It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, September 02, 2022
Sorry Zuckerberg, the Metaverse Won't Replace Zoom
“Welcome, welcome!” My guide, Philip, waves at me from his seat in a virtual conference room, where he’s wearing a green shirt and sitting at a desk. I’m at Facebook’s Reality Labs headquarters in Burlingame, California, wearing Meta Platform Inc.’s Quest 2 headset. Philip is in another room there as his cartoonish-looking avatar hops to another seat using a button on his virtual dashboard.
“You may have noticed when I changed seats that you heard me a little louder and a little closer in your left ear,” he says, noticeably more loudly and to-the-left-of-me than before. I jump to a different seat too.
“Right,” I say.
“You see!” says Philip. “Now you sound a little bit further away.”
This neat trick of spatial-audio technology is part of the pitch that Facebook and its parent, Meta Platforms Inc., are making to employers to gain a foothold in the metaverse, the virtual world that Mark Zuckerberg says is the next chapter of the internet. Though this world will almost certainly be a part of our future, it probably won’t be a place for work meetings.
In Horizon Workrooms, where our avatars are engaging, I can “write” on a virtual white board, and Philip can share his screen to show a PowerPoint presentation. I can even change our environment to a lakeside cabin, and there’s a blank space on the wall where I can put a company logo. I can get out of my seat and “stand” by the whiteboard.
That’s important, says Philip, because if I’m standing at the front, then everyone else feels like they’re in an audience. “It really helps with immersion,” he says.
This abstract notion of immersion is a key selling point. “How do we help businesses create an immersive presence, regardless of where you are?” asked Ade Ajayi, who recently started heading up efforts to sell the virtual conference room tech to employers. He used the word “immersive” another eight times in our 30-minute conversation.
When I asked if his own team uses Workrooms, Ajayi said they hopped on it every so often. It’s more effective than Zoom because creating and viewing documents in virtual reality “creates a more immersive and engaging experience,” he said, without elaborating.
After the demo and conversation with Ajayi, I struggled to see how being immersed with my colleagues would be more worthwhile than a normal video call. For a start, the headset was heavy, and zooming around made my stomach lurch a little. One Facebook representative said they took the headsets off every 30 minutes in their weekly meetings to give their eyes and heads a break. Immersion has its limits.
In fact, numerous VR companies don’t even meet in virtual reality for work meetings, says Marshall Mosher, CEO of virtual-reality startup Vestigo. They prefer Zoom, or even old-fashioned phone calls. It seems that VR’s real value for employers is using it to forge stronger relationships through fun and games, or training.
Facebook’s representatives wouldn’t tell me which companies were currently using Horizon Workrooms, but they did mention Accenture Plc, the consulting firm, and the drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc in examples about how VR meetings could work.
Accenture told me it had bought 60,000 Quest 2 headsets last year, but that it wasn’t using Horizon Workrooms for meetings. Instead, new employees used an app from Microsoft Corp. called AltSpace VR, where they go into virtual buildings for new-hire orientation and training. AstraZeneca declined to comment.
Bank of America Corp., which recently bought 4,000 alternative virtual-reality headsets, uses them for staff training. The bank is looking at ways it could use VR for meetings, but said it also had to consider issues like network security and user experience. “We don’t want to do it simply because we can,” according to BoA innovation executive Mike Wynn.
Often, companies that buy VR headsets for meetings typically realize they’re more useful for internal events or training, according to Mosher.
Facebook is tackling an increasingly sensitive relationship between employer and employee, one made all the more tense by the rise of remote working. Employers are desperate to better manage remote staff who may be feeling lonely and isolated. While this problem presents itself as an opportunity, Facebook faces a unique challenge in targeting the enterprise.
Already, since 2016, Facebook has been selling Workplace, an enterprise version of the Facebook app that rivals Microsoft’s Teams and Slack. Employees at Starbucks Corp., Walmart Inc. and the government of Singapore use it for group chats, video conferencing and sharing news links. But in six years, Workplace has amassed just 7 million paid users. That’s still well below the 270 million people using Microsoft Teams every month, or the 20 million people using Slack, according to an estimate from the Business of Apps, an app news site. All three services are subscription based.
