Srila Prabhupada May Be Correct Although He Seems to Contradict Empirical Data

By Sita Rama das

Krishna Consciousness is a science. In the B.G. Krishna gives the qualities of a self realized soul. There is a logical connection between these observable qualities and ones internal realization. We can see that Srila Prabhupada exhibits the qualities of a self realized soul. This means he clearly sees that the material world consists of eternal spirit souls conditioned by Krishna’s external energy. This cannot be perceived with the fallible material senses. So Srila Prabhupada certainly sees this world with greater clarity than any materialist, however intelligent they may be.

Of course Srila Prabhupada is not an expert on every material subject. That is not the definition of perfect knowledge. Perfect knowledge means to see that everything emanates from Krishna; Srila Prabhupada’s never forgot this most important fact. Sometimes Srila Prabhupada makes a general statement about the world and we can think of a situation where it would not be valid. But this is not a mistake by Srila Prabhupada because he did not intend the statement to apply every circumstance. However; we see that sometimes Srila Prbahupada was momentarily mistaken. A Vyasa Puja homage from the San Diego Temple explains that a devotee once shouted, “Jaya Srila Prabhupad” from behind him. Srila Prabhupada turned and said “yes” thinking the devotee was asking a question, but when the devotee simple repeated “Jaya Srila Prabhupada” he understood that it was not a question and thanked the devotee.

So how do we properly understand Srila Prabhupada’s statements as absolute? To what extant can Srila Prabhupada be mistaken regarding a practical observation? I was recently exposed to such a dilemma regarding the fact that Srila Prabhupada said that he traveled all over the world and saw that everywhere females outnumbered males (see S.B. lecture Calcutta 09/26/1974), However all the empirical data on this topic says that the number of men and women in the world are, almost always, extremely close to equal. I checked into this and found that the ratio of men to women in the U.S. has been essentially 1-1 over the last century, and this is also true for the worldwide population for the last 50 years or more.

If one does a Vedabase search they will find Srila Prabhupada made the statement that females outnumber males no less than 10 times. In all cases he was speaking in the context of polygamy being allowed in Vedic Society. The topic here is Srila Prabhupada’s observation and not the issue of polygamy. But I will say that I also found documentation of Srila Prabhupada prohibiting polygamy in ISKCON. I accept the GBC law against it as being in accordance to Srila Prabhupada’s instruction. The problem is, in this specific case, the greater number of women is cited as the reason the Veda’s allowed polygamy, “The social structure allowing polygamy can be supported in this way. Generally in every society the female population is greater in number then the male population. Therefore if it is the principal in the society that all girls should be married unless polygamy is allowed it will not be possible. If all girls are not married there is a good chance of adultery and a society in which adultery is allowed cannot be very peaceful or pure”,( Srila Prabhupada’s purport to Sri Caitanya Caritamrita 14: 58) If this is not true than Srila Prabhupada is wrong in a significant way and the reason for the Vedas allowing polygamy becomes doubtful. I cannot believe that Srila Prabhupada would have expressed this observation unless it is true. On the other hand cannot doubt the census data.
No matter how much someone tries to tell me that he is only perfect regarding the scriptures, I refuse to accept that Srila Prabhupada is mistaken here. He might make superficial observations that are wrong; but implicit in his observation of women outnumbering men is that the Veda’s confirm his observation. So if I conclude he is wrong here I am concluding that he is wrong about the Veda’s. Therefore my reaction to this is that there must be some reasonable explanation for this seeming contradiction between Srila Prabhupada’s statement and scientific data. This is not fanaticism. In any sphere if one has ample good reason for faith in something they do not immediately abandon it because of the inability to explain some detail. I would have to reject an abundance of observational, and rational, evidence regarding Srila Prabhupada’s veracity to doubt him on this point. That would be unscientific.

