CNN reports on how the oil spill will damage the Gulf economy:
“As efforts to plug the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico continue to fall short, the stakes for the region’s economy grow ever higher. The numbers being batted around when it comes to how much the oil spill will ultimately cost BP and the local Gulf of Mexico economies are huge. $3 billion. $14 billion. One politician put it at over $100 billion. Continue reading
Update (March 30):
If anyone claims that looking at gender and the way it inflects culture is inherently collectivist, I’d say they need to define collectivism more accurately. The way libertarians define it now, it’s more a term of abuse than a credible unit of analysis, unless it’s qualified pretty heavily.
There is a body of evidence that males are over-represented in highly aggressive behaviors of certain kinds. That isn’t an argument that men are “less moral” or that women are “more moral.” Not at all. For instance, women predominate in certain other kinds of crimes. In studies of child-killing/infanticide, women killers are often represented more heavily when considering certain age groups. Why? Perhaps because children are weaker than women physically and because women spend more time around them and usually have primary care of them. On the other hand, there are fewer female serial killers than male.
The richest financiers in the world are males. That’s a fact. Males are heavily over-represented in the financial industry and it’s a very male-dominated culture. There are complex reasons for that.
But they’re irrelevant to this post.
Do women benefit from welfare-state programs and set-asides and does that affect voting patterns, consumer culture, tax policy, and welfare policy? I’d say, with some caveats, probably yes.
[But conversely, men might benefit from crony capitalism on Wall Street and defense boondoggles, and indirectly, through set-asides from women that benefits families].
But, again, that doesn’t have much to do with this post…
For all I know, some of these financiers were pushed into reckless behavior because their wives were shopaholics or suing them for everything they had.
But, once again, that’s not this post.
So, this isn’t gender bigotry. It’s simply one way of looking at the influence of our own collectivist tendencies (masculinity as it’s constructed, as well as masculinity as a biological reality) on Wall Street culture.
Original Post
Deal Journal tracks down another outsider who spotted Wall Street’s corrupt practices ahead of the pros. Turns out she’s a woman too. There’s something about estrogen that doesn’t lend itself to mega financial swindles. We’re waiting for the Harvard thesis on the gender behind Wall Street’s agenda.
I hate to come to this conclusion, but a lot of the hot-air, recklessness, ego, hype, aggression, and cut-throat competition really does sound like the product of a culture that conflates masculinity with viciousness and braggadocio. Paulson, Weill, Rubin, Dimon…no women in the top sharks. But when you look at whistle-blowers and expose writers, women stand out: Ann Williamson, Padma Desai (both on the Russian crisis) Lucy Komisar, Meredith Whitney, Janet Tavakoli….
“Deal Journal has yet to read “The Big Short,” Michael Lewis’s yarn on the financial crisis that hit stores today. We did, however, read his acknowledgments, where Lewis praises “A.K. Barnett-Hart, a Harvard undergraduate who had just written a thesis about the market for subprime mortgage-backed CDOs that remains more interesting than any single piece of Wall Street research on the subject.”
“Barnett-Hart’s interest in CDOs stemmed from a summer job at an investment bank in the summer of 2008 between junior and senior years. During a rotation on the mortgage securitization desk, she noticed everyone was in a complete panic. “These CDOs had contaminated everything,” she said. “The stock market was collapsing and these securities were affecting the broader economy. At that moment I became obsessed and decided I wanted to write about the financial crisis.”
Back at Harvard, against the backdrop of the financial system’s near-total collapse, Barnett-Hart approached professors with an idea of writing a thesis about CDOs and their role in the crisis. “Everyone discouraged me because they said I’d never be able to find the data,” she said. “I was urged to do something more narrow, more focused, more knowable. That made me more determined.”
