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Economica with Victoria Bateman
1.2k Plays21 days ago
In this conversation, economist Dr. Victoria Bateman discusses the critical role of women in shaping economic prosperity throughout history. She argues that women's choices, independence, and labor have been overlooked in traditional economic narratives. The discussion covers various themes, including the impact of women's marriage decisions on population control, the relationship between women's independence and technological advancements, and the historical marginalization of women in economic history. Bateman emphasizes the importance of recognizing women's contributions to economic growth and the need for policies that support women's rights and independence.
Takeaways
- Women's choices have historically shaped economic prosperity.
- Independence in marriage decisions leads to smaller families and economic stability.
- Women's labor is crucial for technological advancements and economic growth.
- Democracy is sustained by empowering women and encouraging their participation.
- The historical narrative often overlooks women's contributions to the economy.
- Property rights for women are essential for their economic independence.
- The blend of market and state influences leads to successful societies.
- The cult of female modesty restricts women's economic participation.
Chapters
- 00:00 The Hidden Role of Women in Economic History
- 08:03 Impact of Women's Economic Freedom on Society
- 14:41 Democracy and Women's Independence
- 21:31 The Gender Gap in Economics
- 27:50 Household Dynamics and Unpaid Labor
- 35:03 Property Rights and Women's Economic Roles
- 38:24 Empowering Women: The Role of Economic Freedom
- 42:11 The Interplay of Markets and States
- 44:43 The Cult of Female Modesty: Historical Context
- 55:58 Modern Parallels: Women’s Freedom and Economic Prosperity
- 59:24 Lessons from History: Women as Economic Drivers
- 01:04:04 Revisiting Historical Narratives
- 01:04:29 Conclusion and Call to Action
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Transcript
Introduction to Women's Economic Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
Today, we're tackling one of the biggest questions in history. Why did the West become rich? Now, the usual suspects get all the credit. Cool colonies, clever inventions.
00:00:13
Speaker
But what if the real story was different? What if the overlooked factor was extraordinary women making extraordinary choices about their lives?
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome back to Breaking Math. I'm your host, Autumn Feneff, and today we are tackling just that. To explore this, I'm joined by economist and author Dr. Victoria Bateman with her latest book,
Guest Introduction: Dr. Victoria Bateman
00:00:41
Speaker
Economica.
00:00:41
Speaker
Together, we'll look at how women shaped prosperity, why economists ignored it, and what lessons we can draw from it today. Because remember, folks, history always repeats itself. Hi, Victoria. How are you doing today?
00:00:56
Speaker
It's a pleasure to be with you. Even better for being with you, Autumn. It's a pleasure having you on So let's dive deep and start with the classic textbook story here.
00:01:08
Speaker
When people ask us why the West pulled ahead in the so-called Great Divergence, They usually hear about energy, colonies, or institutions.
00:01:20
Speaker
Now, what's missing from that picture?
The Overlooked Economic Freedom of Women
00:01:23
Speaker
Women, and in particular, women's economic freedom. So I will say ironically, we're in a male-dominated field, economics, mathematics, and two women on the podcast. So this is a rare occasion, statistically.
00:01:40
Speaker
So what If women's lives were actually the hidden difference, what exactly was going on in Europe that made this so unusual? Yeah, yeah.
00:01:52
Speaker
So I think when you compare the West with what were the economic hotspots of the world, For millennia, we're talking about China, India and the Middle East. I would say what most stands out isn't differences in terms of things like energy or colonies or institutions. It's actually differences in
Women's Marriage and Financial Independence: A European Case Study
00:02:17
Speaker
women's lives. And let me take that down to the most basic level.
00:02:22
Speaker
And that is, as a woman, your ability to go out into the world, to make your own money, and with that, to have the financial independence needed to take charge of the marriage decision.
00:02:35
Speaker
So to decide for yourself whether, when and who to marry. And I think one of the things that is most a so astonishing about Europe in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, so we're talking about the fifteen hundreds the 1600s, the 1700s, is actually that ordinary women at that time were not getting married until they were in their mid to late twenty s So 25 or 26 was a common age at which women would get married. And actually, not every woman was getting married. So a good 10% of women actually had the freedom to live an independent existence you know for their whole lives. And that compares with those other parts of the world, China, India, the Middle East, where
00:03:28
Speaker
All women, pretty much all women got married and they got married young. So child marriage was extremely common and women had very little control over who they married.
00:03:41
Speaker
So we're in a situation on that run up to the Industrial Revolution when the average woman in, let's say, Britain was going out into the world of work.
00:03:51
Speaker
She was working, say, as a dairymaid. or taking on an apprenticeship and working in a workshop or working in domestic service. She was earning her own money, she was saving, and then she was deciding for herself whether, when and who to marry. And when she did marry, she was starting up her own experience.
00:04:10
Speaker
independent household compared with many other parts of the world where women were being married off at a young age by their fathers into an extended family where they would be under the watchful eye of their of their parents-in-law, where they would be Because they're married young, they're, as a result, childbearing from a young age. And so women end up in a situation where they have very little control over their lives, where they are committed to a life of childbearing with no control over how many children they have, no control or very limited control over household
Impact of Women's Financial Independence on Industrial Revolution
00:04:52
Speaker
expenditure. And what we're talking about here, remember, when we're talking about women, we're talking about half of the population.
00:04:59
Speaker
And it is this really extreme difference in the lives of ordinary women that I think is key to understanding why it was that Europe was not only able to catch up with parts of the world that had been ahead for millennium, but overtake.
00:05:17
Speaker
yeah How the West managed to make it to the top of the global league tables, economically speaking, So essentially, in other parts of the world, they ignored women. So women were sidelined. Women were treated as second class citizens, as pawns, with very little control over their lives. And I think, do you know, I think that In some ways, in some I would say actually that in whatever society you look, in whatever period of time, women have been valued, whether that is reproductively because of what we can do with our boobs or because of what we can do with our hands, like the cloth that we can make that has... formed the currency of global trade for centuries. We are a valuable resource, women, and we always have been.