Ultimately, cloning a conference room in VR isn’t going to make collaboration more effective, and replicating the sensation of being in a room with your colleagues is a superficial answer to staff isolation. For that, companies with remote workers are better off holding quarterly offsite meetings, where their staff can meet face-to-face over the course of a few days for fun and real-world collaboration. They can even have a fun VR adventure together, like climbing Mt. Everest.
Finally, there’s the big elephant in the room: Facebook’s sketchy reputation on privacy and social harm. According to a TechCrunch report in January, “Workplace from Meta” had recently nabbed a large restaurant chain as a client but was asked not to announce the deal because they were concerned about “reputation issues.”
That may be hampering Facebook’s enterprise efforts in VR too. Some employers don’t want to force their employees to use or open up a Facebook account, which they need to use the Oculus, says Mosher, citing previous conversations with clients who said they also weren’t comfortable with their corporate data flowing through Facebook.
“I know Facebook has assured everyone who works with them that the privacy is super solid,” he said. “But people don’t think that way when it comes to Facebook’s brand.” Shaking off that notoriety may be even harder than getting employers to swap their Zooms for VR, no matter how immersive.
George Yeo on Southeast Asia's Chinese diaspora, regional anti-Chinese sentiment, and Lee Kuan Yew's US-China calculations
For half a year, Singapore's former foreign minister George Yeo met and mused over a wide range of topics with writer Woon Tai Ho and research assistant Keith Yap, in weekly interview sessions which lasted two to three hours each time.
The result of the interviews is a series of three books. In the first book, George Yeo: Musings, the 67-year-old offers his views on India, China, Asean, Europe, the US and other parts of the world, and how Singapore's history and destiny are connected to all of them.
In this excerpt, Yeo addresses Singapore's strong diasporic links with China, its relationship with the mainland and regional suspicions about these ties.
How will Singapore's connection with China affect its ties with other countries?
As China moves to centre stage in global politics and economics, the relationship between China and the Chinese diaspora will naturally grow stronger.
Chinese communities which lost their connection to China (like the Peranakans of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) are finding renewed interest in Chinese heritage and language.
For generations, the Peranakans of Singapore and Malaya developed their own subculture.
They were self-consciously Chinese but looked down on new Chinese migrants, whom they called the sinkeh.
Peranakan food is a favourite cuisine among Singaporeans and Malaysians. The fastidiousness of their womenfolk is expressed not only in their food and dressing but also, and especially, in their jewellery.
When in mourning, the women wear only silver jewellery as gold is reserved for celebrations.
In 1993, Edmond Chin put together a delightful exhibition called Gilding the Phoenix at the old Tao Nan School, which became a part of the Asian Civilisations Museum.
Many of Singapore's first generation of leaders including Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Lim Kim San were Peranakans.
With the rise of China, Peranakans are reconnecting to their mother culture. This creates new tensions.
In the US today, American-Chinese working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) have suddenly found themselves under surveillance or suspicion by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) because of worsening relations between the US and China.
In 2018, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, said the US was concerned with "the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat on their end", which required "a whole-of-society response by us".
In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in January 2022, Wray stressed again, "I want to focus on it here tonight because it's reached a new level – more brazen, more damaging, than ever before, and it's vital, vital that all of us focus on that threat together".
In Southeast Asia, ethnic Chinese have gone through difficult periods in the past. After South Vietnam fell to the North in 1975, the first waves of boatpeople were mostly Chinese.
Under Suharto, Indonesia banned Chinese language and literature, probably the only country in the world to do such a thing.
I remember reading with disgust customs forms which stated that, along with drugs and firearms, Chinese-language material was also considered contraband.
In Thailand, those of Chinese descent were not allowed to join the army (although many still did).
Anti-Chinese sentiment
The main cause of anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia is the disproportionate role ethnic Chinese play in business.
