Yeah but more independence means it will eventually lead to the breakdown of family structures because if the US is anything to go by where 75% of divorces are women initiated you’re going to end up with broken families all over, dads in jail due to the inability to pay child support, parent less kids. In South Asia there is a tremendous amount of good that comes from having stable families even if everyone in it is not a 100% satisfied with their life.

That being said, I’m not against any of this progress but you can’t just introduce these sweeping societal changes to millenia old traditions and expect the social order in the country to survive.

Meh women have independence in Philippines but they made divorces illegal. You can have a job or even separate and have an affair but none of the family law bullshit where one spouse becomes a slave to alimony and tossed in jail because a judge now owns his/her ass because of a divorce. It's probably the sanest system in the world. Your wife/husband don't have the kind of insane leverage they do in the USA because they managed to bypass all the power play fuckery of the family law courts.

The way it works in the USA where your citizenship is half-revoked in divorce and now a judge gets to make all sorts of minute decisions over your life "for the interest of the children" (bullshit) or some such is insane. Of course it does lead to more independence for women perhaps, because it's easy to be financially "independent" when you get half + child support + alimony as you can get all the old timey support of a man while pretending you're independent because a judge said it instead of the institution of marriage.