00:06:07
Speaker
And societies kind of know that. But precisely because we're valuable, people want to capture and control us, you know, in a historical context. Yes. And societies have come up with, you know, 101 different ways of capturing and controlling women.
00:06:24
Speaker
So whether that is at the level of states, for example, having legal guardianship systems through the legal system that place women under the control of men, or whether it is at the level of families. So, for example, in China, the practice of foot binding. no Breaking the feet of your daughters to render them immobile such that they have limited ability to go out into the world and make their own choices, make their own decisions so that you as a family can then, for example, chain them to the spinning wheel in the home and have them producing the cloth that you then as the family can extract the value from.
00:07:08
Speaker
So I think, you know, there is this irony that that this mistreatment of women isn't necessarily because we're considered worthless. in In many ways, it's because we are valuable. You know, you don't want to capture and control things that are worthless.
00:07:25
Speaker
You want to capture and control things that have value. But what I argue in Economica, what happens when you try and capture and control that thing of value is that, in a sense, it turns to dust.
00:07:39
Speaker
You know, you you you kill off the golden goose because, you know... And it creates
Democratic Values and Education Through Women's Independence
00:07:44
Speaker
ripple effects throughout society, right? So whether you're looking at teenage wage work outside of the home yeah and the ability to keep wages...
00:07:55
Speaker
yes Let's dive into some of these ripple effects let' say yes throughout history. What happens with later marriages yeah in this case?
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So there are four or five positive effects, I would say, on Western Europe as a result of women having this ability to take charge of the marriage decision and with it getting married later in life rather than being married off as girls. And the first one is because as a result of that, women marry later and then with it, families are smaller because women are, you know, historically you had children only within marriage.
00:08:36
Speaker
And so your childbearing starts once you're married. So if you're not married until 26, you're not you're not starting you know your family until you're 26, compared with starting a family at 13 or 14, you're going to end up with fewer children in your household. And this means that your economy is subjected to less population pressure. Now, your population will have the ability to expand and contract with the economy. So population can move in sync because what happens at the individual level is if as a woman, when you get married, you start your own household, you have to be financially independent to do that.
00:09:15
Speaker
You know, you're not being absorbed into a more traditional extended family household where you're living with your parents-in-law. They're therefore providing you with food and shelter. In Western Europe, where you start your own household upon marriage, you have to think about financially supporting yourselves.
00:09:35
Speaker
And that means that your ability to get married and start a family depends on on the economy around you. So if times are good, you can get married a year. yeah You can say to you you know the person you're engaged to, let let's take the plunge. We we can do it now.
00:09:51
Speaker
And that means if times are good, people get married a little bit younger, they have more children, that's providing, you know, the extra manpower perhaps that the economy needs. Whereas if times are bad, you say to your partner, OK, well, let let's hold on.
00:10:05
Speaker
let's Let's reassess in a year from now. And then if times are still bad, you might reassess in another year from then. That process of that ability to postpone the marriage means that you are...
00:10:18
Speaker
lessening population pressure within your economy. So what happens is that in in Western Europe, you avoid excessive population pressure and the population growth that you do have is able to keep in sync with the ability of the economy to support it.
00:10:35
Speaker
If times are good, it will naturally expand. If times are bad, fewer marriages happen, fewer babies are born. And so you don't have population running away with resources.
00:10:47
Speaker
And I think that was extremely important because what that meant is by avoiding population pressure, not only are you avoiding some of the resource crises that happen, say, in China, in pre-industrial China, where you have some really pretty horrendous natural resource crises, you know,
00:11:06
Speaker
population getting out of control, running out of land. And with that deforestation, deforestation then silts up rivers, for example, because with fewer trees, there's nothing to hold the soil together.
00:11:20
Speaker
Soil leaks into the waterways. As the waterways silt up, that hurts trade. So natural resource crises that that that are bad for the economy, you don't have the same extremities happening in Western Europe, but also because there's less population pressure, you can support a higher wage economy.
00:11:38
Speaker
so So the equilibrium in terms of labour demand and labour supply
Why Are Women's Economic Contributions Overlooked?
00:11:42
Speaker
is such that you have a higher wage economy. And that is extremely important because if workers are that little bit more expensive, then companies, businesses are better incentivised to mechanise.
00:11:56
Speaker
So if you have lots and lots of cheap labour around you, then there's less incentive to mechanise the production process, you know, to develop and to adopt new technologies, because you can just use a cheap labour process of production, get people to do repetitive tasks, you know, with their own two hands. Whereas if wages are more expensive,
00:12:21
Speaker
if then you want to develop machines such that you can economise on your use of workers. And when we think about what is the Industrial Revolution ultimately, you know, this this big deal in economic history, the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century, that really crystallises the West's dominance of the global economy.
00:12:44
Speaker
What was the Industrial Revolution? It was ultimately about technology. It was about mechanisation. It was about engineers and inventors and innovators. And why did that happen? It happened in part because you're a high-wage economy. And where did the high-wage economy come from? It came from the fact that everyday women had the ability to take charge of their lives and as a result...
00:13:07
Speaker
Families were smaller. The other thing it does is because families are smaller, they can better afford to educate the children that they do have. So if you've got 10 children, trying to afford to apprentice each of those children, you know, to educate each of those children, it's too expensive.
00:13:25
Speaker
If you've got four or five children, you're you're better able to afford to educate at least some of your children. And so you have, you know, a higher skill base.
00:13:35
Speaker
And then in terms of institutions, so in terms of democracy, i mean, there's a sense in which political institutions at the level of the economy as a whole mirror what's going on within the home. So if you are brought up within a patriarchal traditional family where you're told from a young age to do as you're told, where you're told to shut up rather than speak up, then to two always go along with whatever the patriarch wants, you know, the father or the grandfather.
00:14:06
Speaker
And of course, this applies to young men as well as to young women. Quite naturally, yes. Absolutely. None of us get a say. Then in that type of family situation, you are you're not socialized to...
