South Asia’s ‘missing women’

Author / Source : M. Shahidul Islam

Tuesday, 07 December 2010 21:36

South Asia’s demographic setting is highly diverse. From demographic window to gender
imbalances, one can see marked dissimilarities across the region. The global average sex ratio,
for instance, is 101.7 (males per 100 females). This implies that for every 100 girls, there are
101.7 boys. In Bangladesh, for every 100 females there are 102.3 males. For India and
Pakistan the corresponding figures are 106.8 and 106.1 respectively. The gender bias in sex
selection in South Asia in the past has been even worse. Sri Lanka and Nepal have bridged
the gender disparity and Bangladesh is catching up fast. However, there is still a strong
preference among Indian and Pakistani parents for sons over daughters. In India, the regional
variation in gender ratio is extremely skewed--in Punjab there are 80 girls for every 100 boys,
whereas in Sikkim the ratio is fairly balanced. In China the preference is even more skewed in
favour of boys (108 boys per 100 girls). Its ‘One Child’ policy is believed to have played a key
role in China’s highly unbalanced gender ratio.
It is hardly surprising that the number of “missing women”- the term was coined by economist
Amartya Sen- is staggering both in India and China. Sen popularised the issue in 1990. He
estimated the number of “missing women” in Asia by calculating the number of extra women
who would have been in a particular country if it had the same ratio of women to men as
obtained in areas of the world in which they receive similar care. According to Sen, in countries
where men and women receive similar care, the female to male ratio is about 1.05. In Europe
and North America, for example, there are 105 women for 100 men.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the global average sex ratio shows that there are
at least 39 million fewer women in India’s total population owing to parents’ preference for
males. The corresponding figure, according to the Sen criteria, could be as high as 67 million.
While Bangladesh has made the most progress after Sri Lanka and Nepal by improving its sex
ratio, still 800,000 girls could not endure due to parents’ somewhat skewed gender bias. The
number can be as high as 6 million based on the Sen benchmark. For Pakistan the
corresponding numbers are 4 to 10 million, based on the two criteria.
However, no one could match the Middle Kingdom as far as an imbalanced sex ratio is
concerned. At least 40 million fewer females were added to the population in China due to
parents’ high preference for boys. The number can be as high as 80 million for China, according
to the Sen criteria.
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in their Pulitzer Prize winning book titled Half the Sky:
Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide called this gender bias in sex
selection as gendercide. According to the authors, the daily slaughter of girls in the developing
world, steals more lives in any given decade than all the genocides of the 20th century.
Detailing the extensive account of gendercide in the developing countries, they claim that more
girls have been killed in the last fifty years than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth
century.
It is not surprising that Sri Lanka ranks first in South Asia in the global gender gap ranking,
devised by the World Economic Forum, followed by Bangladesh and Nepal. India and Pakistan
are graded poorly in the ranking. However, China is a big contrast in this regard. Despite
traditional preference for boys, China has made rapid progress in narrowing the gender gap.
The country has an educated women labour force. According to Kristof and WuDunn,
approximately 80 percent of the factory workers in the Guangdong province are female and six
out of the 10 richest self-made women in the world are Chinese.

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South Asia’s ‘missing women’

Author / Source : M. Shahidul Islam

Tuesday, 07 December 2010 21:36

The staggering number of “missing women” in South Asia is believed to be due to economic
reasons: boys are generally considered as “helping hands”, particularly in agrarian families. The
prevalence of the dowry system is another reason why parents prefer sons over daughters.
However, the nexus between low level of income and gender imbalance does not follow a linear
pattern. In South Asia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal have demonstrated that girls are worth
no less, if not more, than boys compared to India and Pakistan. Bangladesh and Nepal have
achieved marked success in this regard with a very low per capita income. In India states with
high per capita income--Chandigarh and Delhi, for instance--have witnessed more skewed
gender ratio in favour of boys than the lagging states like Meghalaya and Chhattisgarh.
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh educated their female population better than their South Asian
counterparts and both countries have seen much higher participation rates of women in the
labour force than India and Pakistan.
No nation can progress towards a modern society by neglecting its female population. This
could be ignored easily in countries like India thanks to its high economic growth. But growth
may not necessarily translate into development. One can see some fault lines – rising inequality
and social tension – in South Asia’s largest country. According to Smita Narula, researcher for
the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, “Some 160 million people in India live a precarious
existence, shunned by much of society because of their rank as ‘untouchables’ or Dalits- literally
meaning ‘broken’ people- at the bottom of India's caste system. These Dalit women are
frequent victims of sexual abuse.” Pakistan’s decline as a state and society requires little
mention. The state of the female population in Afghanistan is no better than what history tells us
about the Dark Ages.
Bangladesh’s stride towards a near-balanced gender society as well as its steady progress as
far as women empowerment is concerned is drawing increasing global interest. Next time I will
discuss the factors behind women empowerment in Bangladesh and how the country’s success
in balancing its gender gap could play a significant role in helping the economy move towards a
higher growth trajectory.

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