Among the very wealthy, many are ethnic Chinese. Some are known for their philanthropic work like Lee Kong Chian's family, but a few behave badly and live ostentatiously.
Thailand's King Rama VI criticised the ethnic Chinese as the Jews of the East even though his own ancestor, Rama I, had Chinese blood.
They are also seen as being disloyal or not loyal enough. Overseas Chinese supported China's resistance against increasing Japanese encroachment into the Chinese mainland from the early 1930s.
Tan Kah Kee organised the Nanyang Federation of China Relief Fund Technicians.
From 1939 to 1942, over 3,000 overseas Chinese volunteered as truck drivers and mechanics in China along the Rangoon-Yunnan Road. About 1,800 technicians died from bombing, disease and exhaustion.
His nephew, Tan Keong Choon, raised money to build a memorial by Dian Lake near Kunming to remember their sacrifice.
At the Ee Hoe Hean Club in Singapore, there is an interesting memorial hall to Tan Kah Kee and other Singapore-Chinese leaders.
Japan viewed overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia as extensions of China.
Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia was carefully planned for years before it was executed in December 1941. Plans for the Malayan Campaign were made in Taiwan (which Japan took from Qing China in 1895).
In his book, The Killer They Called a God, Ian Ward writes about how Lieutenant Colonel Masanobu Tsuji drew up a detailed plan to eliminate many overseas Chinese once the Japanese army had occupied Singapore.
Post-war sources revealed that the order was to kill 50,000. The Japanese referred to the Sook Ching as the Kakyō Shukusei, meaning purging of overseas Chinese. Sook Ching was second only to Nanjing in the cruelty inflicted on a civilian population.
During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), led by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), fought a guerilla war against the Japanese in the jungle. They were mostly Chinese.
Between the Japanese surrender on Aug 15, 1945, and the return of British forces in September that year, the MPAJA took action against Japanese collaborators, many of whom were Malay.
Ultimately, the failure of the CPM struggle in Malaya was due to their inability to win over the Malays, who expressed their nationalism through the United Malays National Organisation (Umno).
Photojournalist and artist Sim Chi Yin at her exhibition on the Malayan Emergency in Jan 2018. She was inspired by her late grandfather’s experience to look into the large-scale deportation of ethnic Chinese Malayans by the British from 1948 to 1960. PHOTO: South China Morning Post
The Malayan Emergency will eventually be seen in the historical context as a nationalist struggle which failed because of racial division which the British exploited.
Many young men lost their lives in pursuit of a righteous cause. Robert Kuok burns a joss stick every day for his second brother, who was killed by the British during the Emergency and whom he admired for his good-heartedness, brilliance and eloquence.
The Straits Times had a photographer, Sim Chi Yin, who accompanied me on a number of overseas trips when I was a minister.
On one such trip to Hong Kong, I bumped into her in Stanley one evening. She told me that she had an exhibition on the Emergency.
When I asked her about the reason for her interest, she said that it was the story of her grandfather, who had been banished to China during the Emergency and killed by the Kuomintang (KMT).
The exhibition was titled One Day We'll Understand.
In both Malaya and Singapore, the British were determined to hand power over to credible nationalist groups who were less unfriendly to them.
In Malaya, the proposal for a Malayan Union was changed to one for the Malayan Federation, enshrining the position of the sultans and Malay rights.
In Singapore, the British favoured Lee Kuan Yew and his faction in the People's Action Party (PAP). Both direct and indirect British interventions at critical moments were decisive.
The British did not want an independent Singapore because it could become a satellite of China. They manoeuvred for Singapore to gain independence through the merger with Malaysia.
Lee Kuan Yew later said that Sarawak and Sabah were the dowry the British gave to [Malaysia's independence leader] Tunku Abdul Rahman to admit Singapore into Malaysia.
When the Tunku agreed two years later that Singapore could go free, Lee Kuan Yew wrote that he kept it a closely-guarded secret from the British until it was irreversible because they would have thwarted it.
