged 16-17.
I was quite startled when I read that claim yesterday. I don’t know if her stats are correct or not – but if they are, it seems unnerving. Maybe such a small age group means it’s just a blip, but I don’t know.
RT: Norway has a government-run program teaching migrants how to treat women. Meanwhile in Germany, we now have the Cologne mayor calling on women to alter their behavior around men. Which is the way to go?
VH: That’s an excellent question. What boggles my mind is that no one in Europe has been asking this question. I’ve been studying societies with abnormal sex ratios favoring males for over 20 years… and I can tell you on the basis of my research that societies with highly masculinized sex ratios, that is, with far more men than women in the young adult age group, are unstable. They have higher rates of violent crime, property crime, crimes against women. Women’s freedom to move about in an unconstrained manner is curtailed and there is also a very high demand for prostitution and trafficked women to fill that need, that demand. And so I think someone should be asking whether the alteration in the sex ratio for Europe is not a tragic loss for the women of Europe, for ideals of gender equality in Europe and so forth.
I hadn’t been thinking about this subject in terms of a distorted sex ratio. I wonder why it’s happening, if it is. Because of male privilege or because males are more likely to be targets of violence? I don’t know.
This is more of a biological problem than anyone wants to talk about but then so are much of the problems being discussed of late as opposed to cultural other than there not being enough culture to mitigate the biological.
Most adults entering Europe as refugees are males from misogynist cultures, that’s the problem, not sex ratios. Where are the women and children? Given the huge size of Europe’s population this is a statistical blip, unless of course, the uncontrolled migration continues indefinitely, then the Europeans will have far more serious and immediate problems than sex ratios. I haven’t noticed any similar reports from China about mass predatory behavior by young males.
I have heard such reports from India though. There definitely are studies of the way the missing women translate to even more violence against women. I’ve blogged about it, though it was a longish time ago.
Basically fewer women means more kidnapping and trafficking and forced “marriage.” For the obvious reasons.
@3 Ophelia,
Yes, so have I, statistically there are many millions of females ‘missing’ from the Indian birth records.
@4
Yes, again, however a misogynist culture would intensify the problem, China will be an interesting study, it seems farther down the path of modernisation than India.
Why more young males migrating? Because young women in the source countries aren’t easily able to go anywhere or do much of anything.
Just about the only Middle Eastern/North African women I’ve seen in the pictures of migrant floods have been either accompanied by male family members or mothers with children. The latter, I think, is explained by such an overwhelming desire to save their children, they’re willing to tell the culture to go stuff itself.
But more on topic: I’ve been thinking Europe could probably mitigate some of the unwanted effects of migrants if they granted asylum only to women and men the women designate. That would probably also deskew the sex ratio in a hurry.
All this might be a moot point anyway, since the Europeans are systematically closing their borders. I noticed a report that the Danish government is considering the policy that the refugees should contribute to the cost of their ‘room and board’ ie any assets they held over a specific amount would be confiscated by the government.
Here’s Valerie Hudson herself:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/europe-refugees-migrant-crisis-men-213500
H/t Helen Dale.
@quixote
I wonder, too, whether there’s a time-lag element to this. Here’s the thought:
For whatever reason, if a family can only afford to send one person to Europe, it’ll be a guy. Why? So that he can act as a pioneer. Once he’s settled in a job – however crappy and grey-market – he’ll be in a position to support his family, who would join him later. Of course, the rest of his family might never make it; they might not survive, or our refugee might decide that he’s better off without them (especially if the marriage was arranged), or any number of things. They might even decide that sending a remittance back home works out better than bringing more people across. But. still, if there is a gender imbalance, that’d likely explain at least some of it.
Can we try basic arithmetic here? And a bit of context?
The estimate of population for Germany (2013 figure) is 80.62 million. Their population hasn’t been growing very fast of late so let’s be very cautious and say 82 million on 1 January 2015.
Since then approximately 1 million refugees have arrived. For all the reasons we can work for ourselves the plurality of these are youngish men. Pause to remember that the majority who first went to what is now the USA were men, ditto Australia.
So that gives us 82 Germans for every refugee, many of those refugees being women, children and older men.
There is little doubt that something very nasty happened in Cologne but what we have to date is anecdotal evidence of what did happen. We also have anecdotal evidence that, at the time, the police were as much use as a set of chocolate teapots.
We also have anecdotal evidence that people in large crowds before this event have had similar unpleasant experiences and that, again, the police were not a lot of help, not really interested at all.
