Female Infanticide

China’s one-child policy caused the policy nation to have fewer workers and more elderly.The number of youth workers has gone down factories report. In 2007 there were six adults for every retiree, but by 2040 that ratio is expected to drop to 2 to 1. Too few children to care for them, China’s

In this short video and article on the topic of gendercide, reporter Elizabeth Vargas travels to India to found out from the people of India personally why there is such a shortage of females. She discovered that although aborting a fetus of a female child is illegal because of the shortage of females, families still continue to abort them because they don't want the burden that the baby girls brings. Vargas also discovered that illegal sex determination clinics can be found just about on every street. Men and their families also the wives to have sex determination tests and abort the baby if it’s female.

"Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbors’ garden.” That quote from a Hindu proverb.is referring to is how in some cultures when a daughter is old enough to be married, she leaves that family and joins her husbands'. So, raising a daughter in those cultures is seen as helping another family. Unlike females when a son is born he will stay and take care of the parents as they age. This son preference can lead to some countries committing gendercide. The act of gendercide is the mass killing of people because of their sex. Gendercide is a horrid trend that is due to the son preferences of many countries. Parents in Countries such as china and India have been killing there daughters. In India 25 percent of girls die before they can reach puberty. Also, 200 million women are missing because of being killed at a young age. There are many cultural causes of gendercide. The first is that boy babies are valued far more then female babies. Male children can carry on the family name, take care the parents when they get old and are less "expensive" to raise. In India there is a dowry system where in order for a woman to be married, the bride’s family must give gifts of money, land, livestock or other expensive items. This can put I strain on poorer families who cannot afford to pay a dowry or richer families who do not want to spend that type of money. So , when they have a girl child they either get an abortion or kill the child to save money. There was a Indian mother that

Most females are not respected and are heavily pressured by their parents. Many Chinese women are expected to be in arranged marriages and are not respected in their family or the work-place. Woman that aren’t even born yet suffer from infanticide. If the parents came to find that they were having a girl from ultrasound- they would abort that child and try for a boy causing pre-birth ultrasounds to be banned. “Negative social consequences, particularly sex discrimination. With boys being viewed as culturally preferable, the practice of female infanticide was resumed in some areas shortly after the one-child policy took effect.” (Document E) “I hate to say it but the one-child policy should party be blamed for some social issues in youth today.” “She wished she has a brother or sister to share all the attention.” (Document F) This evidence supports the claim that the one-child policy was a bad policy because women have always been culturally no preferable, causing unborn females to be aborted.

Infanticide is not unique to humans. It is practiced by many mammals including some primates. The main difference between human and animal infanticide is that infanticide in humans is performed by the parent(s) of the child while in the case of animals it is usually a male suitor (Caldwell and Caldwell, 2005, p. 208). In pre-modern societies infanticide was done instead of abortions as it allowed for sexual selection, it was much more effective than pre-modern contraception, and it did not require any special skills or esoteric knowledge (Caldwell and Caldwell,2005, p. 205). Infanticide has a history as a method of population control. It is more frequent to throw away girl babies. This may be because of dowries or other cultural reasons.

As Mingliang states, “the Chinese preference for at least one son is well documented” (3). Having two sons in a family is very unusual in China. Due to the preferences of having sons, the abortion rates have increased. Abortion is well known in China, as is the “missing girls” phenomenon. Shaou, Dodge, and Suter argue that, “of the seven million abortions annually in China, the International Planned Parenthood Federation indicates that more than 70 percent are female unborn children”(4). This is a big percentage, and the number of girls in this country is decreasing every year. People are using different ways to limit the number of girls. Moreover, if a woman does not want to abort, she is forced to do so. Bluett argues that, “abortions are performed throughout the entire nine-month period, even up to the point of childbirth” (3), simply saying the increase in sex ration is caused mainly by son preference, which is as a tradition in China. It is significant to mention that because of the gender imbalance, younger generations are facing other problems. According to Bluett, “many males are left without a wife, which leads to an increase in human trafficking” (5). The one child policy is causing a lot of troubles and China has to make sure to reduce the negative effects of this policy.

One reason I have this belief is, China is very male dominated and through the One-Child Policy, women have become more empowered and treasured. For example, “Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the one-child policy have been urban singleton daughters. Their parents’ only treasure, since the 1980s single daughters in China’s cities have enjoyed privileged childhoods little different from their male counterparts… With no brothers to compete for their parents’ attention and resources,... these teens have been socialized to value educational and career success and provided the resources with which to achieve it.” (Susan Greenhalgh, Document D). Opposing the gender norms, women are getting better education, more job opportunities, and markets are gearing towards women. The One-Child Policy was effective in shining light on women and advancing their

First, China’s One-Child Policy was upsetting to many females. In document D it

China’s one-child policy made it illegal for most Chinese couples to have more than one child. It was the culmination of the government’s long struggle to control population growth. The policy was enforced mainly through financial incentives and punishments, but in rural areas brutal enforcement techniques like non-consensual sterilization and abortion were sometimes used. While the policy did reduce the population, it also caused problems such as an unbalanced male-female sex ratio and “4:2:1 families.” The one-child policy shows that women in Communist China remained in a position of social and political inferiority.

In the video documentary on China’s lost girls, we learned about the country’s strange rules. In order to keep the population lower, they have laws only allowing one child. The reason why they do not let peoples families grow is because their country seems to be overpopulated. This video is called China’s lost girls because people of China only want to have boys, and they throw their girls away. The reason for this is boys will keep the family name and stay in the family to take care of their parents when their older. If they have a girl, the girl will marry into another family and take care of her husbands parents and leave her own. The parents

India’s statistics are similar. According to the BBC “In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls. Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China. Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children. But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide”.

Female infanticide has been accepted for centuries in many countries, and is more prominent in India and China than in any other countries around the world. It is illegal in India, however it is reported by Unicef that up to 50 million girls and women are “missing” in India as a result of systemic sex discrimination.

It is regrettable that female infanticide and foeticide are rapidly decreasing the female population throughout India. The main factors that is responsible for the increase in the incidence of female infanticide and foeticide is the low status of women, son preference, and the practice of dowry across all casts groups.

There have been significance changes in these practices and they remain significantly distinct in Urban and rural areas. For instance, free marriage is promoted now. Rural women, unlike before have more freedom, they have their own choice in migrating to the new cities to work where they are often seen as the “cheap” labor. Unlike traditionally, women are economical independent of their husbands. There is huge gap between urban and rural China, especially when it comes to the gender equality. This fact, adds further complexity in explaining the marital and family situations. Rural china still reflects on following their ancestral customs whereas the urban China is following the footsteps of the developed nations. There is increasing preference for nuclear family. Furthermore, urbanizations have changed beliefs of people when it comes to children. Having children was considered first priority before, but now most of these

A survey conducted by researchers at Zhejian University and University College London asked 212 men and women, from both urban and rural areas of China about their attitude towards the gender of their children. In this survey, it showed that the attitudes younger people expressed were less traditional than their parents. One respondent said “Son preference isn’t common like it was before, and I think the sex [of the child] doesn’t matter,” despite being from rural China, where this belief is more widespread.