00:14:21
Speaker
ask questions, to hold people to account, to disagree, to debate. And yet that is what we need for democracy, not only for democracy to get established, but for democracy to be sustained.
00:14:36
Speaker
Because in a sense, the more difficult thing isn't just establishing democracy, it's sustaining it. And democracies only sustain themselves if we as people hold our politicians to account. you know debate with one another, no matter how fearsome that can be.
00:14:54
Speaker
Ask questions rather than doing as we're told and rather than shutting up when instead we need to speak up. And, you know, ultimately that, you know, so that, you know, what we need, the way we need to behave as citizens, if democracy is to be secure and to be sustained, you know, that is rooted in what's happening within the home. And so,
00:15:18
Speaker
in In Western Europe, where women ah going out into the world, taking charge of the marriage decisions, they're able to to to avoid child marriage, they're able to avoid being brought into the home of their parents-in-law where they're being told what to do.
00:15:35
Speaker
yeah They're setting up their own independent household. Then that is acting as a ah model for political institutions more generally. And we see that in Britain, for example, in the 17th century.
00:15:48
Speaker
British people demanding of democracy, tired of kings and queens bossing them around and telling them what to do, wanting to hold them to account, wanting to have their voices heard. So the power dynamics in this essentially wants to quiet women or quiet the newer generations.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yes. That is right. That is right. It's about traditional elites, whether that is, you know, landed aristocracy or whether it is the patriarch within his own family. It is about them having a voice, them being able to control ah the people within their domain versus us all as individuals being free to take charge of our individual lives. So in this case, when you're saying fewer children, higher wages, more apprenticeships, and even with the rise of democracy, all trace back to women's independence.
00:16:48
Speaker
Now, that's it's bold, but both as you're we're looking at this, evidence shows that it's the trend. So how did those choices actually fuel things like technological change and capitalism?
00:17:03
Speaker
But let me add to that. But if women were so central in these decisions, why didn't the economists put them in the story from the start? Yes. i mean, such a great question.
00:17:16
Speaker
i mean, certainly when we think about economic history, we think about the lives of men. and We think about from Genghis Khan and Hanang Cortez to Henry Ford and JP Morgan, you know, the men who've become household names. And I think to a large extent, we assume that men were the people bringing home the bacon, now that men were sustaining their wives and children.
00:17:41
Speaker
on the incomes earned in farms and factories or by working as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. That, in other words, men were the people who dealt in money. Men, the economy was just for men.
00:17:53
Speaker
And that women were the people dealing in that altogether different currency, the love that makes the world go round.
Unpaid Labor: The Economic Value and Exploitation
00:18:01
Speaker
So, in other words, we have this vision of economic history in which women have spent most of history as housewives. And it is with that, that idea, that impression of history, one that I think is so common and in popular culture.
00:18:18
Speaker
We think about TV series and films, you know, whether it's Mad Men, you know, or whether it's period dramas. and We're given this, we're fed this impression that women were housewives and but also in economic textbooks.
00:18:33
Speaker
You open the average economic textbook and you will find a whole section on how women entered the workforce in the 20th century. How, for example, the World Wars encouraged women to do men's work.
00:18:50
Speaker
You know, whilst men were off fighting at the front, we have Rosie the Riveter you know in the in the in the factory doing what was previously a man's job. And again, this helps to create this impression that before the 20th century, women weren't in the economy, that they were housewives. So if you assume that women have spent most of history as housewives, then naturally when you're thinking about the economy, you think about men. Now that ah vision of the past is one that I attempt
00:19:21
Speaker
to shatter in the process of economica, to show, no, women haven't spent most of history ah as housewives. They have been doing all kinds of things in the economy, from helping build pyramids in ancient Egypt and plumbing the ancient city of Rome, to not just making cloth, but mining silver and mining coal. And actually, it was women's independent, women's financial independence that they got through. through their work that, as we've discussed, I argue that was actually key to sowing the seeds of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the Western world. So thinking about this a lot more, every city has statues of male inventors and industrialists, but not
00:20:10
Speaker
Women? Or as much? I've seen a couple here and there, but not that many. So right why has economics been so blind to these contributions?
00:20:21
Speaker
So is it in part that economics has a long been a male-dominated subject? And economic history too. There are far more men doing economics and economic history than there are women. And of course, this creates to an extent, a vicious circle.
00:20:38
Speaker
Because if the people doing it are ignoring what's happened to the lives of women, then perhaps women are not so attracted to economics and economic history, they feel perhaps it doesn't speak to them.
00:20:52
Speaker
And so they go off and they do perhaps social history instead or sociology instead because economics and economic history sadly just don't speak to them. So I think the only way we're then going to break out of that, you know, vicious circle is to really confront ourselves and as academics and say to ourselves, look, is this impression of the past that we're creating, is it a truly representative, is it a truly accurate one? And I think that also looks at gender gap in economics degrees and even professors.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah. It parallels a lot in the universities and just seeing how the gender gap plays an effect even in all all at engineering and mathematics.
00:21:44
Speaker
My big question is, why are we still seeing this? yeah Yes. Well, I mean this is so mean, we're back to this vicious circle because sadly, it's and I mean, certainly in terms of economics, it's not really getting that much better.
00:21:57
Speaker
You know, when you look at the number of young women that were studying economics back, you know, 10, 20 years ago versus today, it's really not getting that much better. And there have been initiatives, you know, to try and improve it. And, i'm you know, I'm sure those are.
00:22:15
Speaker
having an effect in the places where those initiatives are ah being welcomed and um being invested in. But if we are going out into the world and creating this impression that what makes you know countries rich has nothing to do with women's lives, then Why, as a woman, would you want to study economics? In fact, it might it might perhaps turn you against markets and trade and business, you know, um and perhaps push you in in a very different direction. So, and you know, it's so important because, they cut you know, as an economist, what you're ultimately looking at are the big questions.
