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It strikes me as unlikely that Asian American applicants lack extracurricular activities. Though first generation immigrants may come from societies where academic achievement is the summum bonum, they know that in American admissions criteria that non-academic strengths matter. But, you can't manufacture leadership and charisma. Harvard's role is to educate and inculcate the leaders of the next generation of Americans. It is the training ground for our natural aristocracy. Can American society actually conceive of a situation where 40% of those leaders are Asian? I doubt it. Asian Americans are not seen as plausible leaders. Especially by the established oligarchs, who would prefer their own offspring to inherit the mantles of power. Asian males in particular exhibit a "penalty" in thedating game. White females perceive them to be sexually impotent (on average), and for better or worse the opinions of white females as to who is a plausible leader in our society is very telling. If American women won't want have to have sex with them, then why would the broader society see them as creditable leaders?

While the women interviewed did seem to be in agreement that Japan is not a gender-equal society, they also pointed out that both genders tend to have different roles in society here and are appreciated for different reasons. Additionally, there are some perks which women enjoy in society that are denied to men. Some even questioned whether a gender-equal society would be beneficial to anyone.

"All the evidence is, that if families, households, societies, countries have to deal with large numbers of dependants, it takes away resources that could be put into driving society, the economy etc," Harper said, adding that the "problem" of an ageinga population also needed to be reconsidered, not least because technology to support dependants was advancing while people were staying in good health for longer. "It is much easier to enable older adults to stay upskilled and healthy and in the labour market than it is to say to women 'oh you have got to have children'." Indeed, empowering women might do more to change a country's total fertility rate than pushing pro-natalism, said Harper, although that would not necessarily cause a baby boom. "In those societies that enable women to stay in the labour market and have children, they will go from none or one child probably up to two [per woman]." In rich societies the wealthy might opt for more.

"It's very easy to look at the politicians and CEOs and state how a vast majority of them are male, but what people overlook is that only a stark minority of the population are politicians and CEOs, whereas 50% of the population are women. The only reason why the politicians and CEOs are male is because they know that women are attracted to money and power, because women are hypergamous. Men don't automatically get laid for being good looking and having money, which is why they're entrepreneurial. Men know that to be accepted in society they have to produce something of value. Women don't have to be good at anything to impress men, because err they're a woman."

"Societies become considerably more risk-averse as their average age rises, which may have important consequences such as reducing investment in the stock market or the extent of self-employment. These are the central findings of new research by Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, Bart Golsteyn, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde, published in the October 2017 issue of the Economic Journal."

"Male students are "manning-up", setting up men's groups to celebrate and explore the concept of masculinity amid accusations of sexism and gender stereotyping. Manchester University has created the first official MENS Society - Masculinity Exploring Networking and Support - despite outrage from critics who claim the existence of such a group undermines women's ability to speak out for equality. Meanwhile, at Oxford University the formation of Man Collective - Oxford (MC-O), launched "as a response to the current state of masculinity" has been branded "reactionary and ridiculous"."

"Efforts to mark Mr Khong as a "public enemy" on account of his views on homosexuality are the opposite of what it means to live harmoniously in a pluralistic society. To build a truly inclusive, tolerant and diverse Singapore, Singaporeans of all creeds and stripes should take a firm stand against such calls for ideological conformity."

Workers across the socioeconomic spectrum, from hotel housekeepers to surgeons, have stories about toiling 12- to 16-hour days (often without overtime pay) and experiencing anxiety attacks and exhaustion. Public health experts have begun talking about stress as an epidemic. The people who can compete and succeed in this culture are an ever-narrower slice of American society: largely young people who are healthy, and wealthy enough not to have to care for family members. An individual company can of course favor these individuals, as health insurers once did, and then pass them off to other businesses when they become parents or need to tend to their own parents. But this model of winning at all costs reinforces a distinctive American pathology of not making room for caregiving. The result: We hemorrhage talent and hollow out our society.

can such hoaxes be beneficial? If a Western audience was in fact impelled to learn more about the social woes in Syria, is this a net gain for society in general? Should such well-intentioned projects be condoned, even perhaps emulated in certain ways if deemed an effective educational tool? Could we use this format - a narrative-driven account of important far-flung events that allows audience a portal into such events that may be more engaging than typical AP newswire reportage? People tend to connect better to emotion-filled story arcs than recitation of facts, after all. Perhaps instead of merely piling on MacMaster, we can learn something from his communication strategy …

In nature, the balance of males and females is maintained by natural selection acting on parents. As Sir Ronald Fisher brilliantly pointed out in 1930, a surplus of one sex will be redressed by selection in favour of rearing the other sex, up to the point where it is no longer the minority. It isn't quite as simple as that. You have to take into account the relative economic costs of rearing one sex rather than the other. If, say, it costs twice as much to rear a son to maturity as a daughter (e.g. because males are bigger than females), the true choice facing a parent is not "Shall I rear a son or a daughter?" but "Shall I rear a son or two daughters?" So, Fisher concluded, what is equlibrated by natural selection is not the total numbers of sons and daughters born in the population, but the total parental expenditure on sons versus daughters. In practice, this usually amounts to an approximately equal ratio of males to females in the population at the end of the period of parental expenditure. Note that the word 'decision' doesn't mean conscious decision: we employ the usual 'selfish gene' metaphorical reasoning, in which natural selection favours genes that produce behaviour 'as if' decisions are being made.

If you base a society on a conception of self that is about achievement, not character, you will wind up with a society that is demoralized; that puts little emphasis on the sorts of moral systems that create harmony within people, harmony between people and harmony between people and their ultimate purpose.

In the slow-growing, hierarchical societies leading up to the 20th century, he said, the most important factor determining your economic prospects was the class into which you were born; from Italy to India, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich. By the mid-20th century, though, the most crucial factor was the country of your birth. In the U.S. and Western Europe, rags-to-riches stories became common, if not routine. Maybe, Zucman warned, the 20th century was an egalitarian anomaly and inherited wealth would again dominate. The question, he said, is "how to have a meritocratic society when so much of wealth comes from the past."

Sometimes I think the oppressed forget their values and they adopt the values of the dominant. Maybe it is the value system. Maybe this over-fixation on GDP. However, you must look at the construct of GDP. It doesn't include informal care for the children, for the elderly. It doesn't include all the intangibles. Our report on nursing homes is called "Safe but Soulless". I find it interesting because the title has been used by foreigners to describe Singapore. Singapore is safe, clean, efficient, controlled, somewhat unnatural and there is a psychological fear in society. Unfortunately, the nursing home sector is a microcosm of this stereotype which must change.

"these are not "women's issues," but social and economic issues. Societies that discover how to use the education and talent of half their populations, while allowing women and their partners to invest in their families, will have a competitive edge in the global knowledge/innovation economy."

In Chapter 19 of a new book Management of Success, Singapore revisited, National University of Singapore law professor Michael Hor makes a strong argument that Section 377A of the Penal Code is unconstitutional. This is the law that makes it an offence for men to have sexual relations with each other, effectively criminalising male homosexuality.

France's Proposed Burqa Ban: Why Americans Might Want to Consider It Too