Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising

Feminists around the world fight for the right to "choose". Ironically for them, women use this right and choose not to give births to women. Pro choice people are complete hypocrites if they find this situation to be wrong. Needles to say, if it is okay to choose whether or not to give a birth to a baby, it must be then OK to chose whether or not to give a birth to a boy or girl.

The Editors of The Economist:

It pains me to point out the palpable bias that your magazine has for China when it comes to a comparison of China with India.

Your article has liberally mentioned north India along with China as a cause for concern for, what you term as 'gendercide'. While your copy has been long on mentioning India (even if only parts of it) alongside China, the data has been short on India.

Therefore, I decided to do some investigation. Shown below is the number females per 1000 males in the main administrative parts of India. This is as per the census carried out in 2001 in India. Also shown is the computed ratio for China based on the article that you have published. For the sake of convenience, I have assumed early 2000s for China to be the same as 2001. The data is shown below:

Females per 1000 males in main adminstrative units of India - per census 2001:

Kerala 1058
Pondicherry (U.T.) 1001
Chhatisgarh 990
Tamil Nadu 986
Manipur 978
Andhra Pradesh 978
Meghalaya 975
Orissa 972
Himachal Pradesh 970
Uttaranchal 964
Karnataka 964
Goa 960
Tripura 950
Lakshadweep (U.T.) 947
Jharkhand 941
Mizoram 938
West Bengal 934
Assam 932
Rajasthan 922
Maharashtra 922
Bihar 921
Gujarat 921
Madhya Pradesh 920
Nagaland 909
Arunachal Pradesh 901
Uttar Pradesh 898
Sikkim 875
Punjab 874
Haryana 861
Andaman & Nicobar (U.T.) 846
Delhi (U.T.) 821
Dadra & Nagar Haveli (U.T. ) 811
Chandigarh (U.T.) 773
Daman & Diu ( U.T. ) 709

Females per 1000 males in, 2001 (assumed):
China 806

The table above shows that the sex ratio (females per 1000 males) in all parts of north India, except Chandigarh, is above those of China. Thus, including north India as a geographic whole in your article is a trifle contrived, which, in the absence of any other evidence, seems to be only an effort to bait your Indian readers.

Given this, perhaps it is time that The Economist stopped comparing China with India, or, as a matter of principle, any comparison at all. Comparisons, after all are odious.

This is not to say that some parts of India have a sex ratio issue. They do. India is a democracy and not a police state. Public policy planners in India will address it. Till then, it may be wise for this magazine to hold its tongue and, more importantly, refrain from drawing insidious comparisons.

Thank you!

The most organized of societies are often matriarchal. This holds true even among insects. Bees and ants are most industrious. Women give life and therefore value and strive for its betterment.
The philosophy of femininity is around us: Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Mother India, Mother Mary. As the domination of males grew, the less was understood of femininity's value and the faster we hurtle towards our own destruction. The single biggest mistake has been to identify the human race as 'mankind'
More than global warming, more than border issues or economic crisis, this is the problem, which if not tackled will be our nemesis.

Sir,

In China, the main problem seems to be the one child policy. Parents can only have one child, so many are very motivated to make that child a son. The quickest way to solve this would be to drop the policy. Also, the one child policy will cause economic problems later on, as China will have a large old population and a small young population. Thus, dropping the policy would be best.

India is a different case altogether. Indians can have as many children as they want, but the truth is that women are strongly looked down upon in that country.

In fact, to deal with gendercide--a very apt name--you have to deal with the cultural view of women in that culture. For example, wife burnings, widow burnings, child marriages, child servants, and worse are all common in India culture. Child marriage still occurs in large numbers in India, where little girls are married off to old men, despite the recent 'modernization' and economic growth. Also, young girls (as young as 8) are made into domestic servants by India's upper class. And their is virtually no public outrage against this. Indeed, child female maids are increasing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/world/asia/18iht-india.4637103.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/world/asia/03iht-child.html

Additioally, the sexual attacks against women in India has been increasing in recent years, with very little public outrage. Thus, the view that economic growth will somehow civilize societies is simply wrong (yes, I said civilize because currently treating women as cattle is uncivilized.)

The real problem here is a culture that views women as inferiors.
What is needed is a major cultural change. Gendercide is just a symptom of a problem.

Also, I am curious about the gendercide that occurs in Islamic nations. I imagine that it would be worse than what happens in China or India.