She emailed scores of Harvard alumni. One pointed her toward LehmanLive, a comprehensive database on CDOs. She received scores of other data leads. She began putting together charts and visuals, holding off on analysis until she began to see patterns–how Merrill Lynch and Citigroup were the top originators, how collateral became heavily concentrated in subprime mortgages and other CDOs, how the credit ratings procedures were flawed, etc.
“If you just randomly start regressing everything, you can end up doing an unlimited amount of regressions,” she said, rolling her eyes. She says nearly all the work was in the research; once completed, she jammed out the paper in a couple of weeks.”
More here about the young lady whose research probably played a big part in Michael Lewis’ new book, “The Big Short.”
[At least, Lewis acknowledged the research. That puts him several rungs above most celebrity authors].
Meanwhile, I really like that a violinist was involved in this. My own father was a very gifted amateur violinist and Perlman, Zukerman, Oistrakh, Elman, Kreisler, Menuhin and many others defined my childhood.
Perhaps a lifetime of being immersed in real virtuosity and creativity left Barnett-Hart immune to the glamor of the phony maestros of Wall Street …
Now Mike Duvall admits to “inappropriate story-telling” but denies having had an affair with either of the two lobbyists. That denial is seconded by Ms. Barsuglia. The man to whom he told the story now denies hearing it. He wasn’t paying attention, he says. Duvall talks a lot.
We were wondering ourselves…..
If the denials are accurate, it looks like Ms. Barsuglia and her family might have a case for defamation.
We’re all agog.
And we have another question: Just what level of IQ does it take to be a California assemblyman?
We’re all agog about that too.
Many’s the time we’ve seen a female employee slandered for no more than being more personable and competent than the males around her. Her career is then almost sure to be attributed to her sexual wiles.
If Duvall is any indication, there seem to be married men whose rich imaginations don’t come equipped with the ethical compass that tells them that dragging your associates into your adolescent fantasies does irreparable damage to their professional credibility and personal reputation.
If the denials hold water, Ms. Barsuglia should be paid substantially for the damage done to her career and her family’s sensibilities.
Of course, the denials may not hold water.
Ross Douthat on what to expect if you’re a female candidate for office:
Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.
All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class.
Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it. “
“If inequality in things that matter is important, there is a basic inequality that the worriers about inequality should be paying attention to: the inequality in life expectancy between men and women. In 2005, life expectancy at birth was almost seven percent higher for American women than for American men (80.4 years for women vs. 75.2 years for men). Governments could certainly reduce this life-expectancy inequality by redistributing medical research funding on women’s health to research on men’s health, and general medical care funding from women to men. Consider that men are more likely to die from prostate cancer than women are from breast cancer. Yet in 2005 federal expenditures for prostate cancer research were $390 million compared to $698 million for breast cancer research, and the American Cancer Society contributed almost three times as much for breast cancer research ($98 million) as for prostate cancer research ($36 million).
When I talk to people, I find that they generally agree with, and rarely strongly oppose, forcible government transfers of income from the rich to the poor to reduce income inequality. But when I suggest that the government transfer medical expenditures from women to men to reduce life-expectancy inequality, I get a very different reaction. Often, the listener will simply give me a strange look and quickly depart. Those who do respond verbally, however, typically say that I couldn’t possibly be serious because my idea is outrageously silly. I agree. It is silly. But I am completely serious in suggesting it.”
More at the Library of Economics and Liberty.
Comment:
To forestall anyone who writes to me anxiously that this sort of argument – even tongue-in-cheek – is dangerously sexist and anti-feminist, let me just say I am a feminist, if feminism means advocating that women be treated as individuals and as fully human. I am enough of a feminist to recognize that women and men are biologically and culturally different and have different histories that need to be taken into account.
But if feminism means declaring the other half of the species the enemy – and some of what is passed off as progressive opinion on this topic is just that – I’ll say no to the label. There’s a kind of feminism out there that’s just public posturing by people who get social and economic benefits from doing so that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.
And if they were to gain equal benefits from holding the opposite bias, they would switch sides in an instant….
