China has 44 million missing women: Case Study

1) The case study basically explains the segregation and problematic child gender problems that still exist in many parts of India, southern Asia, and China. Long- established traditions of turning females into commodities as oppose to people are creating large imbalances in the male to female birth ratios each year. The government being aware of such problems are beginning to illegalize such inhuman practices as selective sex abortions and preventing doctors from exposing the generation of the child to its parents until after its birth. However in societies where a woman’s ability to have a boy dictates her society hierarchy, many women have found ways to commit gross acts infanticide and escape the clutches of the law. The article goes on to explain that the problem with having a female stems from the traditional sexist perspective of her being seen as an object as oppose to an equal to her male counterpart. Families dread their daughters coming of age to marry because in addition to the lost of their surname the family will have to forfeit a copious amount of money, property or valuable items in the form of a dowry to have their daughters married. The idea of the female being made a material of burden whom sole purpose is to procreate makes females a very unwanted commodity in many agrarian societies. However the article does elude to the consequences of such behavior could potentially result in “a generation of brideless men”.

2) Some key examples used in the article are:

“Dr. V. Parameshvara, a former president of the Indian Medical Association, estimated that 2 million sex- selective abortions are performed in India every year.”

“Method is feeding hot, spicy chicken soup to the babies. They writhe and scream in pain for a few hours and then die.”

“Another ruthless elimination method catching up in Salem villages is to over-feed babies and tightly wrap them in wet cloth. After an hour of breathless agony they die…..”

“The latest technique of asphyxiating the baby by placing beneath a pedestal fan at full blast has stumped the police…”

“One study in India showed no gender gap in deaths from severe and non- preventable diseases, but girls were twice as likely to die from diarrhea- which is treatable.”

“In the East and South Asia, the proverbs that enshrine the preference for boys are many. Eighteen goddess-like daughters are not equal to one son with a hump.”

3) The key issue being discussed is the growing separation in the boy to girl ratio birth in a lot of agrarian communities in Asia and the Middle East.

4) In terms of solutions to attempt to correct the problem, many governments have outlawed selective- sex abortions in their respective countries and outlawed doctors from revealing the baby’s gender until after the child is born. Also their law enforcements continue to crack down on suspicious infanticide cases and penalize those who do commit the heinous act.

5/6) The best course of action would be to simply continue what they are doing or make illegalize dowries and other pre-marital traditions that materialize the female. The problem with any course of action is it is very difficult, especially with huge populations such as China and India to regulate the equalization of male and females births, where clear disadvantages are apparent for female births. The only solution maybe to let the problem surmount and show these countries how difficult it would be to live with “a generation of brideless men” and see how fast their ideology on the matter changes.