The March 6 issue of the Economist highlighted the problem of gendercide – the “disappearance†of an estimated 100 million baby girls, either killed, aborted or neglected. Three factors were cited:
• the traditional preference for sons
• a modern desire for smaller families (including China’s one-child policy)
• technologies that identify the sex of a foetus (such as ultrasound scanning)
Distorted sex ratios are unbalancing societies in many parts of the world. In China and northern India for example, for children born in the early 2000s, the imbalance has risen to 120 boys to 100 girls born. Similar tendencies can be found in other East Asian countries, including Taiwan and Singapore, and in former communist states in the western Balkans and the Caucasus. Wealth does not seem to be a factor; within China and India the areas with the worst ratios are the richest, best-educated ones.
When these children reach maturity, a shortage of brides will be evident. China for example will have as many unmarried young men as the entire population of young men in America. In many countries, rootless young males are associated with higher crime rates, bride trafficking and sexual violence. A study in China shows that higher sex ratios accounted for about one-seventh of the rise in crime.
Only South Korea has managed to reverse its cultural preference for sons. Female education, anti-discrimination suits and equal-rights rulings made “son preference†seem old-fashioned and unnecessary. Concerned countries should therefore promote actions that raise the value of girls through the encouragement of female education, the engagement of women in public life and the abolishment of laws and customs that prevent daughters inheriting property.
Is gender preference an issue in your country? What actions could IFUW together with its NFAs and other NGOs take to help protect baby girls in the regions concerned?
Gendercide is not an issue in Rwanda. Girls are valued, not least because traditionally they bring cows to the family when they marry.
IFUW can continue its advocacy work with the UN on these issues.
When I was in India last year I attended a function with Ambassador Verveer who was giving a grant to NGOs who are working on this issue. Perhaps the Indian Federation of University Women could support these efforts.
Certainly the work all NFAs do in advancing the priorities of IFUW, education for girls, adult literacy, decision making etc will help by empowering women to make personal and group decisions to reverse these practices. Publicity about the situtaion and the future effects of gendercide would also help to create awareness.
In Greece, girls are valued equally especially between people with higher education. I think that the average mother prospective keeps a secret hope her first child to be a boy, just because traditionally the elders seem to face it as positive. When a woman is pregnant to give birth to her second child, it is considered better the baby to have the opposite sex of the first. Nobody confesses that is preferable boy or a girl as a first child. Everyone’s with is the baby to be healthy. The above mentioned reflect the feeling I have living in Greece, the information is not the result of a research. In a research of mine, I examined the dual-career family, that is the family in which both spouses try to combine career in high status jobs and family, I found that the spouses have less children, have less ties to the members of the extended family, interact less each other and with their children, they convey less to the families which were studied as groups of comparison, traditions and religion education. The gender roles are the most equal and the father contributes less to the cohesion of the family. The adolescents of the dual career family do not seem more secure than their peers, refer less family cohesion, and difficulties in school although they present the highest school performance. The demographic data show that in Greece, there is not deference in the educational level between men and women, and women more frequently have higher than men educational level, women make decision equally as men in the family. More men than women though are employed in high status jobs, I have details if you are interested in, more women earn less money, work less hours and change work more frequently than men to fulfill the needs of the family instead to fulfill their own expectations.
Gendercide is not an issue in Malawi. Although my cynical view is that since its a poor African country, we will soon hear some researcher claiming it is. Data can always be tortured to confess! There are some interesting dynamics though. A number of families prefer boys because they will earn money, others will say its better to have a girl because they will take care of us (parents). This was also the case when I was in rural South Africa. Again, at the moment these are none issues. For most part, people are just happy to have a healthy baby. Also, most tribes in Malawi also do not pay lobola so women do not bring cows. In fact since many tribes do not pay lobola, they are wary to have their daughters marry someone from a tribe that pays lobola for fear (often unfounded) that this will disempower their daughter. I call the fear unfounded because just as many women if not more in non-lobola marriages are disempowered. Anyway, I digress but I agree with Shirley that the Indian and add Chinese IFUW should consider how they can make their small but big contribution
Gender preference is not a problem in Australia, where most parents want both girls and boys in their family.
Where the problem does exist it usually has an economic basis as well as patriarchal attitudes. In Papua New Guinea for instance girls are valued because a ‘bride price’ is paid to the parents, rather than their having to provide a dowry. Solutions such as outlawing kiling of female foetuses are unlikely to succeed without changes in both social attitudes and economic structures. In the long-term there’s a need for widely-based education programs on the bad effects of an unbalanced population, better economic support for the elderly, etc. Short-term positive methods might involve economic incentives to value baby girls –a selective baby bonus perhaps?
Gender preference is not a problem in Rwanda, where most parents want both girls and boys in their family.
Where the problem does exist is that most african societies are characterised by a patriachal structure in which male dominance is the norm, whereby girls are socialised to become mothers and be submissive; boys are socialised for leadership roles, and being assertive and aggressive. The government of Rwanda has, since 1994, demonstrated strong political commitment to the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women.However, much of the work that women do is considered unimportant in the economic world. This is because women are often invisible in the market economy because much of what they produce does not go through the market. For example child care and household work. This does not only affect girls from poor families, it also affects girls in well to do families