Note: I said some progressive opinion on this…
Here are some notes I made recently that turned into a full-fledged article. I thought people interested in the Indian business scene might find it interesting:
Women Business Leaders in India – Are Things Any Better Today?
Women in India do better in business today than they did about 35-40 years ago, but it’s fair to say there’s still a lot more they could do. In the professions and at lower levels things might have gotten better, but at the higher levels, you still don’t see the number of women you’d expect, given the available labor pool (in 2001 women were 48% percent of the population).
There are lots of reasons why Indian women at the top still have problems:
How women do is influenced strongly by how well educated they are. So, the more women have access to schooling, the better they perform economically. That’s why there’s been progress, especially at lower levels. But at the upper level, the situation is different. In the 1970s, you could say the main difficulties were the absence of role models and the shortage of financing and opportunities, which to some extent, still persist. But the overwhelming problem today in upper management remains culture: notions of what women should and should not do in the work place.
Traditional gender roles make female bosses unacceptable to a lot of Indian men. Tradition also places the bulk of family responsibilities on the shoulders of women. (This is strictly a generalization, and in particular cases, just the opposite can be true). Culture demands that women stay at home. That make it harder for them to develop networks and mentoring of the kind that men use to launch business careers.
Then there are problems of perception. Women are often seen as needing more time to balance work and family commitments, even when this isn’t really the case. Many male colleagues see them as opting for (and better at) the “soft-focus” areas of a business rather than its hard core. Women tend to get shunted into roles that provide support, communication, and coordination rather than profit and loss evaluation, or expansion and acquisition. That means that while women account for a good part of the ordinary work-force and mid-level positions, they aren’t so visible in the very highest positions. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, CEO of Biocon, says there’s a credibility hurdle that women face when they go out to get financing. People see them as less willing to take risks and less capable of solving problems and trouble- shooting.
Not much research so far:
Another difficulty is that there isn’t much research on the subject available. What there is supports what I’ve observed. Studies in the last 2 years show that Indian women make up 16 percent at junior levels of work but at the highest level (CEOs), that tapers off to only 1 percent. There are only 2 -3 women in administrative and managerial positions for every 100 economically active people. That’s far behind the rest of the world. And while the rest of the world has spent time researching the matter (for example, Breaking through the Glass Ceiling, ILO, 2004), Indian examples haven’t usually figured in the research.
Of course, some of the problems in India are common to other countries too , problems like sexual harassment, patriarchal attitudes and some gender bias in hiring and employment practices. Just as in other countries, these are likely to get better with targeted effort.
Culture can help women too:
Surprisingly, culture can be a positive too. The statistics for top- level managers and leaders in the US may be better. But there are other areas where Indian culture, counter-intuitively, provides a a friendlier environment.
*Studies show that women in Asia tend to draw more of their income from business than women elsewhere. That’s proof of a solid tradition of female business acumen, even if it’s a tradition that’s largely been centered around the family. (Powerful Indian business women usually came out of powerful Indian business families: Simone Tata, from the Tata family (Trent Ltd); Vidya Chabria (Jumbo Group) and Priya Padamjee (Thermax) all owe their positions to family connections).
But even that might be changing now. Now you can also find a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. Shaw started the biotech giant Biocon, from her garage, after being turned down for a job as a master brewer. And there is a whole crop of managerial divas – from Naina Kidwai (CEO of HSBC) to Microsoft India’s Neelam Dhawan.
Technology spurs womenomics
*There’s another angle to this. It shows how “culture” as an explanation can cut both ways. In India, engineering had been (and still is) a field for men. One side effect was that the “alternative” discipline of computer science was left wide open for women. So, when the Internet revolution brought the outsourcing industry to India, Indian urban women with computer skills got a good chunk of the financial benefits.