As has been my experience whenever Srila Prabhupada seems to be wrong a little investigation solved the issue. When Srila Prabhupada says women outnumber men he is clearly saying there are more potential brides than grooms, because it is always within this context that he says it. It so happens, empirical facts show that a shortage of grooms is a common situation and it was the case when Srila Prabhupada was traveling all over the world. This is referred to as the female “marriage squeeze” a term coined by Dr. Paul Glick, who was Senior Demographer of the Population Division of the U.S. Census Bureau for where he worked for over 40 years. There can be a female squeeze where women are squeezed out of the marriage market and there can be a male squeeze when men are squeezed out. A thing called the “marriage gradient”, coined by sociologists Jesse Bernard, contributes to the marriage squeeze. Several University studies have verified the existence of both the gradient and the squeeze.
The marriage gradient refers to the theory that women prefer men who are essentially on their own level, but a little taller, more educated, and most importantly for this discussion a little older. Some of you will immediately see how this leads to the squeeze, for others I will get to that soon. Empirical evidence of the age gradient is given in a 2004 research paper by The Division of Social Statistics, University of Southampton. (1) It analyzed the age difference of married couples in both the U.K. and the U.S. and compared this to the age preferences of 32.326 clients of a British dating agency. They cited data showing that the average age difference, (given in years the husband is older than the wife), fluctuated between 2.2 to 3.1 years from 1901 to 1992 in Britain and Wales. The fluctuation showed no directional trend that could be attributed to changes in social cultural attitude. It was 2.2 in 1901, 2.5 in 1992, and 3.1 in 1946.(2) The average difference in the U.S. fluctuated between 2.4-3.1 from 1964-1990.(3) Before that the U.S. statistics were only for the mean age difference of men and women at first marriage: although less accurate, these were consistent with the other data, it varied from 2-4 years throughout the 20th century.(4) The study found that there was good agreement between the preferences given by the dating service clients, and the actual marriages in both the U.K. and the U.S. They comment on their findings: “It should be regarded as surprising that a single set of age preferences collected in the 1990’s in Britain performs well through historical time and in both Britain and the U.S. While little is known about the origin of, and role of, partner age preferences, it seems reasonable to suppose the they reflect a mixture of psychological and social factors that are relatively stable through time, and comparable between broadly similar cultures, particularly age differentials between the sexes in physical and psychological maturity”(5). A paper “The Mating Gradient: Alive and Well on the college Campus”, was presented to Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in 1983. It described a survey of 377, white middle class college student which found, “That women wanted spouses who earned more, were older, better educated and taller.” So throughout time women have been marrying slightly older men and contemporary studies show it is what they prefer.

It is easy to see that the marriage gradient will cause a female marriage squeeze if the birth rate increases. For instance if a lot more people were born in 1947 than in 1943 there will be a lot more potential brides than grooms in the late 1960’s Of course this happened during what is widely known as the baby boom which occurred in the U. S. and most industrialized countries(6). It just so happens that when Srila Prabhupada was traveling all over the world the baby boomers were just coming to the common age for marriage. So his observation that the population of women is more than that of the men, rather than being an error, shows a brilliant perception of this world. Srila Prabhupada did not have a style, as some intellectual’s do, of writing a whole page to qualify one simple point. He had too many things to say to have time for this. When he said the female population was greater he was clearly talking about the number of available brides for available grooms and he was correct.

I will give various studies that show a female marriage squeeze did exist when Srila Prabhupada was traveling around the world. A 1981 study from UCLA which discusses how the female marriage squeeze and the “contraceptive revolution” related to the women liberation movement, shows clear statistical evidence of the marriage squeeze; from 1960-1975 the proportion of men 20 to 24 who were married declined by 6.3 percentage points while for women in this category it declined 12.9 percent.(7)
The introduction to a 1984 paper by professors at Princeton University reads: “ In the contemporary U.S., the increasing shortage of males for females in the prime marriageable age has been shown to relate to increasing age at marriage, increasing percentage single, declining marriage fertility, rising rates of divorce, rising illegitimacy rates, increasing female employment, and higher female earnings” Later in the introduction: “The unfavorable sex ratio for woman has even penetrated the world of popular literature with the recent publication of a book describing the problem, with advice to women on how to cope with the poor odds.”(8), (illegitimacy is an old fashioned word for children born to a single mother.)
The Summary of a paper by Donald Akers of the U.S. Census Bureau, reads; “During the 1960’s single men have been marrying at an increasing rate and single women have been marrying at a decreased rate. These trends can be explained almost entirely by the disproportions between the sexes at prime ages of marriage- that is commonly called the “marriage squeeze.” The disproportion arose from the increase in births during the period 1939-1947 coupled with the fact that women marry earlier than men.”(9)

A study by Jean E. Veevers, from the University of Victoria concludes: “In essence what is involved in the “Real” marriage squeeze is a reaffirmation of the double standard. The traditional double standard was based on the vestiges of Victorian England morality. These underpinnings have been discredited in light of egalitarian norms and increasing permissiveness. In their place, however there may well emerge a new basis for a double standard… The emergent rationale may be based, not upon androcentric ideologies, but upon a world in which there is a relative scarcity of men and a surplus of women”. (10)
A study from the University of Michigan appeared in “Evolutionary Psychology” in 2009. It defined the “operational sex ratio”,(OSR), as the average ratio of sexually active male to females in a population. It gives abundant references to previous studies to support its claims. For example:

“When men are scarce in a female biased population, there is less incentive for competition among men for commitment and paternal investment because male scarcity enhances their short term mating success, (Pedersen 1991). Females have less selective power and may exhibit lower thresholds for male commitment in order to have sexual relations. Women compete for partners through signals of fecundity and sexual availability, (Cunningham 1986: Tesser and Martin 1996). In female biased populations female mating effort and sexual receptivity increase, as can be seen in trends for skirt length, (Barber 1999) and teenage pregnancies, (Barber 2000)”. “Pederson, (1991), described how the demographic bulge of the baby boom generation in the United States combined with sex differences in average marital age to result in an effectively female biased OSR”. “Across history female biased OSR tend to destabilize marriages, and lead to higher divorce rates, more out of wedlock births and single mother households and lower parental investment,(Guttentag and Secord 1983: Pedersen 1991). Male biased OSRs are associated with the reverse pattern.”

The study also cites a study that shows a female marriage squeeze existed in the late European Middle Ages, where many women remained unmarried because of a scarcity of men and men’s reluctance to commit to marriage because women were abundant. (11)

If anyone is interested I can email these studies. The ones cited are just a few of a much greater number that I have viewed which are in agreement with the ones I have presented. Sophisticated mathematical models have been developed to measure the squeezes which take into account practically any variable one could imagine. Of course research is still going but the trend I have seen is a building on former theories rather than attempts to discredit them. The scholarly book, “Too many Women? The Sex Ratio Question”, by Guttentag and Secord, (1983) in particular is cited often. I am waiting to receive a copy. But the reviews explain that, based on an empirical approach, it describes social consequences of marriage squeezes throughout history. The cited descriptions of the result of an oversupply of unmarried women seem to agree exactly with what the Veda’s say on the matter. And of course the book acknowledges the oversupply of females in 1960-70 in industrialized countries.
Of course Srila Prabhupada would not deny that sometimes the male population is greater. In a conversation with Shyamasudara on psychoanalysis and the soul, Srila Prabhupada says in the Punjab state there are more men than women. So it is unlikely Srila Prabhupada would deny the data that says since the 1980’s, as a result of an decrease in the population growth in the 1960’s, the tendency is that the market now has a shortage of grooms. Although on a local level, in many urban area’s the potential brides are still greater due to more women moving to cities looking for men who are usually better off financially then men in rural areas.

It shows intelligence to question these seeming contradictions. But a truly intelligent person will also ask themselves if the seeming contradictions really prove a person is mistaken. The point is if all one knows about population is that the number of men and women are almost always, essentially, equal they know very little about the subject of marriage markets. If based on this a person concludes Srila Prbahupada is wrong they are clearly seeing Srila Prabhupada based on their own mentality. They know very little about the subject but think they know much, so they conclude that Srila Prabhupad does not know what he is talking about. Beyond this such a person must not know much about any subject. In any field of knowledge there are facts which seem contradictory to the layman but not to one who has studied the subject. So if one has deep knowledge of at least one subject they will acknowledge that in another subject, which they know little about, things may appear contradictory although they aren’t. So a learned person will not conclude Srila Prbahupada is wrong is wrong in such circumstances, without looking into the matter; rather a person who has no deep knowledge in any field is more likely to make this conclusion.

(1)Marie Ni Bhrolchain, 2004, “Validating age preferences for marriage market analysis”, Division of Social Statistics, School of Statistics, University of Southampton. mnb@socsci.soton.ac.uk
(2)Ibid Pg. 11.
(3)Ibid Pg. 7
(4)Ibid Pg. 21.
(5)Ibid Pg. 3
(6)“ The Population Of The United States Of America” submitted by the U.S. to the U.N for “World Population Year” 1974, P. 9.
(7)Heer ; Grossbard-Shechtman,1981, “The Impact of the Female Marriage Squeeze and the Contraception revolution on Sex Roles and the Women’s Liberation Movement in the United States, 1960-1975. “Journal of Marrigae and the Family, Vol. 43. No.1( Feb., 1981), pp44-65. Statistics cited are on page 52
(8)Noreen Goldman, Charles F. Westoff, and Charles Hammerslough, Affiliates of the Office of Population Research, Princeton University, 1984, “Demography Of The Marriage Market In The United States” Population Index 50(1):5-25. Spring 1984.
(9)Donald S. Akers, “On Measuring the Marriage Squeeze” Demography,(1967) Population Association of America.
(10) Jean E Veevers, Universtiy of Victoria, “ The Real Marriage Squeeze: Mate Selection,Mortality and the Mating Gradient”, Sociological Perpsectives, vol.31 No.2 April,1988 169-189
(11) Kruger, Schlemmer, University of Michigan, 2009, “ Male Scarcity is Differentially Related to Male Marital Likelihood across the Life Course” Evolutionary Psychology,2009, 7(2): 280-287

Email-djk201@gmail.com