00:22:55
Speaker
Why are some countries rich and others poor? You know, you have the lives of people potentially in your hands, you know, This, you know, if you get your policies right versus if you get your economic policies wrong, we are talking about affecting the lives of millions of people. And you if you affect people's lives for the worst, then the knock-on effects in terms of, you know, the poverty that people are exposed to within the family as children and then how that goes on to affect them in later lives. You know, as economists,
00:23:32
Speaker
um We're not just paper pushers. yeah What we have to say and what policies we recommend really matter. And so, you know, why wouldn't women be interested in that? You know, surely we're all in and women are interested in that.
00:23:50
Speaker
It's just the stories that we tell that turn people off. And that's what um that's what needs to change. Now, let's take a little bit of a pivot here. and you talk about household dynamics quite a bit in the book.
00:24:06
Speaker
And as we all know, households are not frictionless. and yeah Whether we imagine households as neat optimization machines and maximizing happiness, but The reality that we're looking at, as you portray, is that it deals with a lot with exploitation, unequal power, unpaid labor, and that looks very different.
00:24:32
Speaker
So what do economists miss when they've modeled the family this way? Yeah, yeah. To note So here's the irony. Economists are often criticised by non-economists for the assumptions that they make.
00:24:46
Speaker
And those assumptions include for the fact the fact that, fact I shouldn't say fact, the assumption that we're self-interested, maximising, optimising, rational agents. you know These are the the assumptions that make mathematical modelling
Preventing Exploitation Through Financial Independence
00:25:02
Speaker
easier.
00:25:02
Speaker
We can you know assume people maximize profits or maximize utility. And then we can do some kind of differentiation and work out you know the optimal outcomes and so on. So there's this kind of standard set of assumptions that we make as economists.
00:25:16
Speaker
And it's been quite trendy in the past couple of decades to critique economics, you know to criticize those assumptions. So to try and suggest actually, no,
00:25:26
Speaker
We're all a bit nicer in the real world and we, you know, we can, I do, we're all these kind of selfish people. and that actually by assuming we're selfish, it somehow makes people selfish.
00:25:37
Speaker
I mean, I actually think the counterpoint to that is that you know, if you were to instead assume a world in which everyone was altruistic and we were all nice to each other, then how do you understand the mistreatment and exploitation that happens to women within their own home?
00:25:56
Speaker
And the reality is that, you know, i mean, there's a lot of unpaid work that women are doing within the home. And actually, if you add up the value of that unpaid labour,
00:26:10
Speaker
There have been various calculations, but based on the calculations that have been done, we're talking about between 20 to 60% of GDP. So the amount of unpaid work that women are doing in the world is the equivalent to an extra 20 to 60% of GDP. So that's, you know, the cooking, the cleaning, the caring for children, the caring for elderly relatives and so on.
00:26:33
Speaker
If you take the upper end of that estimate, that's 60% of GDP. Leaving that out of our GDP calculations would be the equivalent to leaving the US, China, the EU out of global GDP calculations. I mean, there's a lot of work that women are doing within the home that is unpaid.
00:26:52
Speaker
But whilst they're doing this work, it doesn't guarantee fair treatment within the home. um And we see that in the world all around us.
00:27:03
Speaker
And we see that, for example, in India, the fact that women who are expected to take on the life of a housewife, where they will be committed to a lifetime of unpaid labour within the home, you know creating real value for their families, birthing children, looking after children, looking after parents-in-law, family. feeding their husbands, you know, that despite that fact, they're expected to bring a dowry into marriage. know, they're expected to bring financial resources into marriage to compensate for the fact that they are not earning their own money.
00:27:38
Speaker
And moreover, women who bring more financial resources into marriage, more of a dowry, are treated better. So ultimately money talks. Without your own money, you are liable to mistreatment and exploitation. And that's because you are rendered dependent, you know, dependent on others. And unless you have outside options, unless you have an ability to escape that situation...
00:28:07
Speaker
then people will take advantage of you. So know no matter how much value you are creating for your family, unless you yourself have that value in your pocket, you are prone to exploitation. So in some ways, back to the old fashioned economic assumptions of people being self-interested, if your partner...
00:28:28
Speaker
is self-interested, if your parents-in-law are self-interested, then actually with those kinds of assumptions, we can better understand perhaps the exploitation that happens within the home. Whereas if we assume that as as households, people act as one and behave altruistically, then we assume a way the problems that go on in the lives of so many women across the world. so And so this is why, you know, ultimately, I believe that as a woman, you have to be able to build your own independent financial existence in life. You cannot be dependent on men. And no matter, you know, sometimes as a society, we're promised that, you know, let men be the breadwinners.
00:29:16
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, throughout history, we've been told that Being in the workplace, it's hard. You're open to exploitation. you know Instead, stay in the home where you can be protected, where you can do a much more important job of having children and looking after your parents-in-laws and so on.
00:29:35
Speaker
Trust in the male breadwinners to look after you. The male breadwinners will provide. And sadly, it so often doesn't work out well for women that way. That includes today as well.
00:29:47
Speaker
does include the whole Tradwife movement, sadly. The reality of the world is that, you know, everyone is a mix of self-interest and the opposite. And because of that, as women, we need to be able to...
00:30:01
Speaker
um have our own independent financial existence. And that, you know, as I argue in the book, that was actually what was key to the rise of the Western world. That was what was key to through those ripple effects.
00:30:14
Speaker
um You know, it's not just good for women, for women to be financially independent. It's good for the economy as a whole. And that means ultimately, it's also good for
Historical Inheritance Rights and Economic Impacts
00:30:23
Speaker
men. Some listeners might be surprised to hear that under...
00:30:28
Speaker
Islamic law centuries ago, daughters could inherit half a son's share. So sometimes giving them more rights than women in Britain and in Europe as a whole.
00:30:42
Speaker
How did property and inheritance shape women's roles in economies? What does the wealth gap look like? And ah I'll add one more thing to this. This brings a larger picture, right?
00:30:56
Speaker
It's how do women's freedoms actually shape not just families, but the way that markets and states function. Yeah. Great. Okay, so the Middle East.