*Technology has helped. Contrary to Luddite rhetoric, globalization and the Info-tech revolution have helped womenomics in India. Take transportation. In the past, it’s been a major barrier for would-be business women in India. Now women can set up shop whenever they turn on their computers. Not only do computers let house-bound women become entrepreneurs, they also open up a whole new market of home-shoppers to whom other businesses can sell. Computers also make networking and mentoring easier and cheaper. An example of a bottom-up network enabled by the computer is the popular Indian work-at-home site, sitagita.com
Some people even credit computer technology with the renaissance of Indian female entrepreneurship. That might not be completely true. But what’s true is that female home businesses are a success story overlooked by activists who focus only on the negatives, like the impact of multinationals on female agricultural workers.
Other cultural factors that help
*Despite the traditionalism shown in gender roles, Indian women leaders, at the highest levels, seem to be judged more fairly. A comparison of national politics in the US and in India bears this out. In the US, female candidates have to suffer far more remarks about their appearance than Indian candidates do. And Indian female business leaders are called upon in the media as much as, or more than, American female business leaders.
I believe that one reason for this is a streak of misogyny hidden under the surface of a lot of popular culture in the US. Being able to command the respect of her peers and subordinates is perhaps the most crucial element in a woman getting to the top. But public culture in the US is permeated by demeaning imagery and language. Violently misogynistic rap lyrics and pornography and sexualized epithets for women do not help the perception of them as workers. Asian cultures tend to be less permissive about this.
* Another positive for Indian women in business is that although women are only a tiny part of top management, the women who are at the top are very powerful and in crucial sectors where they make an enormous impact.
How demographics can help women in India
*Demographics also helps in India. India (like China) suffers…and will continue to suffer…a shortage of skilled personnel. This seems incredible given the population figures. But first-class education there really does not reach down as deep as it does in the west. In a number of disciplines, including computer programming and management, there simply aren’t enough people for all the start-ups, expansion and relocation going on. That’s going to be good for women. Human resources departments will have to go after them more actively and groom them for higher positions.
*There are other positives. About a third of India consists of young people below the age of 15. That means that the pool of experienced labor is relatively small and HR departments will be forced to turn to an overlooked resource: women who’re done with rearing their children and want to reenter the job market. Since women live longer than men by several years, there’s no reason why women couldn’t outlast them to reach the top in managerial positions.
*Companies looking to hire Indians who live abroad and relocate them to India are running into obstacles. The Indian- origin employees want pay and benefits equal to other employees. Also, they’re often not in touch with what’s happening in their home country, unless they revisit frequently (as I do). Local employees resent the “foreign-returned” Indians. There are only a few areas where this isn’t so, and two of them are computers and finance. Not surprisingly, some of the most powerful women entrepreneurs and managers are in those areas.
The most important Indian business women
* Who are the most important Indian business women?
It’s difficult for an outsider to judge but it’s possible to pick a dozen of the most visible.
The capital markets are important as India opens up to foreign direct investment. And Naina Lal Kidwai, who was the first Indian woman to graduate from Harvard Business School and runs the Indian operations of HSBC, has been named repeatedly on lists of the most prominent Indian business women.
Lalita Gupte and Kalpana Morparia, the joint managing directors of ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank are important figures as well.
So is Manisha Girotra, who chairs the India operation of Swiss banking giant UBS.
In Information technology and computers, one of the most visible managers is Neelam Dhawan, head of Microsoft’s Indian operations.
In Biotech, the biggest name is Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who heads Biocon.
The automotive industry has also been pretty important in recent developments, with a number of large auto manufacturers opening branches in India (including Ford, Toyota, and Hyundai) and with large-scale investment in highway projects and in other infrastructure.Sulajja Firodia Motwani, joint MD of Kinetic Motor, which manufactures two-wheelers, scooters and motorcycles and various auto components, as well as elevators, escalators and auto parking systems, is a noteworthy figure here. Her company has attracted investment from the likes of Citigroup and is likely to do well as the transportation business profits from the real estate boom in India.