We need to stop being politically correct. People refer to these practices in India and elsewhere as 'simply cultural.' But the little girls working as slaves, or the women being burnt and abused by their husbands are suffering. This is not just a 'cultural difference.' It is an uncivilized practice.

Having a boy child in a family is real happiness for the most societies.But what we need to know is the reason of being so.There are quite big differences in societies.It can be tradition,it can be religion or country's economic situation.

A commnet by the sidelines: my respects to The Economist: as a deep believer that the right of the possibility of life in the wound is superior to the choice of the mother (when her own life isn´t at risk), effectively, largely anti-abortion, I deeply respect the way this journal manages such a topic, with an editorial stand but an honest will to debate it from a lots of perspectives. That´s rare in the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" type of view of the world.
By the way, perspectivist, your comment is completely out of line ("China and India are still uncivilized, barbaric and ignorant countries."), what about the killing of growth adults? Does the fact that the US is a very rare example of a rich country with a practicing death penalty makes it "uncivilized, barbaric and ignorant"? I personally don´t think such generalisations really can seriously stand.

I would love to hear the defense of "safe, legal, and rare". If it is morally acceptable to kill unborn children, why the fence-straddling? Why should it be "rare"? Is killing unborn children ok if it will be REALLY INCONVENIENT for the woman, but otherwise it is objectionable?
Please don't hide behind the "health of the mother" talking point. No statistics I have seen report even 10% of abortions for that reason.
I am ashamed that western firms have gladly sold the equipment necessary to facilitate the explosion of abortions in China and India.
Those countries will pay an incalculable price in coming generations.

I suspect these countries with such imbalances will soon learn firsthand of the simple capitalist concept of "supply and demand". It may sound cruel, but perhaps the best way to counteract these outdated cultural norms is to let them play out. Eventually there will be so few women around that daughters will be highly valued, dowries will be going the other way, and women (and, in less enlightened societies, their parents) will have the pick of the litter. The fact that there may be widescale riots of single young men in the meantime only speaks for... appreciating our own modern civilization.

In modern, rich societies where wealth potential is largely a function of education, girls are exceeding boys in education and thus in earning potential. Half the workforce in the USA is now female. Those wishing to choose the sex of their child based on their likely success in life will choose a girl. As it becomes easier to pick children's sex using in vitro procedures as well as abortion, one wonders when the sex ratio in modern rich countries will begin to skew towards girls.

While this gendercide is indeed a tragedy which will haunt China, India, and others as they have to learn to deal with their many excess single men, I would be surprised to see it continue for many generations as the article indicates. Countries now going through industrial and post-industrial development do so much faster than those that went through first. Knowledge does disseminate. China and India are aware of this problem, and I'm sure fear the consequences. In 20 years I bet the problem disappears.

In a post-evolutionary society, one where we adapt our genes by design rather than through Darwinian survival and breeding, there is no obvious need for the male of the species, who are more expensive to care for and increasingly less productive. In 100 years, will those rare men remaining serve only an ornamental function, the ultimate fashion accessory?

One little life graced us, somewhat early at 745gm in week 25. In 150 days in hospital she had not one operation, even her ductus valve closed by itself, a rare occurrence for micro-preemies. One day she may be President of our country, but not the first female President, or maybe Prime Minister, but not the first female PM, chances that are possible because as a region we have evolved to a level where gender is least significant in our workforce compared to greater than 98% of the UN members. In the Nordic lands this winter is tough, but in these harsh conditions we continue to care about saving life, regardless of gender.

The Economist states:

"For those who oppose abortion, this is mass murder. For those such as this newspaper, who think abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” (to use Bill Clinton’s phrase), a lot depends on the circumstances, but the cumulative consequence for societies of such individual actions is catastrophic."

So, why did the economist choose the title Gendercide if it agrees with abortion as an individual right? Wouldn't it be more accurate to simply state the fact: "Looking forward to a Future with more Boys and its Consequences" or something of the kind?

The number of legal abortions in the U.S.A. (5 % due to risks to fetal or maternal health) is less than one million per year, from which only one tenth is performed on the third trimester. In the U.K., the number is only one fifth than in the U.S.A. but still sixty times the number of people killed on 9/11. The really good news is that in both places baby boys and baby girls were killed in similar percentages and therefore their deaths didn't skew the statistics.

