The Missing Girls: Son Preference Reshapes the Population in India and China

The Conflict

In the two most populous countries of the world, India and China, attention has lately been drawn to a disturbing trend in which some couples try to ensure male children by means of sex-selective abortion and infanticide. Because of these practices a significant imbalance has been noted in China and India, as well as Korea, Bangladesh, and some other countries. The imbalance will almost certainly mean that millions of young men will never marry, throwing the social structures out of line. Son preference not only disturbs the natural balance, but also reflects and perpetuates the inequality of women.

Political

• In China the government's "one child" policy, aimed to curb the population explosion, probably caused a significant number of couples to abort female fetuses or kill female infants in order to try for a son, since they were only allowed one child.
• The governments' policies for population control in both India and China have indirectly added to the gender imbalance in the population.

Economic

• In both China and India economic reasons for preferring sons are compelling. While daughters join their husbands' families, sons can supply a couple with an additional hand on farms or another income in the home, and can support them when they are too old to work.
• With the dowry system in place in India in modern times, multiple girl children have become an overwhelming expense when it comes to paying large dowries to their prospective husbands' families. Many poor people simply cannot afford to have them.

Religious

• The ancient traditions of India and China still have a profound impact on the cultures in modern times.

Afew years ago Malli, a young woman in India, delivered a baby girl. Instead of being greeted with joyful comfort and congratulations, she heard her mother-in-law speak in angry voice: "Again a girl! Are you not ashamed of yourself? The third time and still a girl." Both mother-in-law and husband had already threatened to send Malli to her parental home if she delivered a baby girl again. The fate awaiting the unwanted new baby girl and her helpless young mother was uncertain and not promising. This true story, reported by Shobha Warrier in Rediff on the Net (March 1999), is one among many. Stories of aborting and killing unwanted baby girls are generally untold and under-reported, but these practices are widespread in India and China and other nations, particularly in Asia. Population statistics provide evidence of a very large missing segment of the female populations of those countries.

There are several factors behind the imbalance in population ratios in terms of sex balance in India and China, the two most populous countries in the world. Scholars point out that the age-old tradition of son preference has combined with new technology and the introduction of government-sponsored family planning programs designed to control the rapid population growth in both countries. Fertility rates are dropping, while at the same time governments have increased control over population growth by making it difficult for couples to have large families. Wishing to ensure that they have boys (often a cultural preference)—and not having the assurance of being able to keep trying—couples are likely to perform pre-natal gender testing, now widely available through ultrasound. When the tests indicate a female fetus, many couples are taking the option of abortion. Along with this selective abortion and some cases of killing female infants, the female mortality rate tends to be higher for girls than boys in many places, due to the poorer nutritional and medical care that is given to young girls. Consequently, there are significantly less females than males in the population.

The imbalance in the male to female ratio may result in some serious long-term social and economic consequences. Some population scientists maintain that if the current trend goes unchecked, women will eventually become an "endangered" sex in China and India, and in other countries engaging in selective abortion and infanticide. Due to this so-called "gender-cleansing," men will eventually face a "bride famine" for lack of females to mate. Beyond this, the practices have harsh social consequences for women, who are devalued by the very concept.

Historical Background

Son preference can be found in the history of any country and dates back to ancient times. In modern India and China the culture of son preference has been reinforced by economic needs as well as some unique belief systems. Most people in India and China today engage in agricultural production, using traditional methods. Since this kind of farm work is highly labor intensive, they need more laborers, and thus, sons come in very handy. Most farmers are quite poor—they need sons to generate family income. A daughter may be a helping hand to her parents before her marriage, but once she is married, she will live with her husband's family. If a couple has no son, their future may well be one of hardship and toil. In both countries there are only very limited public social security systems for the elderly, especially for the rural population. Parents still rely heavily on their children—especially their sons—to provide for them when they get old.

Apart from purely practical matters, belief systems perpetuate son preference in both China and India. The particular beliefs are different in the two countries.