00:31:07
Speaker
So here's the fascinating thing. Whilst in Europe, women were free to leave the home as teenagers, go out and take a job on on a farm or in a factory or in a workshop and build their own independent financial existence through that means.
00:31:24
Speaker
They, for a long time, didn't have full control over property once they were married. And of course, that made doubly important marrying the right person because you need to marry someone you trust.
00:31:38
Speaker
So essentially, once you got married, four wealth and resources combined into one single pot. And this was the system of coverture. So in a sense, you were covered by your husband. So your husband was the person then responsible for looking after that combined pot.
00:31:55
Speaker
of wealth and resources. So until that point, when you were a single woman, you you had your own independent financial existence. Once you were married, if you if you did decide to get married, then your husband had this control over the the combined marriage pot.
00:32:13
Speaker
Now compare that with the Middle East at the time. So in the Middle East, it was less common for unmarried women to go out into the labour market beyond their own home to work and earn their own financial existence in that way.
00:32:26
Speaker
So in terms of labour markets... women were more limited. But in terms of capital markets, so if you're thinking about wealth and property and capital, in terms of capital markets, things were actually in many ways easier for women in the Middle East.
00:32:42
Speaker
So in the Middle East, women, as you said, had rights to an inheritance. They also had dowries and they had control. in you know ah According to Islamic law, they had control over those dowries and those inheritances. Now, that was great if you were a woman from a wealthy family.
00:33:01
Speaker
So this is the thing for ordinary women who don't really benefit, you know, whether you're a boy or a girl, if you're if you're not in a particularly wealthy family, and inheritance doesn't matter all that much anyway.
00:33:14
Speaker
so So this, you know in the Middle East, this was particularly beneficial for women within wealthier families. But what it did mean that was that for women in wealthier families, you were expected to take an active role when it came to how your money was invested.
00:33:29
Speaker
And so whilst women, for example, were not there working in workshops and working in shops, you know, behind shop counters, they invested in property, in commercial property.
00:33:41
Speaker
They invested in the licences. that craftsmen needed to you know, the equivalent of licenses that taxi drivers might need today. You know, they invested in buying and selling those licenses. So women were really quite active as investors, whereas in the West, it took quite, and I mean, it was the first big fight of feminism, actually, in the 19th century. It wasn't the vote.
00:34:07
Speaker
You know, before the fight to get the vote was the fight for married women to have control over their own property. And that was a fight in the late 19th century.
00:34:18
Speaker
And that was a fight that was won by the 1880s. And actually, from that point when you look at the railways, the railroads, for example, in the latter part of the 19th century, one in three investors in the railroads, in the railways, were were women.
00:34:34
Speaker
So, you know, women have this great appetite for investing, but men were very much in charge of um of the capital for a long time. So, yeah, so in the West, women kind of more active when it came to labour markets.
00:34:47
Speaker
In the Middle East, wealthier women more active when it came to capital
Current Wealth Disparities: A Historical Perspective
00:34:52
Speaker
markets. But if we're talking about the majority of the population rather than just the wealthy elite, then actually you'd have rather been a woman in Britain, I would say, than one at the time in Saudi Arabia.
00:35:04
Speaker
So today we we even look at our current wealth for women in general. Women earn only ah about 57% of men's total income. That's right. and and there And that's bigger than the gender pay gap. So often when we think about the gender pay gap, there's this kind of 20% figure quoted.
00:35:25
Speaker
But that's because you're just comparing women in work with men in work. So if you were to also factor in the women that are not earning, so you've got those that are, ah so you've got about a half of women across the world of working age are in jobs and they're on average earning 20% less than men.
00:35:43
Speaker
But then you've got the other women that are not earning anything. So if we combine all those women together, then overall, women as a whole are taking home only 57% of what men are taking home in terms of their income.
00:35:57
Speaker
But what's even more frightening is then the gaps in wealth, because the gaps in wealth are even bigger.
Economic Freedom's Dual Benefit on Market and State
00:36:05
Speaker
It's only about 20% of women are landowners.
00:36:09
Speaker
So that's right. No more. And you know, the even more frightening thing is the data is so... It's so dodgy on this because actually, whilst we have a lot of data, you know, a lot of statistical agencies have been able to collect data that allows us to look at, you know, what women are earning, income income of men versus women. When it comes to wealth, where, you know, in terms of what people...
00:36:35
Speaker
you know, what but wealth people own. It's not the data in terms of whether it's a man or a woman that owns a particular property or a particular patch of land or stocks and shares.
00:36:47
Speaker
You know, the gender of of the of the person that owns that isn't always known or and the data on that isn't always collected. So really, this is just best guesses that we have from international economic organisations that based on the data that we do have, that women own no more than 20% of land across the world today. Now, let's compare this with ancient Egypt.
00:37:11
Speaker
Sure. Ancient Egypt. um It was something like 12 to 15% of were women. Sure. landowners but women So we're not much better than ancient Egypt. And actually, in North Africa and the Middle East today, less than 5% of landowners are women.
00:37:35
Speaker
So things have gone backwards rather than forwards in the Middle East and North Africa compared with where we were in ancient Egypt. times So the wealth gaps are much bigger than then the pay gaps.
00:37:49
Speaker
And i mean, if we look at the very top, if we look at global billionaires, if there were the same number of female global billionaires as there were male ones, we'd have seven times as many Oprah Winfrey's and Taylor Swift's and Sheryl Sandberg's.
00:38:06
Speaker
Seven times. Wouldn't that be a wonderful world to live in seven times as many Taylor Swift? Yeah, it would. I mean, just thinking about Taylor Swift and her Eros tour, she paid, i I don't know, just exorbitant amount of money to everybody on her team for bonuses. Yeah.
00:38:27
Speaker
for just hauling the gear, equipment, taking care of anybody who is... She's a remarkable woman, isn't she? A remarkable, I mean, a real role model in terms of if you're going to be a global billionaire, then do it the way that Taylor Swift does it.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yes. And it it's essentially the give back to the communities that support you model. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And as women, we put so much emotional labor into that already. We need to be fairly compensated to be able to financially do that as well.