Although many ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia threw themselves into nationalist struggles against the colonial enemy, like the Philippines' Jose Rizal, as a group they were sometimes seen to be less supportive, as in Indonesia, or too aligned with China-backed communist movements, as in Thailand and Malaya.
When, for whatever reason, countries in Southeast Asia are unhappy with their indigenous Chinese populations, they project their unhappiness on Singapore as a headquarters for Southeast Asian Chinese.
Regional suspicions about Singapore
Whatever we say or do, the fact is that many countries factor Singapore's Chinese-ness into their planning and calculations. For this reason, Lee Kuan Yew held back diplomatic relations with China until Indonesia had done so.
To some extent, we have succeeded in convincing other countries that while Singapore has close cultural ties to China; on political matters, we calculate in our own self-interest.
One day in the mid-1990s, Singapore's relations with China went through a bad patch.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas expressed his concern about the state of Singapore-China relations to me, and indirectly offered his assistance.
I was pleasantly surprised that here was Indonesia worried that we were having bad relations with China.
For a period, Vietnam viewed us with suspicion, too.
After Vietnamese divisions moved into Cambodia in 1978, Singapore, together with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries, worked with China to support anti-Vietnam forces in Cambodia. (Unlike China and Thailand, Singapore kept a distance from the Khmer Rouge but supported all other factions.)
At the UN and other international gatherings, we combined efforts to deny legitimacy to the government in Phnom Penh installed by Vietnam.
After 10 years, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. They then decided to follow China in gradually opening up its economy.
Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet visited Singapore in 1991. At the end of a dinner hosted by Lee Kuan Yew at the Istana, Kiet asked Lee Kuan Yew to be an adviser to Vietnam.
Although he was taken aback and promised to visit Vietnam regularly, he did not agree to become an adviser.
I accompanied Lee Kuan Yew on his first three trips to Vietnam.
Relations steadily improved. The first Vietnam Singapore Industrial Project (VSIP), was a mini-Suzhou, established near Ho Chi Minh City in 1996. (Since then many VSIPs have sprouted across the length of Vietnam.)
When I was Minister for Trade and Industry, I co-chaired a bilateral commission with the Vietnam Minister for Planning as my counterpart.
Whenever meetings were held in Hanoi, I called on PM Phan Van Khai. He was always polite but somewhat formal until, one year, he spoke to me as if I was his minister and started giving me "homework".
Something had happened. My belief was that Vietnam had come to the conclusion that Singapore was not an agent of China and could become a strategic partner.
On Khai's next visit to Singapore in 2004, the two countries launched the Connectivity Initiative, which I helped put together for Goh Chok Tong.
Will the suspicions ebb eventually?
I doubt so. Chinese-ness is an inseparable part of Singapore. Others believe and expect that so long as Singapore's core interests are not affected, Chinese-Singaporeans are likely to view China with greater sympathy.
Some of my Chinese Singaporean friends who are critical of China nonetheless get upset when they see Western countries finding fault with China.
Singapore's one-China policy is not merely a decision. The position that Taiwan is part of China and only separated because of Japan up to 1945 and the US after that is widely held by older Chinese-Singaporeans.
A Singapore government that departs from this policy is likely to face strong opposition from the majority of older Chinese-Singaporeans.
In 1989, I was asked by Lee Kuan Yew to announce in Parliament that Singapore would allow US military forces in the Pacific to use our base facilities after the closure of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay.
Without the US, Singapore could not be sure that the Straits of Malacca and Singapore Strait, which are our lifelines, would always be kept open.
Lee Kuan Yew was, however, very clear that should there be conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, Singapore would not be involved. I don't believe that position has changed despite close defence links between Singapore and the US.
Chinese communities everywhere in Southeast Asia are conscious of their "Jewish" status. Anti-Chinese sentiments have generally subsided but they are still there in the soil.
In countries where bad experiences are more recent, a certain sense of insecurity is pervasive, like background music.