China

Confucianism dominated China for more than two thousand years. One of the Confucian virtues is filial piety. There are three grave unfilial acts, and the failure to have a son is at the top of the three. The importance of having a son is obvious in a patrilineal society: only sons can carry on the family name. Without a male heir, the family chain is stopped. In the old days the failure to produce a son could be an excuse for a man to divorce his wife or to marry a number of concubines in order to guarantee a male heir. The Chinese have always valued boys more than girls. When a son is born, it is considered to be a "big happiness," while when a daughter is born, it is considered to be a "small happiness."

Historians have noted that female infanticide (the killing of newborn baby girls) was widespread in China in the nineteenth century and probably for many centuries before. The practice decreased significantly after the Chinese Revolution in 1949. In the 1980s, however, the ratio of women to men once again began to drop. Many believe it was an indirect result of the People's Republic of China's imposition of the "one-child policy" of 1979. In trying to control population growth, the Chinese government limited couples to having only one child, and for some time the government strictly enforced this rule. Between 1982 and 1983 women who had already had a child were compelled by the government to use birth control; women who had unauthorized pregnancies were compelled to have an abortion. When a couple had two or more children, some were forced to undergo sterilization, while others were subjected to severe administrative punishment, such as heavy fines, or the loss of benefits, promotions, and even their jobs. It is likely that during those times a some parents chose to secretly abort, abandon, or even kill their female infants in the hopes of trying again for a boy, especially in the rural areas.

By the late 1980s China had eased up a bit on its population policies, but the trend of gender preference in individual family planning decisions seems to have taken hold. In September 1997 the World Health Organization reported that more than 50 million women were "missing" from the population in China due to infanticide or neglect—that is, the rate of women to men was very low and could not have occurred naturally.

The result has been a pronounced imbalance between males and females, with young men in China facing a future in which they are unable to find wives.

India

In India people traditionally believed that daughters were liabilities and sons were assets. Boys were to be better treated and better educated than girls. Only sons were allowed to perform important religious rituals. For instance, according to the Hindu tradition, sons were needed to kindle the funeral pyre of their deceased parents and to help in the salvation of their souls. These cultural values remain very strong today.

In India, when a son gets married and brings a daughter-in-law into his family, he is providing for additional help around the house as well as a large dowry payment to the parents. The dowry system in India, a source of income for the groom's family, has become a terrible burden for many brides' families. A bride's parents may have to put their life savings into a dowry payment to give to their daughter's new family. If they have several daughters, their financial situation becomes almost unbearable.

India's dowry system has led to practices known as "dowry death" or "bride burning," in which husbands and in-laws have killed women (often by burning them to death and claiming it to be a kitchen accident) because they were unhappy with the amount of the dowry. In the old days dowry was only meant to be a small gift a bride's parents gave to their daughter at marriage. The purpose of such gifts was to provide some financial security for her in case of her husband's death or any other calamity—the gift was considered the wife's property. In modern days the dowry has become a way for the groom's family to accumulate wealth. Dowry has been changed from a pure gift to required conditions. Quite often, the groom's family will demand a specific amount that the bride's parents are reluctant or unable to pay.

If problems arise in the payment of the dowry the consequences can be extreme for the wife. Bride-burning is widespread in India. The Indian government reported 5,199 cases of dowry death in 1994, but some non-governmental organizations put the death toll as high as 25,000 each year. Although the Indian government outlawed the dowry system in 1961, the practice continues. Alice W. Clark wrote in an article published by Economic and Political Weekly that the dowry system has contributed directly to the high female mortality rate in India: "In a patrilineal kinship system where marriages are arranged on principles of dowry … and where women are objects of exchange along with other forms of wealth, excess female mortality is argued to be an inevitable outcome." Clearly, for a poor family, paying for dowries for several daughters is a frightening burden and would naturally lead to some attempt to limit the birth of daughters. Young women who have been subjected to great cruelty by husbands and in-laws may also think twice about bringing another female into the world only to suffer in the inhumane system.

Modern Technology in the Aid of Patriarchal Values

Although the child mortality rate has come down in both China and India, the sex ratio of child mortality has continued to be skewed against female children. Modern technologies of pre-natal testing, particularly ultrasound (a diagnostic technique that provides two-dimensional images of organs and structures within the body) have helped those parents who insist upon having baby boys.

