[Dialogue] Gendercide at Apocalyptic Levels - Experts

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 by Inter Press
<http://www.ipsnews.net>  Service 

Gendercide at Apocalyptic Levels - Experts

by Zofeen Ebrahim

HYDERABAD, India - Experts at the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on
Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights are painting an apocalyptical
vision of the Asian region where 163 million women are 'missing' and the sex
ratio continues to decline as a result of easy access to modern gender
selection techniques.

China tops the list of countries with a skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) with
just 100 females for every 120 males. India follows going by the country's
2001 census, which revealed that the SRB had fallen to 108 males per 100
females.

Experts worry that unless action is taken, Nepal and Vietnam may soon have
skewed SRBs. Countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh are already beginning to
follow Asia's largest countries with people resorting to medical technology
to do away with the girl child at the foetal stage.

"We place it (skewed SRB) in the context of discrimination against women,"
said Purnima Mane, deputy executive director UNFPA, while addressing the
press. "Women are not valued." She predicted that a continuing unhealthy SRB
trend could lead to increased violence, migration and trafficking as well as
greater pressures on women.

"When there is no economic recognition to women's work and no social value
attached to this particular gender, when resource sharing remains
inequitable, when women are paid less then it becomes easier to do away with
this gender," said Renuka Chowdhry, India's junior minister for women and
child development, at the inaugural of the Oct 29-31 conference.

She called for increased women's political participation and a push for laws
and legislations that empower them as remedy to the adverse sex ratio.
''Don't mess with nature, otherwise it will lead to a mutation of society,"
she warned.

But where have all the girls gone? The sobering answer to the unbalanced
SRB, according to the latest series of studies commissioned by the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), lies in modern gender determination and
selective abortions.

French demographer Christophe Guilmoto, author of the UNFPA's regional
report 'Sex ratio Imbalance in Asia,' based on studies conducted in China,
India, Nepal and Vietnam and presented at the conference, referred to it as
'gendercide' in which millions of parents resort to a variety of techniques
to ensure male offspring. Choosing gender had become easy with the arrival
of amniocentesis in the late 1970s and later with ultrasound imaging
technologies.

In 2005, the estimated overall sex ratio was 107.5 males per 100 females in
India, as against 106.8 in China, 106.0 in Pakistan and 104.9 in Bangladesh
- four countries that accounted for 43 percent of the world's population in
2005.

The underlying reasons for the abnormal sex ratio in China, explained Baige
Zhao, vice minister of that country's National Population and Family
Planning Commission, included the age-old bias for sons, a poor social
security system in rural areas and a trend for smaller-sized families.

The draconian one-child policy imposed by China's government at that time
and the high cost of child rearing provided just the climate for abusing
modern technology.

In India, discrimination against girls is more intense among urbanites and
well-to-do families, while similar data from China indicate that sex
selection appears more pronounced among peasants than among urban residents.
In both India and China, education tends to be positively associated with
discrimination against the girl child.

Perhaps that is why Gillian Greer, director-general at International Planned
Parenthood Foundation, laid particular emphasis on "real investment in
girls' education" as a critical driver of development if they are to be
saved from becoming "invisible and forgotten".

Interestingly Pakistan - where abortion is illegal and unsafe abortions
rampant - does not yet have a sex selection problem. "The fewer studies that
have been carried out all point to the fact that sex selective abortion is
very rare. This could be because we have not been deluged by technology as
in other countries in the region," explained Dr Yasmeen Sabeeh Qazi, country
representative, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Pakistan.

Pakistan also benefits from positive religious beliefs. ''One cannot ignore
that such deeds (selective abortions) are considered sinful with great
misfortune befalling those who commit such deeds. One of the commonest
teachings of Prophet Mohammad, with which all Pakistanis are familiar,
relates to not burying daughters alive (a practice in Arabia before the
advent of Islam)."

The social ramifications of these private decisions will end up affecting
everyone and a 'masculinisation' of Asia, predict specialists. There will be
a vast army of surplus males causing a 'marriage squeeze' with the most
underprivileged the worst off. With fewer women of marriageable age, men
will have to delay marriage; it may also lead to a backlog of older
unmarried men.

However, say experts, it is still not late to turn around the numbers. South
Korea, after a period of 25-30 years, has brought back its SRB to normal
levels through self-regulatory mechanisms and economic change. The South
Korean government also contributed significantly to this.

The UNFPA study recommends keeping an eye on the private health sector which
has played a major role in spreading gender selection technology, and a
strict regulation of sex-determination procedures.

Many countries already have tight regulations. India started as early as
1983, followed by South Korea in 1987 and China in 1989. Nepal banned
sex-selective abortions in 2002 when it liberalised its own law on
abortions. But these laws have proved extremely difficult to enforce.
India's Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technology Act of 1994
prohibited both the use and advertising of gender determination techniques,
but remains largely ignored. Reducing sex-ratio imbalances is better
achieved through advocacy, sensitisation and awareness-raising programmes
says the UNFPA report. "By targeting special groups, such as health
personnel, young women and students," people's mindsets and attitudes
towards girls can be changed."

"The role of girls and women (in society) needs to be applauded," suggested
Guilmoto.

"Supporting girls or those families that only have girls can take many forms
- direct subsidies at the time of birth, various scholarship programmes,
gender-based quotas or financial incentives aimed at improving their
economic situation," UNFPA recommends in its report.

C 2007 Inter Press Service

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/30/4899/

 

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