00:39:04
Speaker
Exactly right. Exactly
Societal Rise and Fall with Women's Inclusion
00:39:06
Speaker
right. So... If we're looking at this beyond just markets versus states, right? The 20th century politics framed it as markets versus states sort of capitalism yeah versus communism.
00:39:21
Speaker
But I noticed in your book, you argue that some of the most successful societies actually blended both. Now, women's freedom was the key, but can you elaborate on that a bit for us here? Yeah.
00:39:36
Speaker
So I think women's economic freedom gives us both better markets and better states so we can have the best of both worlds. So in terms of markets, and again, I want you to compare those you know that those historic differences in the way families functioned in, say, China, India and the Middle East compared with Western Europe.
00:39:58
Speaker
So where you have these extended traditional family structures within that large extended family, you can do a lot for yourselves. You know, you can have your own mini welfare state, for example. You know, the richer members of the family can subsidize the poorer members of the family. Also, you can have your own military system, you're in your own mini military system. so So the young, muscular members of the family can provide the muscle power and the defense needs of your family as a whole.
00:40:32
Speaker
Think almost mafia style, you know? Yes. big extended mafia style families. One of you could be, you know, look after the legal needs of the family. One of you could specialize in being the builder, you know, the plumber. So there's so much that you can do within your own family.
00:40:49
Speaker
don't, you know, okay, you might deal with people beyond your own family, but you have less need to do that within that traditional extended family system. Compare that with what happened in um Western Europe, where you have you know young women going out into the world, taking charge of their lives, earning money and setting up their own independent household.
00:41:13
Speaker
So this is where nuclear families come from, setting up your own little nuclear family. With your own little nuclear family, you can't do everything for yourself.
00:41:25
Speaker
You have to engage with, trade with other people out there. If your roof needs fixing, you might need to you know go down the street and say, hey, can you fix the roof for me?
00:41:40
Speaker
And in return, will... you know perhaps look after the food for your next family party or, you know, something like that. So you have to trade with other people.
00:41:51
Speaker
And with that, you develop the type of underlying trust and social capital that goes beyond those tight family networks, that generalised trust and that social capital that that is so important for making sure that markets can function and markets can become deep.
00:42:12
Speaker
That if there's something that we need in life, we can go into the marketplace and we can engage with people and find someone we trust in order to get what we need.
00:42:24
Speaker
And that in turn allows us to specialise in what we're best at doing at individuals and so helps the economy to prosper. So markets are able to develop to a more sophisticated level and to become deeper in in that where you have a society of that kind. And then in terms of the state, and this takes us back to what we were discussing earlier, that, you know, do you want a state that is responsive to the needs of the general population, a democratic state that listens to the needs of the general population, that
00:42:57
Speaker
that therefore is held to account if it is not offering economic policies that will deliver, that will grow the economic pie, that will but will make us you know in the long term richer, that will mean that our children and our grandchildren can live a better life than our own. So investing in infrastructure, for example, investing in you know health and education and so on.
00:43:19
Speaker
And where does that type of democratic and responsive state come from? It comes from the ah fact that it within the family from a young age, we are encouraged to hold people to account, to ask
Modesty, Roles, and Economic Contributions
00:43:33
Speaker
questions. And that only happens within the type of family system that is a more gender equal family system.
00:43:41
Speaker
It doesn't happen within a more traditional family system where you have a and a more patriarchal structure, where young people are not allowed to speak up, where they're not allowed to ask questions, where they're not allowed to hold people to account. So I do think that societies where women are freer, can go out into the world, can build their own independent financial existence, can take charge of the marriage decision, can set up their own family household, that that makes for both better markets and better states.
00:44:13
Speaker
And that is the secret recipe in terms of getting the best of both worlds. Now, getting the best of both worlds. You often talk about times where society's pull women back just as they're most needed, especially throughout history.
00:44:32
Speaker
Now, you also mentioned this in a prior book that you wrote, ah Naked Feminism, and you call this the cult of female modesty?
00:44:43
Speaker
so Do you want to go into that a little bit and how even backlashes happen in women's freedom, which clearly fuels prosperity? So one of the big themes of Economica expansion.
00:45:00
Speaker
It's really the story of the rise and decline of civilisations throughout history. I mean, in in a long-term perspective, that is what economic history is all about. It is about one civilisation after another, acquiring great wells, doing great things before it ends up in a ditch ready to be found by some unsuspecting archaeologist.
00:45:20
Speaker
And what I say in Economica is that you cannot understand that story of rise and decline without including women. Because every successful civilization of its day, whether that was the Romans, whether that was the Islamic Middle East um in the medieval period, whether that was um imperial China in the Song Dynasty. So we're talking about the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries. Every successful civilization of its day has been one where women were there at the heart of the economy.
00:45:56
Speaker
And similarly, every subsequent civilizational decline has involved a process of marginalising women, limiting their options, limiting their their their choices. And so this happened in the Roman economy, and I i argue that this is the the missing piece when it comes to explaining the decline of the Roman Empire. When Emperor Augustus started to worry about falling fertility rates,
00:46:24
Speaker
He started to worry that women were not so keen on marriage, that young women were not, not enough of them were getting married. He also, Emperor Augustus, worried about immigration.
00:46:36
Speaker
He worried that the Roman roman culture was being eroded by immigrants, by foreigners. And actually Augustus worried in particular about what he called the Greeks and the barbarians. And you know his response to that was to say that women needed to spend more time, Roman women, pure Roman women needed to spend more time breeding for the good of Rome, to spend more time in the home.
00:47:02
Speaker
And he manipulated all kinds of laws to try to encourage women to do that. And, you know, it's never as obvious as we're going to make a ruling that women can't work.
00:47:13
Speaker
Instead, it is more subtle things like, for example, making men's promotion prospects within the administrative structure of the Roman Empire, dependent on how many children their wives have.