In China it is estimated that there are at least one million female fetuses aborted each year (and some figures are many times higher), much higher than the number of aborted male fetuses. Technologies to determine the sex of unborn fetuses were introduced in China during the 1980s. Among the different techniques, ultrasound is the most widely used, although it cannot accurately determine the sex of the fetus until the second trimester of pregnancy. This results in late abortions, which are more controversial and can be harmful to the mother's health. Beginning in 1979 China has manufactured thousands of its own ultrasound machines and also imports machines to supply its heavy demand. The availability of ultra-sound machines in China may contribute to the higher abortion rate for female fetuses.

The Chinese government prohibited the use of ultrasound for the purpose of sex-selective abortion by the Maternal and Child Health Law passed in October 1994, which prescribes penalties for medical practitioners who violate this provision.

India, too, began using prenatal techniques for sex determination in the late 1970s. When ultra-sound appeared, it was used regularly to determine sex and then to abort female fetuses. In a January 6, 1994, episode of ABC News Prime Time Live, it was estimated that more than three thousand female fetuses were aborted every day in India, at a rate of one million per year. A clinic in Bombay reported in the same year that, of 8,000 abortions performed after amniocentesis (a prenatal test) to determine sex, 7,999 of the fetuses were female. On January 1, 1996, the government of India banned prenatal sex determination, making it illegal for doctors to perform such tests, for women to undergo testing, or for relatives to encourage women to abort female fetuses. The law stipulates fines and jail terms for people who engage in prenatal sex determination, but it has never been enforced and did not significantly change the number of selective abortions in India. The law banning selective abortions did, however, cause the prospering business to go underground, thereby raising the prices of testing and abortions considerably.

The Population Ratio

Researchers find that there are some noticeable relationships between the size of a family and the chance of conceiving a boy in India and China. As the number of children increases in families, the likelihood of having boys also increases. As this phenomenon cannot be explained entirely by human biology, it is almost certainly human interference—the practice of selective abortion—that causes this result. Population scientists suspect that when the first baby is a girl the family will use whatever methods are available to them to carry only male pregnancies to term in the future.

Even without resorting to aborting female fetuses, couples may be controlling the gender makeup of their families. A 1993 study in China's Anhui province confirmed this hypothesis. Since 1980, couples in Anhui with only a girl child have been slightly more likely than those with only a boy to have a second child; those with two girls have been 5 to 6 times as likely as those with two boys to have a third child. The interval between pregnancies was shorter when the previous child was a girl than when the previous child was a boy. It is apparent that these couples were attempting to control not only the size, but also the gender composition of their families.

The direct consequence of selective abortion or infanticide is the decline of the numbers of women in India and China's population. The measure of the balance of males to females in a given time period is called Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB). Under normal circumstances the population rarely has an absolute balance in the number of male and female babies born each year. The difference between the two sexes, however, should not exceed six percent. Because boys in general tend to have a higher mortality rate than girls, the gender imbalance will eventually even out. However, if the male/female ratio is greater than 1.06, then a real imbalance will occur.

In China and India, census data reveals that SRB has been increasingly skewed against females. In China, for every 100 male babies born, there are only 82 female babies registered. By a conservative calculation there are 30 million females missing in China, and some estimates go as high as 50 million or more. The study in China's Anhui province confirmed that the overall sex ratio in that province was 1.18 male births per female birth, significantly higher than the expected ratio of 1.06. The sex ratio was low in 1980-86, when the national one-child policy was strictly enforced, and the ratio was significantly elevated before 1980 (1.18) and in 1987-93 (1.22). Last-born children, regardless of family size, had the highest sex ratio in favor of boys.

In India the 2001 census reveals that there are 1,000 boys for every 929 girls. (In the 1991 census the ratio was 1,000/945). This means that the male/female SRB ratio is 1.08: for every 1 girl that is born, 1.08 boys are born. In the states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, the SRB is 1.12. Between 1981 and 1991 there were 35 million girls less than the projected numbers. According to a study by Rami Chhabra, there was a total of about 11 million abortions in India in 1991, out of which 6.7 million were forced abortions undertaken mostly for female feticide.