I believe there is an inaccuracy in characterization of Japanese Americans. This NY Times article makes the point that while Chinese- and Korean- American births show gender preferences, Japanese Americans show none.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15babies.html

Long live the rise of Asia and its benevolent creed.

Are only three forces conducive of that gendercide? No, here is the fourth one: the legalisation and the trivialisation of supposedly safe abortion!
To stay politally correct, the author reckons that only implicitly!

The gendercide will have global repercussions (in addition to increasing criminality and political violence).

The forces of supply and demand will destroy patriarchal value systems, destroy the dowry system and radically increase the social status of women and daughters in these societies.

The gender distribution of immigration to the rich world is already skewed and the shortage of women in the family forming age bracket 18 – 40 will spread to the West as well as most young immigrants are men.

Competition among men for women will be cut-throat and ruthless. Assume that the gender distribution is 55/45, also assume that 40% of all men and women are paired off in a relationship. That will leave 15% percent men competing for the remaining 5% women, three men for each woman. In such a world, smart parents will begin to have a preference for daughters.

Many troubled governments will have to accept massive prostitution as a way to reduce the frustration and release steam in society.

I'm not sure how the years match up, but from this article it seems that Korean-American births show gender preferences while the problem has been reversed in South Korea due to changing values. The overwhelming majority of Korean-Americans are of South Korean origin. I've noticed in the past that Korean-Americans are sometimes like time capsules reflecting the social mores of Korea at the time they emigrated, while South Korean society has changed dramatically since then.

I think one important factor behind changing attitudes in South Korea is awareness of the gender preference issue. We learned about this problem in school, and this issue periodically received spotlight in the media in the past couple of decades. I think people realized that having a son isn't much of an advantage if men are going to disproportionately outnumber women in their generation. So I appreciate the spotlight on the issue.

It is sad to read comments bashing the entire country and her people. I would caution my fellow readers to beware of hypocrisy..

I think this article should be a little more cautious. Statistics for China are not good, but here they are barely even cited. I would like to know if as China has liberalized, it has improved its statistics, or whether the gender preference has worsened.

I do believe the one-child policy is to blame for this (by the way, so does the CCP)...partially. If this article is correct, and the areas where Chinese gender selection are the worst in the richest areas, well, they are the ones who can afford the penalty permit for multiple children. The rural areas are also largely exempt from the one child policy (although it is still somewhat encouraged through propaganda). Finally, it would be interesting to see whether this differs between Han and minority Chinese, because minorities are also exempt from the one child policy.

If these statistics could be found, one could pseudo-scientifically pin the blame on the one-child policy, or find that it is statistically insignificant. For a cover article, conjecture is not enough; I hope to find a follow-up article in the future, because this is indeed an important issue.

Some good news for China is that they have a more open culture than the Koreans or the Japanese. Immigration reform would greatly aid China to solve its population problem and its worker shortage with one fell swoop. China is good enough at assimilating other cultures; it should have immigration that reflects that skill.

@ perspectivist

Thanks for putting a single-party Communist China in the same league with the world's largest functioning democracy India.

The sex ratio figures in India, even in the northern states, are far more favorable than those in China. As a matter of fact, the sex ratio in some major parts of India is even more favorable compared to some major Western European nations.

Yet you had the audacity to call India "uncivilized, barbaric and ignorant". Go educate yourself before showing off your ignorance. And oh yeah... the same applies to the ignorant person who wrote this Economist article. If the Economist continues to publish articles such as these without doing sufficient research, then it will lose whatever credibility it has.

To SongTao,

Yes, thank that very same democratic process in India because of which the Chief Minister of the most populous state in India is from the "untouchable" caste. Thank that very same democratic process because of which so many low caste people have went on to become President of India, Speaker of the Indian Parliament and the architect of the Indian Constitution. Caste-based discrimination in India is a reality but it is far less worse thanks to democracy. A democratic India has made several sincere attempts to eradicate the caste system, be increased educational and occupational reservation or increased political representation.

And "wife buring"?! Are you referring to the now extinct practice of 'Sati'? Tell me Chinese man, how many satis have taken place in the past decade? Two? Three? Out of a population of 1.1 billion people?! Come up with a better argument next time.

To end, first tell your country to start respecting Tibetans and Uighurs. Then try to find faults in the Indian democratic system.