And you can’t leave out Jyoti Naik, President of Lijjat Papad (pappads are fried lentil crisps very popular in Indian households), the first cooperative business by housewives with no experience to make it big.
My Writing on Women:
My interest in India and Indian women stems from writing about the complexity of language, and about how small groups and businesses (and a contextual approach) do better at catering to the the needs of communities than big businesses.
I am not a gender feminist, although I’ve used the language when it’s useful. I’ve blogged on men’s rights and done some very anti-feminist pieces where I think it’s been warranted.
I would say I’m interested in marrying methodological individualism (from the right) with psycho-social awareness (from the left). Applied complexity theory might be another way of saying it.
Some writing that’s related:
“Psychic Injuries and Double Standards,” – a chapter contributed to One of the Guys(Seal Press, 2007).
It argues that female soldiers should be held to be as accountable as the male soldiers.
“Ugly math
On her way to the market, Lingani explained the ugly math: A year ago, she could feed her entire family a nutritious meal of meat and vegetables and peanut sauce for about 75 cents. But now the family gets much lower-quality food for twice the price.
She said the cost of six pounds of cornmeal has risen from 75 cents to $1.50. A kilogram — 2.2 pounds — of rice cost 60 cents last year and costs a little more than $1 now. Other basics such as salt and cooking oil have also doubled in price.
Fuel costs have more than doubled for trucks that haul food to landlocked Burkina Faso, helping keep food prices high.
Beef or goat meat is now so expensive — about $1.20 for a tiny portion — that the family has given up meat completely, eating cheap dried fish instead. Rather than seasoning their sauces with vegetables and peanuts, they now use the tough leaves of baobab trees, the gnarly giants that flourish here in the dry lands south of the Sahara.
To soften the sour taste of the leaves, Lingani mixes in potash, a paste made by boiling down water strained through ashes from wood fires.
“In the past, our money would last the whole month. We might even have some left over,” Lingani said. “But now as soon as it arrives, we spend it.”
Dinner happens only if there is a bit of food left over from lunch. Even then, she said, there is rarely enough left for women.
“When the children ask for food, we have to give it to them,” she said. “We’re mothers.”
Thus the Washington Post on some of the weakest victims of food price inflation, poor mothers in Burkina Faso in Africa, where energy prices have doubled recently.
Comment:
Meanwhile, over in Zimbabwe, suffering from 2.2 million percent inflation, the 100 million…oops, billion... dollar note has just been injected into the national blood stream, for a little extra sugar high. That’s following on the heels of the 10 million dollar note this January and then in swift succession, the 100 million, 250 million, 5 billion, 25 billion and 50 billion notes, according to this report from AFP. Even then, economists say the inflation rate is grossly underreported.
And back here in the USA, GHQ, Globalization, the picture isn’t pretty either.
There are of course the poor. They may be always with us, as the Good Book says, but rarely in such numbers…..and rarer yet for such reasons – adjustable rate mortgages.
But the middle-class too is scrambling, raiding their IRA’s to pay the bills. That is, if they’ve managed to get them. And organic farmers who used to have to fight off insects and birds now have a new plague to deal with – diesel thieves who work round the clock to siphon of gas they can sell for half price to local truckers.
Too bad, trying to solve the energy problem seems only to have added..er…fuel to the crisis. A confidential World Bank Report tells us that about 75 percent of the 140 percent price rise between 2002 and 2008 was driven by the diversion of agriculture to biofuels….
If you got rich in the ethanol scam, try sleeping soundly on that number.
“The marriage of Naveen, an engineer in Florida, hit rock bottom in mere five months. “I just asked her why she was in touch with her boyfriend. She tried to harm herself with a knife. We returned to India and I suggested she stay with her parents for some time. As soon as I was back in the US, she filed a 498-A case against my family and me. My parents were jailed for three days,” said Naveen, a case against whom is on in India and an Interpol Red Corner Notice pending abroad. Anupama Singh, the secretary of Rakshak that has raked up such cases, said the voluntary organisation has received over 700 such complaints, half of them from the US alone.
