Sexual Selection

China's one child policy was incredibly negative towards its people. In China, boys are culturally favored over girls, because of this the practice of infanticide has become more common due to the policy, this is stated in Imbalance and Discrimination where it is stated, "With boys being viewed as culturally preferable, the practice of female infanticide...was resumed in some areas shortly after the one-child policy went into effect" (Document E). This quote demonstrates the negative effects to come out of the one child policy, because parents can only have one child, parents in China will want a boy over a girl as it is more culturally

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.

Throughout history, women were labeled as the inferior sex. It wasn’t until 1920—less than one hundred years ago—that women obtained the right to vote in the United States with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (History, par. 11). In recent years, women have obtained much more respect than their ancestors, but sexism still runs rampant in various parts of the world. The social realm is not the only thing affected by male dominance; birth rates and population growth rates in countries such as India and China are also greatly altered by gender imbalance. Mara Hvistendahl provides information on the negative impact of global gender imbalance in her essay, Missing: 163 Missing Women. Alternatively, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests in his

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.

There are many reasons as to why this practice has become so popular in many countries around the world. It is said that by having a one-child policy, China has increased the rate of abortion of female fetuses. As most Chinese families are given incentives to have only one child, and would

The WHO states that there are three core motivations for engaging in sex determination and sex selection which include “medical reasons such as preventing the birth of children affected or at risk of X-linked disorders; family balancing reasons where couples choose to have a child of one sex because they already have one or more children of the other sex; and gender preference reason often in favor of male offspring stemming from cultural, social, and economic bias in favor of male children and as a result of policies requiring couples to limit reproduction to one child, as in China.” In countries such as India and China, it is apparent that women can be harmed by sex selection

People in India show a strong preference to not spend time raising girls. The sex birth ratio in India is one of the worst having 112 boys for every 100 girls born. Gill and Mitra-Kahn believe the reason for this lack of girls is due to

The male dominated society has a deep rooted bias towards the female child. This bias is the result of socio-economic sources in the society as dowry as large amount of money and gold to be given

In 1981, the sex ratio at birth for the majority of provinces in Mainland China were slightly higher than 106, which is the number generally regarded as the upper limit of a normal SRB (Lai 2005:317). After the subsequent census in 2000, it was found that the sex ratio at birth increased to an extremely high level for all the provinces except one, Xizang which had an SRB of97.43 favoring more females than males. The highest SRB in 2000 was 138.01 in the province of Jiangxi (Lai 2005:320). Additionally, the provinces of Anhui, Henan and Guangdong had each an SRB greater than 130, with several other provinces with an SRB close to 130 (Lai 2005:321). As demonstrated through this census information, China has experienced a great shift in the sex ratio at birth favoring more males than females. In addition, female infanticide is also more common, which decreases the amount of females within the society even

Enforcing the existing ban on sex selective abortion could lead to normalization of the ratios”. (Zhu 1211)

When one thinks of China it is common to conjure up images of rice fields and of the great wall, but also of crowded cities teeming with people and bicycles and cars. One rarely thinks of a nation populated mostly by men and boys, with a noticeable yet surreal absence of women. While this is a bit of an exaggeration, it has been noted over the past several decades that there is an alarmingly imbalanced sex-ratio. The policy has clearly contributed to the nation’s unnatural gender imbalance, as couples use legal and illegal means to ensure that their only child is a son. There are 117 men to each 100 women in China (Goodkind, 2004). In the 1979, when the one-child policy was enacted, the intention was not to create this imbalance, but to

While the United States and China are aware of the importance of family, both countries look at the issue completely different. China’s reluctance to lift the number of children a woman can have is a growing concern that continues to affect China. The refusal to lift the ban will affect China’s economy and country as a whole for decades to come. In the United States, issues surrounding the concept of family are arising, especially in the upcoming Presidential election where abortion is one of the main concerns. The public is continuing to raise concerns surrounding the abortion laws, viewing abortions as a moral decision and what constitutes the killing of an innocent life.

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.

Gender Selection is a medical way utilized by planned guardians who desire to pick the gender of their baby. It is not legal in all nations so there is a new phenomenon which is known “reproductive tourism”. Gender Selection became a debate in our era as it has its advantages as carrying on the family name and decreasing population ,it also has its disadvantages as it is against some religions,and it consumes money .