00:47:27
Speaker
And that, of course, then means that wives are put under more pressure too to have more children. You trace that there's three key triggers for rollbacks, whether in the cults of female modesty.
00:47:41
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about this? Yeah. so and you know, even today, i think when we look across the world, when we look at so many of the problems that women across the world face, whether it is child marriage,
00:47:56
Speaker
Whether it is in Afghanistan, women being pushed out of the workplace and even pushed out of universities and schools. Whether it is forced failing. um Whether it is denial of access to medical technologies, certain medical technologies. Whether it is not being able to join certain groups.
00:48:18
Speaker
parts of the economy, you know, take certain jobs. So many of those problems that women face across the world today are rooted in what I call the cult of female modesty.
00:48:29
Speaker
And this is the idea that a woman's worth depends on whether her body has been seen or touched. So this results in all kinds of social practices and economic policies. So for example, if you believe that your daughter is going to be rendered worthless if she is seen or touched, then of course you want to veil her.
00:48:54
Speaker
You also might not want her to go to university because the risk is she meets boys and might develop a relationship with a boy. You might, for example, want to marry your daughter young to someone of your own choosing so that she doesn't get a bad reputation, you know, as a teenager, that could then jeopardise her chances when it comes to marriage in her twenty s So child marriage also is a response to the idea or response to the concern that your daughter will be rendered worthless if she is seen or touched by her male peers. So this cult of female modesty...
00:49:36
Speaker
that sees a woman's worth, respect and value based on her bodily modesty is something that sadly has been recurrent in societies throughout history.
00:49:51
Speaker
And, you know, in many ways, I would say it is rooted in, in some respects, to biology, to paternity uncertainty. And the thing is that whilst you can always know um who is the mother of a child, it's very difficult to know for sure who the father is, particularly before modern day paternity testing. And so I think this has you know this is underlying it why so many societies want to try and control women's bodies, because they are worried about men impregnating women, that they don't want to be impregnating women.
00:50:30
Speaker
So it might be that you're a husband and you're worried about your wife mixing with men in the workplace. It might be that you're a father worried about your daughter mixing with boys at school or at university. So the fact that women can become pregnant and that who the father is so open to question, I think, drives so much responsibility.
00:50:51
Speaker
desire to control women's bodies and to so easily write them off based on who has seen, touched, had access to those bodies. And I would say that, you know, they're in some societies have gone easier on women.
00:51:07
Speaker
than others. So, you know, not all societies force women to veil. Not all societies force their daughters to marry as soon as they reach puberty. Not all societies deny women access to doctors because, you know, having a medical examination requires a doctor to touch you, you know, or to take your pulse or whatever. Not all societies do that. So why is it that some societies place more worth on a woman's bodily modesty than others. And so want to take these measures that really act to constrain women's lives. And so with it, constrain them economically, constrain their access to education, their access to work.
Modern Challenges to Women's Economic Independence
00:51:46
Speaker
I say that there are three things in particular that tend to push societies in this negative direction. Inequality, warfare and population growth. So first of all, if you have rising and really quite significant inequality, then what happens is that inheritance becomes a bigger deal. So who is going to inherit your money becomes a bigger deal.
00:52:11
Speaker
Now, because of paternity uncertainty, you want to make sure that your offspring really are your own offspring. So if you're a wealthy man and you Yeah.
00:52:26
Speaker
you want to make sure that those children that your wife is giving birth to really are children and not someone else's so you to find in societies where you get escalating inequality and high levels of inequality that there is more of a demand for pure wives, wives that are kept away from other men and that are from a young age, therefore, brought up in a way that they're concealed from other men.
00:52:55
Speaker
forced to veil that they're not allowed to go out to school, to go out into the workplace, to mix with men, such that then when they're married, that they can continue those practices. So there's no chance of them being impregnated by someone else and your wealth then ending up in the wrong hands.
00:53:12
Speaker
So inequality tends to push societies in this rather negative direction, this direction of controlling women and and particularly their bodies. Also warfare. So in periods where you've had more intense warfare,
00:53:27
Speaker
then women who are out there mixing in society, mixing with men, ah seen as potentially fraternizing with the enemy and potentially then in turn giving birth to the offspring of the enemy.
00:53:41
Speaker
They are also women in that situation, perhaps in ah in situations of warfare, sadly more prone to being used as a weapon of war by the other side. So in situations where where societies exhibit clear signs of warfare and continued warring tendencies, then again, women tend tend to be pushed to veil more, to be kept out of the public sphere, to be kept within the home, whether for their own safety or because fathers and patriarchs worry that they'll be fraternising with the enemy.
00:54:15
Speaker
And then the third thing is population growth. So in situations of where population growth is perhaps seen as getting out of control, then because women are other the people that give birth, then women start to be seen as the enemy of society. Because if if people are struggling to feed themselves,
00:54:40
Speaker
then more mouths isn't what you need. And since women are the people giving birth to the extra mouths, they're women and particularly women that become labelled as promiscuous. Women that are seen as engaging in lots of relationships or enjoying relationships too much.
00:54:59
Speaker
Women that are not under the control of their male relatives are seen as a threat. A threat not just to themselves, but a threat to wider society. But simply in situations where you have the opposite, where you're in societies where people consider there to be too few people rather than too many people, then because women are the creators of the next generation, then there is also a desire to try to control women's bodies and women's wombs in order to try and determine how many more mouths are born and whether they are of the right nature.
00:55:35
Speaker
type So whether women are marrying the right men. So inequality, warfare and population growth trends are the three things that historically tend to not turn out particularly well for women.
00:55:51
Speaker
yes And with it, that result in a whole load of constraints on women's lives, from veiling to forced seclusion to women being withdrawn from schools and the workplace, leaving women financially dependent on men in a way that doesn't help women and sadly doesn't help the economy either long term.
00:56:12
Speaker
So in this case, as we're looking at... these three big themes, how does this play in today's society? One thing that I thought about as we're going through this is women often still rely on marrying up. And I know that there's been various studies done on this, that women who are usually college educated, have higher intellect, in general, oftentimes stay single.
