Alice Evans
Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.
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Where they publish
Newsletter The Great Gender Divergence Her newsletter on gender, culture and economic development. Has a feed.
Recent
- Is Matrilocality Over-Rated? 15 Sept 2026 Headhunting and mandatory abortions among the Siraya of Taiwan
- Merchants of Virtue by Divya Cherian (REVIEW) 5 Sept 2026 Over the 16th to 19th centuries, merchants across the world grew rich from global trade.
- “Behind Bolted Doors”: Arab Debates on Seclusion 1 Sept 2026 “Despising the woman, a man filled his home with slaves, white or black, or with numerous wives...
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- "Men are Slaves to the Women Here" 18 Aug 2026 Travelers' observations of 17th-19th century Europe
- What did Indian Women make of Victorian England? 15 Aug 2026 Romance, Independence and Materialism!
- Punishing Foul Play 24 Jul 2026 If you watched the World Cup final, you witnessed two things which are hugely important to the history of global gender relations: male coalitional violence and the rise of impartial institutions.
- What does the Odyssey teach us about European Patriarchy? 14 Jul 2026 Western literature begins with wars over women.
- Confining Insiders, Raping Outsiders 5 Jul 2026 VENI, RAPUI, GENUI
- Getting Real about Aztec Patriarchy 20 Jun 2026 Are scholars right to push back against narratives of imperial militarism, instead stressing women’s agency and roles as hidden powers?
- Aztec Patriarchy: Women’s Work and Men’s War 19 Jun 2026 Returning to the primary sources, with new ideas for AI!
- Why does Southern Africa have so many unintended pregnancies and absent fathers? 10 Jun 2026 Why does Southern Africa have such high rates of unintended pregnancy and then absent fathers?
- How does Female Emancipation affect GDP? 31 May 2026 This essay thus explores the economic effects of female emancipation - in terms of labour, marriage and fertility.
- Did Colonialism Help or Hinder African Patriarchs? 24 May 2026 Colonialism is often blamed for consolidating patriarchy, but to assess its effects we must consider labour institutions and the political economy of empire.
- The Global Islamic Revival - Key Graphs 21 May 2026 The Global Islamic Revival represents one of the most significant sociopolitical transformations of the past half-century. Muslims increasingly came to disavow secular or syncretic customs, instead studying scripture, a…
- Patriarchal Rents 9 May 2026 Patriarchy doesn't just puff up men's egos, it also enables extraction - labour rents, kinship rents, exclusion, and impunity rents.
- Are Queen Mothers Over-Rated? 6 May 2026 Rebutting a few myths..
- Female Power for Whom? 1 May 2026 Queen mothers, pawned girls, and the limits of the Standard Cross Cultural Sample
- Why Are Sub-Saharan Africa's Earliest States now Epicenters of Terrorism? 25 Apr 2026 The Sahelian-Sudanic belt converted to Islam but retained ethnic divisions. Salafists now recruit excluded young men to wage holy war.
- Will Female Graduates Break Chinese Patriarchy? 16 Apr 2026 Female education is often sold as the great equaliser. But are institutions really so meritocratic?
- When Cities Outrun the State 10 Apr 2026 Late industrialisers can import machines faster than they build impartial states.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 23 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Once women control their own fertility they have children only when they expect a reward for it, so the case for parenthood has to compete with everything else on offer.
Once women are in control of their fertility, they only procreate if they expect rewards - whether that is personal fulfillment or social approval.
How do we Boost Birth Rates? Said 1 Jul 2025
Improving entertainment technology raises the bar parenthood has to clear, because people have children when it looks more fun than the alternatives.
People are more likely to have kids if it’s FUN - relative to alternatives. As entertainment-technology improves, it generates a tantalising menu of ways to spend our lives.
How do we Boost Birth Rates? Said 1 Jul 2025
Having children is contagious: people are more likely to become parents when the people around them already are.
Community comes into play. If everyone else has kids, this shifts expectations and creates club goods.
How do we Boost Birth Rates? Said 1 Jul 2025
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Culture can be changed, so falling birth rates are a fixable problem rather than a one-way ratchet of modernity.
My qualitative research has taught me one thing: culture is malleable! So surely this issue is fixable!
How do we Boost Birth Rates? Said 1 Jul 2025
Deliberately shifting a culture is far harder now that everyone can personalise their media and skip past anything they dislike.
cultural engineering is extremely difficult in the 21st century: in this age of infinite personalisation, people can swipe past anything they dislike
How do we Boost Birth Rates? Said 1 Jul 2025
Money cannot make up for meeting a partner late, because the years in which a couple can have children have already gone.
