The polygamy route was mentioned earlier. Lets assume a nation is culturally open to immigration, and allows multiple spouses. Said nation becomes well above average in prosperity, so a larger male population can afford a second bride and marriage brokers start working the global female population for acceptable candidates.
AHC: A country enacts female-biased immigration.
- Thread starter Rhymehouse
- Start date
Maybe. But if the government is thinking along those lines it's better to import them as adults, so they don't become corrupted by the local culture. I'll just make the hypothetical country the US to make it easier to type.
If you bring in a Chinese orphan girl, she grows up in the US and it'll be difficult to keep her from being Americanized. (If American women were any good you wouldn't adopt the immigration policy in the first place).
Bring in the mail order bride and she's what you want, as well as more set in her ways.
There isn't a path in the opposite direction (a hyper conservative society bringing in "loose" women, as they wouldn't be viewed as marriage material and would be considered a high risk to corrupt the next generation).
Chapman
Donor
That’s assuming that there’s something culturally/socially “wrong” with American women though. If the only issue is a shortage of women period, then that doesn’t necessarily apply. I could see the same being done with Hispanic girls in a scenario where the US is even more expansionist against Mexico and greater Latin America. These girls also have the “upsides” of already being Christian (even if they are Catholic) and greater prior exposure to English, as well as exposure to American cultural norms in general. At least relative to a boatload of Chinese orphans anyways.
I'm assuming that would be the reason for imports. You could have a shortage as well, but I'm not sure a society with a shortage would be able to attract female immigration, since the shortage would result from women not being valued and baby girls bring killed.
One historical example of both female immigration and emigration is France's policy to increase the French population of New France. The daughters of the King. Here is a link to the website explaining what that policy entailed. It may load in French but you should be able to translate to English.
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
Filles du roi
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
I think most British colonies at some point spent some effort/money on promoting immigration of British or Irish single women, to address the gender imbalance/be servants. I am descended from at least one such woman and possibly more.
Oh yeah thats a good one, colonial enterprises tended to favour men in the initial waves of migration, followed by women being brought across once things were more "civilized".
Re: Molly Welsh. Working at age fourteen as a English servant girl. Accused of theft she was swiftly sentenced to transportation to one of the North America colonies. & to pay court and related costs she was Indentured. As part of this some entrepreneur purchased her Indenture papers and resold her to a farmer in the colonies. The English court got a payment for her Inenduture (part of which the judge may have skimmed off). The immigrant agent or speculator got a profit for his trouble. Ms Welch was just one of tens of thousands of lower class subjects of the Crown enriching the colonial system with seven years of involuntary labor.
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I think another way you could have this is if some ideology that pushes for a form federation based on culture over race and fully commits to it would do something like this. Something like a British Empire that becomes dedicated to creating some sort of imperial upper class while an underclass develops or something like it.
I could see this happening in a state that gets truly desperate about its birth rate when combined with the polygamy others already mentioned. Even if women only continued to have less than 2 children on average, a rise in the proportion of women would increase the birth rate.
Well considering the alternative at the time was often the noose for even petty theft it wasn't that bad a deal for the convicts. Seven years (or fourteen) work followed by a chance to start a new life in the colonies is a lot better than three weeks prison followed by dangling at the end of a short rope slowly choking to death.
Dang, Mao was really enthusiastic about that "10 million Chinese women to America" plan. I thought it was just an off-hand joke, but if you read the transcript, he brought it up like five times.
Responding to the OP, such policies are basically unthinkable in the West, but this scenario could be possible for Middle Eastern or East Asian countries. ME countries have a religious allowance for polygamy so while IOTL it's sort of uncommon, historical divergences could result in some of these countries specifically opening up a visa category for marriageable women to increase the population. As for East Asia, I can see something like this happening in the future where in an effort to correct their >1.0 TFR, places like Taiwan and South Korea incentivize female immigration in hopes they will marry local men and have children. China could also try this, targeting its poorer neighbors and maybe even offering cash or other incentives.
Responding to the OP, such policies are basically unthinkable in the West, but this scenario could be possible for Middle Eastern or East Asian countries. ME countries have a religious allowance for polygamy so while IOTL it's sort of uncommon, historical divergences could result in some of these countries specifically opening up a visa category for marriageable women to increase the population. As for East Asia, I can see something like this happening in the future where in an effort to correct their >1.0 TFR, places like Taiwan and South Korea incentivize female immigration in hopes they will marry local men and have children. China could also try this, targeting its poorer neighbors and maybe even offering cash or other incentives.
This Is low-key OTL in some Euro countries, just restricted to "white enough" places such as the Philippines or most of Latin America or poorer areas of the Schengen Area (Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland too before the turn of the 21st century) after the end of the Cold War. Women come to work as caregivers and housewives.
In the contemporary world, sensibilities are strong enough that it could not be formally codified as policy; before it runs in the problem that no country willingly wants to give up women, China being the exception because Mao was so desperate to curb natality that he was willing to take very extreme measures.
In the contemporary world, sensibilities are strong enough that it could not be formally codified as policy; before it runs in the problem that no country willingly wants to give up women, China being the exception because Mao was so desperate to curb natality that he was willing to take very extreme measures.
One historical example of both female immigration and emigration is France's policy to increase the French population of New France. The daughters of the King. Here is a link to the website explaining what that policy entailed. It may load in French but you should be able to translate to English.
Filles du roi
You know, the same thing happened in the Portuguese colonies too.