Recent History and the Future

So what are the consequences of this strange war against baby girls? The first thing one can imagine is that millions of male bachelors will have to search to find a wife. Many of them will end up living alone all their life. Prostitution and violence against women may result. Studies of China's SRB show that the marriage market ratios are already starting to go out of balance and will become drastic if the imbalance of females to males continues.

The shortage of women has already resulted in kidnapping and in trading young girls to be brides by rural farmers. A group of scientists warned in an article published in Science (1995, 267/5199) that "on the longer term, masculinization of births will result in large cohorts of young unmarried males, posing social and cultural challenges in countries that are already undergoing rapid economic and political change," and, more importantly, that these trends are likely to "complicate efforts to increase the social and economic status of women and their control over reproductive decisions." In Guangdong province, the China news agency Xinhua reported, 500,000 bachelors are approaching middle age without hopes of marrying, because they outnumber women ages 30 to 45 by more than 10 to 1.

Scientists are not sure if this imbalance will be permanent. Ratios are low in the least developed rural provinces, high in more developed provinces, and low in the relatively modern cities of Shanghai and Beijing. Son preference as a rule is waning for couples in urban China. Many are quite happy when their only child is a girl. In the rural areas the government policy allows a couple to have a second child if the first child is a girl. This policy, while it may slightly decrease the number of selective abortions, could potentially encourage sex-selective procedures being used in order to make sure the second child will be a boy, and certainly seems to condone son preference.

The most important consequence of the practices of sex-selective abortion, infanticide, and son preference is social discrimination against women. Because women are not valued as much as men, parents are reluctant to invest in their daughters' nutritional, medical, and educational needs. Researchers in China's Anhui province found that baby girls are breastfed less than baby boys and have higher school dropout rates. This kind of neglect inevitably hurts the self-esteem of girls, lowers their motivation to learn, and makes them feel inferior to their male counterparts.

Population Control

As mentioned earlier, India and China's governmental policies of population and family planning have contributed to the sex discrimination against female babies to a certain degree. Population control pressures are not likely to go away, since both China and India are still facing rapid growth in their population. At the turn of the twentieth century China's population was 400 million, and India's was 238 million. As the twenty-first century began India's population had increased four times, crossing the one billion mark; China's population had reached 1.26 billion. When you put the two countries' population figures together, it becomes an astonishing 2.3 billion, which makes up more than one-third of the world's total population. The land area of the two countries makes up less than 8 percent of the world surface areas.

To support 37 percent of the world population in that small a space is simply an impossible task. Food security is a general concern for both countries. In the early 1960s China had a major famine, which killed more than 20 million people. Half of India's population—525 million—still lives in absolute poverty, living on less than one U.S. dollar per day. There is no sign the population growth has been stabilized in the two countries. In fact, an additional 700 million will most likely be added to the combined population figures by the middle of twenty-first century. "Population explosion" is no longer a prediction, but a reality. It is the consequences of such an uncontrolled population growth the two countries have to find ways to deal with.

The urgent question is not about whether there will be population control, but instead, it is about how to do it. The changing balance of male/female population may be an unintended consequence of population control. People who, in better circumstances, would love and value their newborn daughters just like parents do elsewhere, are trying in their own ways to control their lives in an overpopulated, under-resourced world. Some of their female infants are "born to die" because, in a world with too many people, the value of human life is not always celebrated as it should be. Add to this factor the ancient value of son preference, and female infants will almost certainly have a lower chance of survival than male infants.

In fact, China has acknowledged that its one-child policy led to female infanticide and selective abortion. Although it has changed its strategy—providing incentives for couples to have only one child—the Chinese government believes that a one-child rule is necessary and that it has prevented more than three hundred million births since 1980. Lower population helps everyone's quality of life.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) on World Population Day 2000 criticized India for failing to take action on its low ratio of women to men, one of the worst sex ratios in the world. At the same time the United Nations praised India for making progress in slowing down its population growth.