Even if late 30s eventually find love, the reproductive window is much smaller. Cash incentives can’t trump biology.
How do we Boost Birth Rates? Said 1 Jul 2025
Marriage and birth rates are collapsing across the Middle East and North Africa even though religiosity there has not weakened.
The Middle East, North Africa and Anatolia are witnessing a rapid decline in coupling and fertility. This should rock your priors.
Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA? Said 20 Feb 2025
Where men and women are kept apart, couples form late because it is hard to find somebody you actually like.
With few opportunities to mix and mingle, charm and bond, it’s difficult to find someone one actually likes.
Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA? Said 20 Feb 2025
Marriage survives in South Asia because families arrange it and divorce is taboo, not because men and women mix more freely there.
Thus, even if cross-gender friendships are few and far between, South Asian families still consolidate and preserve nuptials.
Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA? Said 20 Feb 2025
Falling birth rates ended cousin marriage in the Arab world by leaving too few cousins, pushing marriage onto individual choice.
But over the past 50 years, there has been a massive decline in fertility. This entails fewer cousins of a suitable age.
Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA? Said 20 Feb 2025
A backlash against women's economic rise is not automatic; it happens only where politicians choose to mobilise it.
So even though women’s economic advancement did displace some men, and triggered some private hostility, it was never actually catapulted into social antagonism. This is primarily because it was never leveraged by political entrepreneurs!
Does Women’s Rise trigger Backlash? Said 1 Dec 2024
Where women's economic rise is too mild to resent, the far right turns its grievance politics onto immigration instead.
Since women did not pose an economic threat, far-right politicians have instead galvanised society-wide opposition to immigration.
Does Women’s Rise trigger Backlash? Said 1 Dec 2024
Something is broken in how people pair up in the West, and that shortage of couples and marriages, not money, is why there are too few children.
From the 1960s, US fertility fell primarily due to fewer births among couples. In that context, baby bonuses might raise fertility. But today, the major contributing factor is the decline of coupling.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Any theory of the fall in birth rates must explain both the worldwide collapse and the differences between countries, and most theories explain only one.
It must explain both the global collapse and local variation.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Government payments and benefits aimed at raising birth rates do not reverse the decline.
Across the OECD, governments are upping their spending. But a wealth of research suggests these fail to mitigate the downward trend.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Rising female autonomy cannot be the cause of falling birth rates, because births have collapsed just as fast in countries where women's freedom is heavily restricted.
Nicolas Eberstadt speculates that it’s all about rising autonomy. But that can’t explain why fertility has also plummeted in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India, where women are often heavily restricted.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
The fall in childbearing in rich countries is concentrated among the less educated, not among female graduates.
Slurs of ‘childless cat ladies’ usually target female graduates, but in the US, Sweden and Finland the real decline is happening among people with less education.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Personalised online entertainment has got good enough to crowd out socialising, and with it the forming of couples.
My suspicion is that massive improvement in quality of online entertainment crowd out socialising and development of social skills, possibly hurting relationship formation as well as desire for children within marriage.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Immigration cannot hold a rich country's working-age population steady, because doing so would require it to become 40 to 50 per cent foreign-born.
For rich countries to maintain their working-age population ratios in 2050 through permanent migration (where each worker brings one dependent), Lant Pritchett estimates they would need to become 40-50% foreign-born.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
A multi-ethnic society only gets the benefits of diversity if it deliberately builds a shared national identity.
However, productive collaborations are not inevitable. Just look at ethnic violence in South-East Asia or Hindu Nationalism in India. Nation-building is really valuable, learning from multi-ethnic, democratic Indonesia.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Japan's decades of stagnation were caused by its shrinking working-age population rather than by its monetary policy.
The key difference wasn't policy - it was demographics. Japan's working-age population is shrinking.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
As every population ages, countries will have to compete for migrants rather than choose freely among them.
One more word of caution: the world is a closed and shrinking box. As all populations age, competition for talent will only intensify.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Europe is losing the competition for talented migrants because it is not an attractive enough destination.
Europe’s real problem is that we are not a competitive destination.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
Beliefs others hold too
Something is broken in how people pair up in the West, and that shortage of couples and marriages, not money, is why there are too few children. 3 hold this
From the 1960s, US fertility fell primarily due to fewer births among couples. In that context, baby bonuses might raise fertility. But today, the major contributing factor is the decline of coupling.
Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? Said 1 Nov 2024
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