00:56:41
Speaker
um Now, where where do we see these other things play into effect as well? Yeah. Yeah, no, i I mean, that is exactly right. you can kind of understand that, can't you? I mean, I think so things perhaps of concern for me right now, concentrations of wealth, and in particular, perhaps how new technologies, how AI and so on, how how those are going to play out in terms of inequality trends, wealth concentration, wealth inequality, and so on.
00:57:10
Speaker
Warfare. So sadly, i mean, particularly in In a European and Middle Eastern context, we're seeing, sadly, increasing warfare. That has never, never turned out to be good for women, I'm afraid. you know So not at all a particularly positive trend. And then population trends, you know, global population trends.
00:57:32
Speaker
On the one hand, you know, in Western countries, we're worried about falling fertility rates. And increasingly, we're seeing pronatalist policy trying to encourage or pressure women to have more children.
00:57:47
Speaker
But then, you know, when you look more globally, the problem is in many ways, if we want to call it a problem, that is, is the opposite, you know, is really still quite rapid population growth rates, you know, a world that is struggling to, with you know, with natural resource crises, with environmental crises, you know, struggling to feed the number of mouths that we have in the world.
00:58:13
Speaker
And, you know, at the root of that, I would say is a situation where far too few women in the world have the ability to take charge of their lives, to take charge of their lives in terms of achieving financial independence by going out into the world, getting a job, and so being able to to to make their own decisions so about marriage. And also...
00:58:37
Speaker
too little access to medical technologies that they need to take charge of their lives. And I think the the world would be such a different place if ordinary women had that ability to take charge of their bodies and that in turn requires the ability to access education and work so that they can achieve financial independence.
Historical Women and Their Economic Legacy
00:59:02
Speaker
But that is only going to happen by breaking the cult of female modesty, because if you truly believe that a woman's worth is purely based on her bodily modesty, then you don't allow your daughter to go to school, to go into the workplace, because you want to protect her from male pollution, from being polluted.
00:59:24
Speaker
by men. Thinking about this, looking forward, if women's freedom wasn't the hidden driver of prosperity in the past, what lessons should policymakers, economists, and everyday people take for the future?
00:59:39
Speaker
So let me just be controversial here and just let me repeat my claim that I do think that when you look at places like ancient Egypt, when you do look at the early Roman economy, when you do look at Song Dynasty China, you know, these were places that were economic hotspots in their own particular periods of history.
01:00:01
Speaker
And women were doing amazing things. You know, they weren't just housewives, if I can say that. They were, you know, building pyramids. They were plumbing ancient Rome. Did you know there were four times as many female plumbers in ancient Rome than there are in the U.S. s today as a proportion? Very interesting.
01:00:21
Speaker
yeah So in Song Dynasty China, women were doing 101 different things, running tea houses, breeding silkworms, making the silk cloth that was the currency of trade on the Silk Road. So economies where women have been able to be a part of it have been immensely successful. Now, I'm not saying that things were perfect for women in those civilisations. They absolutely weren't.
01:00:46
Speaker
But relative others at the time, women... were in a pretty good place. And that is why those economies were, at the time, the world's economic hotspots.
01:00:58
Speaker
But what happened over time was women were marginalised, sidelined, restricted in terms of what they could do. And so, you know, going forward, if we want to learn from the mistakes of history, if we want to avoid repeating past mistakes, then we need to keep our own economy on track. So we need to, i mean, as I've argued, women's economic freedom is really key to what has made the West best. And I would say, actually,
01:01:30
Speaker
um that when we should be proud of that. There's a lot to be proud of But we need to make sure that we don't repeat the mistake of history, that we don't move backwards. Women have never been the passive victims or passive beneficiaries of the wealth created by men. We have always been, whether behind the scenes or up front, we have been active co-creators of wealth.
01:01:57
Speaker
Whether we've been given the credit for it or not, is a different thing, but we have always been there. Now, I am sure if as women, we we we keep on, we keep up the fight, then we will continue to achieve great things. But sometimes we're, you know, we're swimming against the tide. Yes.
01:02:17
Speaker
And perhaps we're... um Having to do do a bit more swimming than we might otherwise like to do. Precisely. Now, what is one big takeaway that you want listeners to know, understand from this conversation? So I was watching the news a few months ago.
01:02:36
Speaker
And I saw a commentator claim that there has never been a successful businesswoman in history and that modern-day prosperity was built pretty much entirely on the efforts, historic efforts of men.
01:02:49
Speaker
Now, I think what is sad is that he could make that claim. What is even sadder is that no one in the studio could confront him on that claim, could challenge him, because no one in the studio could actually name...
Conclusion: Recognizing Women's Economic Contributions
01:03:05
Speaker
a female entrepreneur, investor, banker, industrialist from the past. We can all name people like JP Morgan and Henry Ford, but can we name their female equivalents?
01:03:18
Speaker
So what I would really like to do is for people to be able to take Economica and from that global economic history, pull out the names of women, the female equivalents to the JP Morgans and the Henry Fords,
01:03:33
Speaker
So that next time someone, whether in a studio or in a classroom or on public transport, is making those kinds of claims, we can all stand up and say, hang on a minute.
01:03:46
Speaker
What about Maggie L. Walker? What about Priscilla Wakefield? What about Bertha Benz? There are so many fantastic women. in history that can both inspire us, but that can challenge this idea that a woman's natural place is in the home. Victoria, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. This has been a masterclass in economics and also women's history.
01:04:12
Speaker
And to our listeners, the next time you hear someone say that the West got rich because of coal or colonies, remember this. Prosperity has always depended on women's choices, women's labor, and women's freedom.
01:04:25
Speaker
So if you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe to Breaking Math, share this episode with a friend, and join our mailing list and Patreon where you can help guide future questions and conversations. Until next time, folks, keep questioning the equations, democracies, and societies in our everyday world.
01:04:45
Speaker
Stay curious and stay informed.