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In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

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Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#101
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it's a serious waste of their abilities as humans. It's no surprise that dual-professional households there who hire specialists for the cooking and looking after the house parts have better lives (as judged by the fact that few women who are professionals will want to become housewives while the opposite is a common desire).

How is taking care of their children a serious waste of their abilities as humans? When you look at all the BS jobs around, spending your time taking care of your family sounds much more productive and rewarding to me.

Because there are rapid diminishing returns with every extra hour past the first few. My parents put a lot of work into me, but they were also full-time surgeons. My mum most definitely put a hell of a lot of work into me but she didn't spend all the time at home.

Worked out pretty well.

Of course you want to allow for people to do whatever they want, but part of that is enabling them to not have to be stay-at-home parents. And most people want to do something more than that, in practice, because creating things is a fundamental human need that most people have. If people want to be stay-at-home parents and they can do it, more power to them, but it's important to allow them to make that choice otherwise unconstrainedly and not through societal pressure to keep women at home because jobs are unsafe (there are whole categories of work one avoids at the margin in India if one is a woman, because you cannot guarantee safe transport from/to one's place of work).

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#102
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is taking care of their children a serious waste of their abilities as humans? When you look at all the BS jobs around, spending your time taking care of your family sounds much more productive and rewarding to me.

Because there are rapid diminishing returns with every extra hour past the first few. My parents put a lot of work into me, but they were also full-time surgeons. My mum most definitely put a hell of a lot of work into me but she didn't spend all the time at home. Worked out pretty well. Of course you want to allow for people to do whatever they want, but part of that is enabling them to not have to be stay-at-home p…

> I turned out to be pretty damned awesome.

I'm not gonna waste time arguing with someone who writes something like that.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#103
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because you are not counting housekeeping and child rearing as essential labor which is inaccurate.

Labor participation would be 99% in all countries. What’s your point? The 20% to 60% is meant to demonstrate female inequality in India, because most of them are working at home for zero pay and low social status. Whereas in more developed countries, women get paid to work in industries.

I think the point the parent is trying to make is that saying that "participation of women in the workplace" isn't a directly-correlated metric for the "how happy / empowered / established / productive are women in this society" metric that we all care about improving.

To put it another way, if we just take the former metric as the gold measure it is better to be payed to care for someone else's children than to not be payed to care for your own.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#104
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are rapid diminishing returns with every extra hour past the first few. My parents put a lot of work into me, but they were also full-time surgeons. My mum most definitely put a hell of a lot of work into me but she didn't spend all the time at home. Worked out pretty well. Of course you want to allow for people to do whatever they want, but part of that is enabling them to not have to be stay-at-home p…

> I turned out to be pretty damned awesome. I'm not gonna waste time arguing with someone who writes something like that.

Don't be like that. It's just a bit of humour. But fine, I took it out. Anyway, it's not important enough to argue so this is an okay outcome.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#106
post #35
post #2

Speech detection is just amazing when you think about illiterate folk, it's a game changer for them. Jio's genius was offering free data plans for a year, getting folks hooked. But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing.

> But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing. 9cents in India would be equivalent to 1.91 USD after taking into account Purchasing Power Parity (OECD 2019). Therefore, you are in effect saying 1.91 USD per GB is amazing. You can not compare values without including purchasing power disparities.

I'd take $1.91 per GB for phones. I don't use that much mobile data so it's not a big deal but it's $10/GB for me on Tracfone.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#107
post #46

If data can be $0.09/GB in India, why does it cost so much more here in the USA?

more expensive inputs to construct and maintain cell networks in the USA. If you look at Indian telcos and US telcos, they have similar profit margins.

I think it's moreso that you can't get blood out of a stone (people wouldn't buy it over there if it cost more) and the true cost of mobile data distributed over all customers is close to $0.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#108

India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress will probably come from creating safe, well-paying jobs.

Isn't any labor statistic from India suspect because so many people work in the "shadow economy"?

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#109
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is taking care of their children a serious waste of their abilities as humans? When you look at all the BS jobs around, spending your time taking care of your family sounds much more productive and rewarding to me.

Because there are rapid diminishing returns with every extra hour past the first few. My parents put a lot of work into me, but they were also full-time surgeons. My mum most definitely put a hell of a lot of work into me but she didn't spend all the time at home. Worked out pretty well. Of course you want to allow for people to do whatever they want, but part of that is enabling them to not have to be stay-at-home p…

One example from your own experience is not generalizable.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are rapid diminishing returns with every extra hour past the first few. My parents put a lot of work into me, but they were also full-time surgeons. My mum most definitely put a hell of a lot of work into me but she didn't spend all the time at home. Worked out pretty well. Of course you want to allow for people to do whatever they want, but part of that is enabling them to not have to be stay-at-home p…

One example from your own experience is not generalizable.

It isn't meant to be. It's meant to be an existence proof to allow people the freedom to work.
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