Singapore is a safe harbour they know they can turn to in a crisis. In Singapore, they can celebrate their Chinese-ness without worrying that some may take offence.
However, there are a few who worry that if Singapore emphasises its Chinese-ness too much, they might be negatively affected. In my years as minister, I was conscious of this dynamic.
During my time at the Ministry of Information and the Arts, one of my missions was to promote Singapore's diverse heritage, including our Chinese heritage.
Vice-Prime Minister of The People’s Republic of China Zhu Rongji (right) during a meeting with Indonesian President Suharto (left) in May 1996 while in Jakarta to attend the Indonesia Summit Economic Conference. PHOTO: Reuters
An Indonesian scholar of Chinese descent whom I know well whispered to a Singaporean friend of mine that he was uncomfortable with what I was doing.
That was during the Suharto years when Chinese language and culture were suppressed in Indonesia.
At the launch of the Chinese Heritage Centre in 1995, Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian-Chinese tycoon and a member of the Advisory Board, came for the first meeting chaired by Wee Cho Yaw.
He told the meeting that he received a phone call the day before from the Indonesian Home Minister asking him why he was going to Singapore for the meeting. It was a hint which he happily brushed aside.
In 1998, Indonesia was shaken to its core by the Asian financial crisis. Shadowy figures orchestrated racist attacks on Chinese-Indonesians.
Many fled to Singapore and stayed here for months. I used to go running along East Coast Park and I remember seeing many of them taking evening strolls – women with their children and helpers in tow looking out to the sea.
Two years later, at a Ministry of Trade and Industry event, we invited the Indonesian scholar who had been uncomfortable with my promotion of Chinese heritage to give an in-house talk on the Indonesian economy.
Before he began, he expressed his gratitude to Singapore for our assistance to Indonesian Chinese in their darkest hour of need, choking on his tears.
Who we are is not only who we think we are, but also how others see us. We have to be aware of the games which big powers play, whether to influence us or to sow seeds of suspicion here.
George Yeo: Musings is available at all major bookstores in Singapore and Hong Kong from Sept 2022.
Beijing has continued to enforce its zero-Covid policy with snap lockdowns, mass tests, contact tracing and hard quarantine for the infected and their contacts to tackle the mostly Omicron-driven clusters
A worker wearing a protective suit swabs a woman’s throat for a Covid-19 test at a coronavirus testing site in Beijing, China on Friday. (AP)
BEIJING: China has swiftly censored a Beijing-based research centre’s report disagreeing with the government’s zero-Covid strategy after it argued that the virus containment policies are disrupting trade and industry and stalling the Chinese economy.
Beijing has continued to enforce its zero-Covid policy with snap lockdowns, mass tests, contact tracing and hard quarantine for the infected and their contacts to tackle the mostly Omicron-driven clusters, which have continued to break out across China despite strict containment strategies.
Covid-19 infection and death numbers have remained low in China compared to other countries but the policies have severely impacted the economy.
Experts say that China’s response is increasingly disproportionate - shutting down a neighbourhood if there’s a single case and continuous mass testing in cities like Beijing, for example - given the rest of the world is learning to coexist with the virus.
Anbound Research Centre, a Beijing-based think-tank, argued against these policies in a report published on its social media handles on Sunday.
In the report titled, “It’s Time for China to Adjust Its Virus Control and Prevention Policies”, the organisation’s macro-economic research head, He Jun, said the current policies are stalling the Chinese economy while post-pandemic economies elsewhere are recovering faster.
“The Anbound Research Center gave no details of possible changes but said President Xi Jinping’s government needs to focus on shoring up sinking growth. It noted the United States, Europe and Japan are recovering economically after easing anti-disease curbs,” the Associated Press said in a report.
The AP report added, quoting the Anbound article that the economic impact of repeated shutdowns of companies and neighbourhoods is more severe than last year.
The report from Anbound, which calls itself an independent think tank focussed on public policy, said that the freezing effect might be even worse than when the outbreak began in 2020 and the whole economy shut down temporarily.
