Having looked at the World Health Organization mortality database population statistics on Saturday, I went back to their main health statistics database last night, looking at the same five countries.
As I went through the database, I eliminated statistics for which I did not have information on all five countries. This reduced my options considerably. But while many health indicators are probably better attributed with prosperity than with relative positions on a scale from partnership to domination orientation, a couple of statistics stood out:
Just as sociologists recognize systemic discrimination as possibly occurring without bias on the part of anyone involved, the adolescent fertility statistic can be seen as indicating how a society uses girls for reproduction. A high fertility rate suggests that a society’s priorities do not include preventing children from having children. In this, the United States, putatively the richest country in the world, looks a lot more like the southeast Asian (more dominator-oriented) countries than the Nordic (more partnership-oriented) countries.
If children are having children, one might expect lots of children. I’m assuming that’s not the only reason that with a larger proportion of children under 15 years of age than of adults over 60, the United States again bears characteristics that more resemble the southeast Asian countries than the Nordic countries.
But in a country where “right to life” views must be reconciled with the death penalty, in which military spending seems beyond challenge despite pressing domestic needs, and which is nearly continuously at war, it might be understood that women’s most crucial function is to produce soldiers. Intentionally or otherwise.