The Global Problem Of Gender Imbalance

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.

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.

Gender issues are central to any culture, because gender is a fundamental means of understanding social reality. Both Australian and Chinese cultures are patriarchal in nature. Last names are carried through the male, not the female. Stereotypes about gender abound in both Australian and Chinese societies. In both Chinese and Australian cultures, it is more likely for a man to be in a position of economic or political power than a woman. Women are more likely to tend to domestic labor. However, Australian culture is more gender egalitarian than Chinese culture. The one-child policy in China has made it so that many families will abort female children in order to have a male child. This would not be considered an ethical

Women’s lives in China have changed dramatically throughout reforms in the Qing Dynasty, the Nationalist period, the Chinese Civil War, etc. In the historically male-dominated society, there still is not the gender equality that women have been hoping for. “Millions upon millions of women are missing. They are not lost, but dead: victims of violence, discrimination, and neglect” (Baute). Why should one gender be valued more over the other? Why should one gender be viewed as more important? Females in countries like China are discriminated against, mistreated, and are valued less since many women and girls are not allowed to get an education, the violence/abuse that they have to go through, and because the one-child policy rule that is placed in countries like China.

This particular article addresses the issue of female feticide and sex-selection abortions in Canada. Mrozek tends to focus on the Indian culture as it is a rather common practice in Indian custom. Indo-Canadians sometimes choose to abort their babies if they find out they are having a girl. Other times they can be coerced into it by elder relatives

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

Support 1: In most Asian counties, people wish for a son instead of a daughter,and this leads to the huge gender imbalance.

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

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”.

China's skewed sex ratio is one of the most important demographic problems facing the nation. Already, the effect of many years of imbalance is discernable: in 2005, there were more than 32 million excess males in the population under the age of 20.6As this trend continues, there may be serious social consequences. First, unregistered girls have no access to education or other social services and must live on the margins of society. Second, it will be increasingly harder for men to marry, violating the Chinese cultural norm that every adult should marry and have children. Some analysts even assert that the skewed SRB will create a surplus of "bare branches," the historical name for unmarriageable, ungovernable, antisocial men, leading to social

Gender inequality is a social problem that is widespread in society. It is referred to as the unfair treatment of individuals based on one 's gender. Historically, laws have opposed women to go to school, access certain jobs, and purchase property. Gender inequality has been experience through culture – honor-killing, sex-selective abortion, and society – occupation, gender roles, and education. The social expectations of men and women differ between cultures that are constructed socially and culturally. These expectations are displayed in roles, and behavior believed both by men and women and their interdependent relationships. Gender inequality can be further understood through the structure of sexism. Discrimination takes place in gender inequality for the reason that men and women are treated on the basis of gender alone (Amjad, R., Ashfaq, M., Kousar, R., Saghir, A., 2010).

Given the high sex ratio in recent China population report, the abnormally excessive male birth exemplifies the persistence of son preference on women’s fertility behavior. Son preference rooted in Chinese agriculture-based economy and historical feudalism, in consistence with the reliance on laborers and continuing the family line. Older people prefer to depend on their sons to get financial and physical support, while daughters are regarded as property of their husband’s family since the day of marriage.

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