China’s economy is at risk of stalling due to the impact of epidemic prevention and control policies, the article said.
The article was published on Sunday but was removed from every social media handle in less than 24 hours.
The Anbound staff declined to share the original report, telling HT they have been “forbidden” from sharing it.
At least one of the centre’s social media handles had been shut down because of the article, HT learnt. “The piece no longer exists on the Chinese internet,” a staffer told HT.
The censorship of the research report indicates that not only will the Communist Party of China (CPC) continue with the zero-Covid policy - occasionally tweaking rules to show it is ready to adapt to the changing Covid-19 situation - but will also not brook any domestic opposition to the policies.
Major sea-level rise now 'locked in' due to melting of Greenland Ice Sheet
If the area’s record melt year of 2012 becomes routine, the ice cap could deliver almost a 78cm sea-level rise in the future
Greenland's enormous ice sheet has lost 4.7 trillion tonnes in 20 years. AFP
A major sea-level rise is now locked in as a result of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, even if more is done to halt global warming, a new study suggests.
Scientists say damage done to date will cause a minimum sea-level rise of 27cm, as 110 trillion tonnes of ice thaws.
And if the area’s record melt year of 2012 occurs routinely, the ice cap could deliver almost a 78cm sea-level rise in the future, said the scientists behind the study, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
That would serve as “an ominous prognosis for Greenland’s trajectory through a twenty-first century of warming,” wrote the authors.
Professor Jason Box from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (Geus), who led the research, said the 27cm change was “very conservative rock-bottom minimum” and guaranteed, despite all efforts to prevent it.
“Realistically, we will see this figure more than double within this century,” he told The Guardian.
The Greenland Ice Sheet, which is on average 2,600 metres thick, is the world’s second largest after Antarctica.
It contains roughly 8 per cent of the planet’s total supply of fresh water.
Melting of the ice sheet has caused about 25 per cent of global sea level rise over the last few decades, according to estimates.
But if the entire sheet thawed, US space agency Nasa has said the sea level would rise by seven metres, endangering the lives and livelihoods of nearly one-third of the world’s population, who live in or near a coastal zone.
A sea-level rise of only between 60cm and 90cm, which is theoretically possible under one of the study’s scenarios, if record melt years become common, would, according to Nasa, create serious global problems: increased coastal erosion, salt water encroachment, loss of barrier formations like islands, sandbars, and reefs, and increased storm surge damage.
The study used a different methodology compared to previous analyses, which have typically used computer models to predict ice cap behaviour.
For this one, scientists studied satellite measurements of ice loss and the shape of the cap.
That allowed them to calculate how far global heating to date has pushed the sheet from the balance where snowfall matches the amount of ice lost.
Last year, scientists gave warnings that the melting of the Jakobshavn drainage basin in Greenland was nearing the tipping point from where it could not recover.
Data indicated that a critical threshold had been reached after a century of accelerated melting.
And in 2012, the ice sheet in Greenland underwent an unprecedented rate of thawing. For a few days during July, 97 per cent of the entire ice sheet indicated surface melting.
“If [2012] becomes a normal year, then the committed loss grows to 78cm, which is staggering, and the fact that we’re already flickering into that range [of ice loss] is shocking,” Dr William Colgan, who is at Geus, told The Guardian.
“But the difference between 78cm and 27cm highlights the [difference] that can be made through implementing the Paris agreement. There is still a lot of room to minimise the damage.”
However, he said there is growing support about the likelihood of a multi-metre sea level rise in the next 100 to 200 years.
Scientists say there are ominous signs of temperature change in both polar regions.
In February 2020, a research base on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula recorded a record high temperature of 18.3°C, according to Argentina’s national meteorological service. And the mercury hit 38°C in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk, an Arctic record.
And in the following year, rain fell at the highest point on the Greenland ice sheet in the Arctic for the first time on record.
Earlier this year, scientists were stunned when the temperature in the Antarctic plateau rose 40°C higher than normal.