“We don’t say all these are genuine cases, but many are. The government is not really concerned. It’s futile to talk about the plight of men and their families by the women they marry. “In contrast, the cases of women being tortured by their husbands abroad have been overplayed with the government claiming that 30,000 brides — 15,000 from Punjab’s Doab region alone — had been abandoned abroad,” she said.
But in 2005, the government said in Parliament that only 100 such complaints had been received. The ministry of overseas Indian affairs (MOIA) recently revised the figure to 152. The trend, therefore, is more of vanishing brides and abandoned grooms abroad, Singh added.”
Comment
That’s from the Times of India last year, describing the ongoing barrage of domestic abuse of non-resident Indian males (especially high-status, high-earning males) by their delicately-nurtured, oh-so-domestic, docile, doe-eyed, dosa-making desi brides).
No surprise. Whenever the state starts “doing-good” with its right hand, its left hand has the thumb pressed into the pan of the scales. Dowry laws were cooked up to protect victimized wives. But after gender feminists got done with the recipe, a new set of victims had been trussed up for carving on the marital altar – husbands.
Topping my recently opened female-of-the-species-is-more-deadly-than-the-male file, this, from an Indian site (I’ve changed some of the language for clarity):
How to Improve Gender Sensitivity in India:
1) Women must not be imprisoned even if they kill. They need to be put into reformatories.
2) As soon as a woman marries, she should get 50% rights to her husband’s property.
3) Large scale single parenting by woman (with maintenance provided by husband) is the norm. Research shows that children who are not allowed to see their fathers after divorce for years grow up to be very healthy. In India, Gender Sensitive judges alone should decide if the women should allow the father to see the child after divorce or not. Or if he should ever see them.
4) Any violence committed by woman against others (including murder) should be considered self-defense.
5) The disparity between life expectancy rates in men and women needs to be raised to the levels in developed countries. In India, women live 2.4 years more than men on an average. This difference has to be improved to the levels in the US and Europe where women live more than 6 years than men on an average.
6) If a man cancels an engagement, he need to be punished by imprisonment of upto 5 months. On the other hand, if a woman cancels an engagement, she should be compensated with 30% or more of the man’s yearly income.
7) For any woman who commits suicide within 7 years of marriage, a dowry harassment (or other harassment) case against the husband should be filed by default. He should be imprisoned for at least a year for not taking care of his wife.
8) If a woman complains of domestic violence, the man should be imprisoned immediately and bail only granted by a court. All their joint bank accounts need to be frozen at once. The woman also has the to right to stay on in the “matrimonial home” (i.e., the husband’s house), until she gets a divorce. If the women has an adulterous relation that is proved beyond doubt, the husband must still allow her to live in his house, or provide alternate accommodation of equal quality. The benchmark case is in the movie, “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.” The husband is even expected to help the women achieve her adulterous goals. If he cannot directly help, he must provide one-third of his salary towards the wife until she marries the other man.
9) A man must do half of all household work, even if his wife is not working. But he must always work full-time. If he does not, even if he does all house work, he should be labeled lazy, improvident, pathetic, and derelict, certainly in private, and preferably in public where it will cause maximum humiliation and pain either to him or to his relatives. If a woman does not work either outside the house or in, she is nonetheless entitled to all consideration and respect and anything less than deferential treatment of all her needs, demands, whims, and psychiatric moods should be considered a violation of her human rights.
10) After marriage, a man must not stay with his parents or allow his parents to stay for a prolonged period with him (“prolonged” to be decided by the woman and subject to revision at any time on request by her, her friends, or her relatives however distant and uneducated). He must allow her in-laws to stay in his house for at least the same length of time his parents stay in his house. If he violates any of these fundamental human rights of a woman, he can be imprisoned for neglect and abuse of his in-laws.