The two facts we have are that the Mayor of Cologne thinks that women should behave differently rather than men behave at all and that, as admitted by their chief, the police were not prepared and were not effective. News junkies will recall that at the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Cairo, during the Arab Spring it was the police themselves who were subjecting women to “virginity tests” before they would allow them into the square!
So what we have is a global problem, a problem with almost every society and culture, which was somewhat exacerbated by the sudden arrival of young men from different societies, on a particular date. Though some of those men behaved badly this is not a one-off, not an event beyond human comprehension – just a bit of an outlier in a common pattern.
If we address it on that basis we’ll have far more chance of preventing a recurrence, which, I presume, is what most of us want.
@6 But more on topic: I’ve been thinking Europe could probably mitigate some of the unwanted effects of migrants if they granted asylum only to women and men the women designate.
Canada’s policy on migrants and refugees are centered on aiding mostly young families with small children. In some cases grandparents are also allowed in. Very few young single males make the cut because so many in the past have meant trouble.
@10 There is little doubt that something very nasty happened in Cologne but what we have to date is anecdotal evidence of what did happen.
How can you call the hundreds of young women who came forward and gave testimony about being assaulted, groped, robbed and raped ‘anecdotal’?
Mass rape is but an anecdote? Rotherham remained anecdotal for two decades as 1,400 to 1,500 underage girls were gang raped. Let’s not ‘Rotherham’ Cologne
So what we have is a global problem, a problem with almost every society and culture, which was somewhat exacerbated by the sudden arrival of young men from different societies, on a particular date.
Yes rape occurs in just about all cultures, but one would have to go back to the end of WWII to find anything even approaching the scale what happened in Cologne. The mass rape culture we witnessed on New Year’s Eve in Germany ( it happened in several cities) is pretty much non-existent in other societies, at least in peace time.
There is one common denominator in all these attacks, whether they be rapes in Cologne, Sweden and Rotherham or les tournantes in France.
It’s not about young men arriving from ‘different’ societies, it’s about the uncontrolled migration of young men from one culture in particular.
And when it comes to protecting people from this ‘culture-that-can’t-be-named’ the entire state apparatus, be it the police, the politicians, the judiciary or the social services, all are so many sets of chocolate teapots.
India and China have distorted gender proportions because of infanticide, medical neglect of girls, and abortion for sex-selection. Is there any hint that any or all of these are happening in the Islamosphere?
I have seen numbers about the sex-ratios of recent migrants. I don’t have them at hand, but they were much more extreme than 125/100. So yes, the street-crime. jihad-recruitment, and women’s safety issues are serious in Germany-France-Italy etc.
But what about the women who are abandoned in Syria, Iraq? Surely they aren’t all Family Members waiting for Mahmoud to wire that he’s landed a job. This must mean that thousands of women have been more or less abandoned in VERY dangerous conditions.
India is part of the Islamosphere, don’t forget – it has the largest Muslim population of any country except Indonesia.
But what about the women who are abandoned in Syria, Iraq?
They need to be fast-tracked for entry into either America or Europe. And even at that, those women trapped in migrant shelters in Germany are still in great danger.
John @ 11,
With refugees it is international law which determines who is eligible. Depending upon what well founded fear of persecution they have there could, in many cases, still be a preponderance of men of military age if, for instance, there is forcible enlistment into armies or militias.
With migrants the potential host country has some choice who it takes but both totally closing your borders and very evident discrimination (pro-Christian or anti-Roma, say) will bring the government under quite a bit of pressure. It may, for instance, make that government ineligible for financial help from richer countries or groups of countries.
I am not using the word “anecdote” in an attempt to say we should disbelieve the women. I am using it in exactly the same way as is used with complaints of sexual violence made by the long-term residents of any country, even the most technically advanced. Depending upon the jurisdiction, it is anecdote until there is a formal statement already checked by the prosecutor or in some cases a formal statement backed up by other evidence. We have seen many people pop up – here and elsewhere – who want to change that to “it is anecdote unless and until there is a conviction” in such cases. We regularly see women complain that they were dissuaded from making a formal statement, in some cases threatened into dropping a complaint.
Look at how the press is handling the multiple complaints against Bill Cosby. Look at the serious studies of the lackadaisical treatment or the variable treatment of complainants. And how many tens of thousands of rape kits are still lying unprocessed in police storage units across the US?
Whichever legal system we are talking about it should be knocking itself out to treat every complaint seriously and every complainant with equal fairness. Most police services, including the UK’s, have some way to go on that. Minority victims as well as minority suspects both get a different response, however much we may deplore it.