Concordia Station, located high on the Antarctic Plateau, hit a record temperature of -11.8ºC, more than 40ºC above the annual average for three days in March.
Updated: August 30, 2022, 8:54 AM
Global population skews male, but UN projects parity between sexes by 2050
As of 2021, there were about 44 million more males than females in the global population. But that difference is expected to disappear as a result of several different demographic trends.
In the coming decades, the world population is expected to age due to a combination of declining fertility (a smaller share of the world’s population will be young) and people living longer (a larger share of the world’s population will be old). Between 1950 and 2021, the median global age rose from 22 to 30. By 2050, the UN projects the median global age will surpass 35.
How we did this
When a large share of a population is young, it tends to skew male because more boys are born than girls. This pattern is exacerbated in countries where sex-selective abortions and female infanticide contribute to imbalanced sex ratios at birth. In 2021, the global sex ratio at birth was 106 male births per 100 female births. Gender inequalities also make girls and women more vulnerable to poor health, often putting them at higher risk of death, including from complications during and following pregnancy and childbirth.
However, in most countries, females have lower mortality rates after birth and live longer than males, on average. Higher male mortality has been associated with behavioral factors and genetic differences. In addition, more males than females have died due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Because of these patterns, females outnumber males at older ages. In 2021, women comprised 56% of the global population ages 65 and older, including 59% in Europe and Northern America. Their share of the global 65-and-older population is projected to be 54% by 2050. As populations age, they are more likely to become majority female.
Not only does the UN project parity between the sexes by 2050, it projects that females will begin to outnumber males in the decades after 2050.
Sex ratios vary widely
The countries with the biggest male-to-female ratios today are Qatar (266 males per 100 females), the United Arab Emirates (228) and Bahrain (164). In several Persian Gulf countries, these wide sex imbalances are primarily due to large immigrant populations of largely male temporary workers. For example, according to UN estimates, 79% of Qatar’s 2019 population was born elsewhere, and among the foreign-born population, 83% were male.
In many former Soviet Union republics, the reverse is true. The former USSR has been predominantly female since at least World War II, when millions of men died in battle. For example, in the territory that is now Russia, there were just 77 males per 100 females in 1950. That number rose steadily in subsequent decades, climbing to 88 by 1995 before starting to decline again. Several other countries from the former Soviet Union have seen similar patterns, and in 2021, they accounted for six of the 10 nations with the highest ratio of females to males.
Even within the same country, sex ratios can differ widely by age. For example, Armenia is the most heavily skewed country toward females (82 males per 100 females), but there are still more newborn boys than girls. In fact, for every 100 girls born in Armenia, 110 are boys – the world’s sixth starkest sex ratio at birth in favor of boys.
Other places with overall sex ratios that skew heavily female include Guadeloupe, Martinique, Hong Kong and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The United States has had more females than males since 1946, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2021, the population sex ratio in the U.S. was 98 males per 100 females. By 2050, it is expected to be 99.
The number of majority-male countries will decline by 2050
In 2021, males outnumbered females in 86 countries. That figure is expected to decline to 67 countries by 2050 as an increasing number of majority-female populations emerge.
Within countries where males are expected to continue outnumbering females in 2050, the UN still projects a more balanced sex ratio in the coming decades.
A recent Pew Research Center report took a closer look at the sex ratio at birth in India, specifically. India’s artificially wide ratio of baby boys to baby girls – which arose in the 1970s from the use of prenatal diagnostic technology to facilitate sex-selective abortions – now appears to be narrowing. This follows years of government efforts to curb sex selection, including a ban on prenatal sex tests and a massive advertising campaign urging parents to “save the girl child,” and coincides with broader social changes such as rising education and wealth.
Projections describe how populations will change if their underlying input data are accurate and their assumptions about future trends (e.g., that fertility will decline in high-fertility countries) are correct. However, unexpected events like war, famine and disease may produce different outcomes and may alter the world’s gender balance by causing a greater number of deaths for males or females and by affecting migration trends of individual countries.
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