Some of India's state governments have established programs aimed at stopping female infanticide and sex-selective abortion while promoting population control. In 1992 the chief minister of Tamil Nadu enacted a program in which poor families that had one or two girls and no sons could receive monetary awards if one parent agreed to be sterilized. The same official established the "Cradle Babies" concept. In this concept, empty cradles were placed in government centers where families who so desired could abandon their unwanted female infants, rather than kill them. These programs were not particularly effective. Some non-governmental organizations have also been combating son preference practices. The Indian Council for Child Welfare has provided training programs on self-esteem, hygiene, and health for adolescent girls. As part of the training, the girls take an oath promising never to take part in female infanticide. Other programs emphasizing education and social strategies to raise women's status have been effective.

The governments of India and China must educate their people to overcome the traditional value of son preference. Special steps must be taken to protect females from becoming an "endangered" sex. The use of technologies must be regulated to prevent human engineering in the gender selection process, and to prevent the disturbance of the natural balance in the human species.

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Baogang Guo

Chronology

1961 India outlaws the dowry system, in which exorbitant sums of money are demanded from a bride's parents by the husband's family. The law is never enforced, and the practice continues.

1979 China imposes the "one child" policy, in which the government limits couples to having only one child.

1979 Ultrasound and other sex-determining technologies are introduced in China and India.

1981-1991 There are 35 million girls less than would be expected in India's population.

1992 China holds the International Seminar on China's

1990 Population Census, at which scholars present papers on the "missing girl" problem that surfaced in China's 1990 census.

1994 The Indian government reports 5,199 cases of dowry death for the year, but some non-governmental organizations put the death toll as high as 25,000 each year.

October 1994 The Chinese government prohibits the use of ultrasound for the purpose of sex-selective abortion in the Maternal and Child Health Law, which prescribes penalties for medical practitioners who violate this provision.

November 1994 The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the government of the Republic of Korea sponsor the International Symposium on Sex Preference for Children in the Rapidly Changing Demographic Dynamics in Asia. Participants discuss indicators of son preference, the incidence of sex-selective abortion, and policy responses in Asian countries.

January 1, 1996 The government of India bans prenatal sex determination, making it illegal for doctors to perform such tests, for women to undergo testing, or for relatives to encourage women to abort female fetuses. Still, the practice continues underground and the laws go un-enforced.

September 1997 The World Health Organization reports that more than 50 million women are "missing" from the population in China due to sex-selective abortion, infanticide, or neglect.

2000 A report by the UN Population Fund on WorldPopulation Day criticizes India for not doing enough to stop female infanticide and sex-selective abortion, stating that India has one of the worst sex ratios in the world. At the same time the UN praises India for making progress in slowing down population growth.

Impacts of China 's One-Child Policy

In January 1979 China's leaders announced a strict policy to control the nation's population growth. For the most populous nation in the world, limiting population growth is a primary concern. When the one-child policy was originally conceived, China was a developing nation with high population growth. It had to extend more of its resources towards its ever-increasing population rather than on modernizing its industry and technology to be more competitive with industrialized nations. Limiting population growth was seen as essential in helping China achieve modernization and increase the country's standard of living. The issue was considered so important that the Beijing Review warned in 1995 that if the population could not be controlled, it would "eventually bring this nation down."

China's efforts at population control have met with some success. Without the one-child policy, official estimates forecasted a population of 1.2 billion by 1986 and 1.5 billion by 1994. Jian Ding, writing in the Beijing Review ("Notes from the Editors: China's Population Hits 1.2 Billion," March 6-12, 1995), commented that "birth control has reduced China's population growth by 300 million over the past 20 years." As a measure of the policy's success, a July 2001 estimate had China's population at 1.27 billion, still far below the unrestricted estimate for 1994.

While China's population control measures have limited population growth, they have also changed Chinese society. Traditionally in China, sons are valued more than daughters. It is the son who is responsible for caring for his elderly parents. It is the son who continues the family line and who stays with the family after his marriage. In contrast, a daughter contributes little to the family's economy. She will grow up, marry, and leave home, ending her ties with the family that raised her. With these traditional beliefs still a part of Chinese society today, the demand for sons is unabated.