11) If in-laws of a man “feel” their daughter (or they) are not properly treated, the man should be thoroughly counseled and sensitized to his failure. If he does not mend his ways, stringent laws must be passed (with provision even for administering a good lashing) that will rectify his behavior.
12) The ratio of male:female suicide rates in India should be brought to the levels in the West. In India, 50%(about 25,000) more men commit suicide than women. This is much lower than western standards, where about 150% more men commit suicide than women.
13) The richer and the more educated the men are, the more pressure should be placed on them. They should provide the wife with a lifestyle equivalent to their status….. and they must also spend quality time with family (See 9, 10, 11 above). If this is still impossible, see 12.
14) By definition, Bangalore techies (since they work with software) are required to be softer than others. Since they are also paid more than most, they should deposit 20% of their monthly salary, at least, in their wives’ names.
15) If the wife of a techie complains of dowry harassment (or any other harassment), he must be sacked from the job immediately (that is, after he gets out of jail on bail).
16) If the wife and husband are both techies, then the wife must not spend any part of her salary towards household or personal expenses. All expenses must be born by the man.
17) Streedhan given as a gift to the daughter during marriage must also be considered dowry.
18) Rural women and poor women are ignorant and can’t afford legal help. So, clearly the laws are really meant for urban India. Rural women should actually be discouraged from approaching the police or the courts since they don’t have the money anyway. Instead, they should be empowered in other ways – by better employment and by continuing to live in the traditional family system where they respect the decisions of elders. That will show everyone that that women’s rights laws are really UNDERUSED and (more importantly) will encourage urban women to MISUSE the law and file false cases. That makes for good business for feminist and Human Rights lawyers and keep bribe-giving at a healthy level, the booty being divided between the police and the women’s organizations. Currently, the rate of extortion for a techie is upto 1 lac and for an NRI (non-resident Indian) it goes upto 4 lacs.
19) Since, rural women do not suffer from domestic violence (see 18), domestic violence laws must be used mostly – and most stringently – in urban India. Quod Erat Demostrandum.
More here in the archives of one of many new blogs on the feminist abuse of dowry and domestic abuse laws in India.
It would be funny if it were not another grim reminder of the way statutory remedies by the state end up creating more problems than remedies. Ultimately, both the men’s movement and the feminists are right….only in different places and ways. The feminists are more right (generally) about rural, uneducated women…..and the men’s movements is more right (generally) about urban, well-educated women.. But even then, each individual case is unique.
Racism, sexism and exist, but only as useful terms for analysis.. Down in the marrow, it’s all about power and relative power.
And when it holds power, the fairer sex is also the fiercer sex…
Read more here on the abuse of dowry laws and some advice for expatriate men who want to return home to be married:
498A victims offer the following advice for men getting married in India:
• When the bride and groom’s families exchange gifts, keep a written record of everything received and given.
• If you are traveling to India, make copies of your passport, visa and all credit cards and leave the copies with a trusted friend or relative.
• Don’t give anyone your tickets or passport.
• Register with the local Foreigners Registration Office upon arrival in India, and let them know your expected date of departure as well.
• “Don’t sign any blank checks.”
• Consider a prenuptial agreement.
• Keep aware of any bank activity by monitoring your bank statements.
• Print out and save any emails that may help your case. Under India’s recent cyber-laws, the emails may be admissible as evidence.
For more information, contact the following:
• Yahoo! Groups: Misusedowryact and Nridivorce
• www.sangyabalya.org (site is not always operational; alternatively, call them in Bangalore at 011-91-80-5696-9850 or email them at victimsof498a@rediffmail.com.
• The FBI’s local Indian staff can be reached through the American embassy in New Delhi: 011-91-11-2419-8000
• A few blogs are online, such as batteredmen.fullhydblogs.com, batteredmen.rediffblogs.com and batteredmen.blogspot.com.