This demand has created a problem in that the one-child policy restricts a couple's odds of having a son. Many determined parents either disobey the one-child policy by continuing to have additional children until the desired son appears (subjecting themselves to fines and a loss of benefits granted to one-child families) or by taking other measures to assure that their first child is a boy.

These measures have a negative impact on girls. Through ultrasounds, parents can learn the sex of their child. If the child is a girl, parents may opt for a legal abortion and try again for a son. If an unwanted daughter is born, she may be abandoned, given away for adoption, or killed. Actions like these have greatly affected the birth ratio of children born after 1979.

Generally, the ratio of boys to girls in a society is roughly equal. In 1994 in China, however, the national birthrate was 117 boys to every 100 girls. According to "Major Figures of the 2000 Population Census (No. 1)," China's current national birth ratio is 107 boys to 100 girls (China Population Information and Research Center). The result of this imbalance, according to Luise Cardarelli in "The Lost Girls" (Utne Reader, May-June 1996), is that "there are now [at least] 36 million more males than females in China."

The imbalance in birthrates has significantly altered the face of Chinese society. When boys are ready to marry, many will not be able to do so, and this will directly impact traditional family roles, particularly that of the son's family caring for his elderly parents. Additionally, women, in such demand due to the "shortage," could become commodities to be bought and sold on a market that values their worth as human beings little in comparison to their worth as childbearers and family caretakers. This, in fact, is already taking place. A reported 8,000 women are kidnapped and forced into marriage in China each year, according to J. Manthorpe of the Vancouver Sun (1999).

The driving desire behind the one-child policy was to give China the chance to modernize, thus giving its people the chance for a better life. The highly uneven male/female birthrate, the uncertain and changing roles of women in society, the missing girls, and the millions of men without a mate are only some of the unpredicted effects—and hidden costs—of the population control effort. For the millions of missing girls in China, it is indeed a high price to pay.

Status of Women in India

There would not be a missing female population in India if women received equal treatment to men. Dowry deaths, bride burning, and female infanticide reflect deep and disturbing gender discrimination. It is important to remember that these particular practices are extreme cases and not the norm. India is in many ways a very modern country with active discussion of women's rights; it also has some very poor statistics regarding women. Some facts regarding the status of women in India follow:

• Women gained suffrage in India in 1950. But while the modern constitution provides for equal protection under the law for women, it also, for the most part, assumes a woman's position is as wife and mother. Husbands are regarded legally as "guardians" of their wives. Property rights and family law generally empower men. Rape is considered a crime against the husband of the victim.
• The government of India proclaimed 2001 Women's Empowerment Year, but the government has not accomplished most of its promised goals for women's empowerment. Notably, the Women's Reservation Bill, which would reserve 33 percent of the seats in India's Parliament for women, was deferred again, having been continually stalled since it was introduced in 1996.
• The Indian government has proclaimed its intent to educate its entire population. However, India has one of the lowest female literacy rates, at 37.7 percent, in Asia.
• The life expectancy of an Indian woman has risen from 32 years to 63 years in modern times. Malnutrition, AIDS, and other diseases, however, hit women in India at a much higher rate than men. Diet and health care are far inferior for lower income women and girls in India than for men. In India 460 out of every 100,000 women and 72 out of every 1,000 infants die during childbirth.
• Significant numbers of women in India are doctors, professors, lawyers, and other professionals. There are many women in the work force and women's jobs entitle them to health care and other benefits. However, many women in India work long hours in agriculture or domestic work or other jobs that do not earn them monetary wages. A study carried out in 1998 found that women are at work—either earning wages or in the home, or both—for significantly longer hours each day than men and that they sleep far less.
• Despite protective legislation, sexual assault and other types of violence against women often go unpunished in India. In particular, upper-caste men have a history of physically and sexually abusing Dalit, or "untouchable," women. India's criminal justice system has proven to be unsympathetic to women in most sexual assault cases, but especially when Dalit women are involved.
• There are laws in India to protect women from dowry killings or abuse, sex discrimination, child marriages, and numerous other gender-based abuses. But these laws have been largely unen-forced.