What a sad piece. If we are going to address this problem, I believe we will have to start by changing attitudes. We need to start with culturally sensitive programs at the local level that promote the value of daughters.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought this practice was the result of thousands of years of dowries, a practice that may now be illegal (maybe?) but is certainly still practiced, especially among the lower classes and the poor. Marrying off a daughter, especially a poor one who has no real chance at college or otherwise supporting herself, is important so that someone will support mom and dad in their old age. I am not sure how easy it would be to change those attitudes, as an American. Perhaps the answer is scholarships? I don't know how practical that is, as one can't promise a fetus will be able to make it in college, much less be sure the money will be there, and it might be difficult to convince old school parents that a daughter could succeed at something besides marriage. Hmmm.

I think you're right Erin. Culturally sensitive outreach which includes connecting with community leaders to encourage them to take a public stand against these kind of practices are the only way to go. I think it's important that those who publicly spearhead outreach programs either do live or have lived in the community being served because it is so easy to make assumptions and seem condescending if one hasn't had first hand experience in the community.
The links below are some interesting reading about how feoticide is being dealt with in India. Maybe some of these ideas could be applied to the British Indian community.
http://india.indymedia.org/en/2001/11/284.shtml
http://www.plan-international.org/wherewework/asia/india/ourwork/gender/

It would be an excellent idea to promote the value of daughters. But that may not have much effect on someone who says that whilst they value daughters highly it is not a daughter that they are proposing to abort, but rather an unformed clump of cells; further, that it's no business of anyone else's why or whether they choose to remove a fetus from their body. To counter that view you'd have to get across the idea that the fetus is a potential woman, with interests distinct from those of its mother, and worthy of protection for its own sake - but that view is notoriously hard to sustain.

Have they learned nothing from China? In a couple decades the men are going to be "importing" women from other countries.

I remember when I was in my Anthro program, how anyone who suggested that cultural practices needed to be changed was hopped on and accused of perpetuating the imperialist project. The lesson I learned from that? People will be suspicious, and sometimes rightly so, of cultural change unless the movement is led from within.

I think the best Westerners can do is provide support to groups within the culture that seek to improve the status of women. Listen to them, learn from them, provide them with venues to make their voices heard, give them financial support. I'm not sure more can be done without really usurping the voices of the people directly affected by these practices. We need to help them by giving them the means to control their own destinies.

Feminism is the only answer to these situations. Until women are equal citizens, this problem isn't going anywhere.

We should also remember that the anti-female children bias isn't in any way unique to Asia and manifests itself among white Europeans too.

Samhita, the BBC did an excellent interview with a British-Asian mother of three girls who went to India to abort her fourth. It's really heartwrenching, and definitely deserves a mention in the original post.

Here's the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7121397.stm

"I think the best Westerners can do is provide support to groups within the culture that seek to improve the status of women."

That's really the "best" Westerners can do to prevent this practice? Yeah, you should respect cultural mores where you can, but there's a point where you go beyond respecting and start enabling horrifically sexist practices. Every culture has problem, Western and non-Western. We're coming together to try to find the best solution. And that means that sometimes we'll have to condemn the practices of non-Western cultures and simply have no tolerance for them. This is one of those cases, like it or not.

Ah, yes, I forgot to add that too. You know these moms are going to want to marry their sons off to good Indian brides and there won't be any. It is really shortsighted.

Ugh, that article is depressing, dinogirl. People are just so open about their hatred of females. I almost think that aborted fetus is better off not having to grow up as her mother's latest "mistake."
People in these cultures know that it's the man's sperm that determines the sex of the fetus, right?
And you know what would make having daughters a lot less expensive? Treat your daughters and your sons equally. Not that it's every individual's fault, but the attitude overall.
Sorry, this inspires a lot of rage.

What about tax credits for having girls? Would that be of any help whatsoever?

In America we get a tax credit for raising a child, of either sex, but nothing for bearing a child. Which in most cases is as it should be; the credit is for doing the work and spending the money of raising the kid, not the act of physically producing a child. But would it make sense to give women in countries like Britain actual credit for *having* a girl? Or, given that we're talking about a tiny subpopulation and Britain has millions of people who would *not* abort a girl, would that be overkill?

Another possibility is an ad campaign aimed squarely at the Indian community featuring Indian women who are accomplished talking about how they became doctors, lawyers, advertising executives, or whatever six-figure salary they have, and it's all because of the support of Their Parents. Cue smiling old people who talk about how proud they are of their daughter. An effort to say "In Britain, girls are not garbage and you don't need to throw them away; they can achieve as much as your sons could if you give them a chance" might have some effect.

(I recall that China tried an ad campaign demonstrating that single daughters take much better care of their elderly parents than single sons do, and it featured old women proudly talking about how wonderful their daughters are to them, because the root of the whole thing is that your daughter doesn't take care of you when you're old, your daughter-in-law does. But that assumes your son can get married. So cut out the middleman literally, have yourself a daughter, and raise her to believe she'll take care of you herself. I wonder if that worked...)

One of the things I think is most horrific about patriarchy and patrilineal systems is that caretaking responsibilities *always* fall on women, but in extreme patriarchy, women are supposed to ignore the needs of their own flesh and blood in favor of taking care of total strangers who are related to the person they married. The reason female feticide is not practiced in Japan is that, although they are also patriarchal, they have enough of a matrilineal streak that women return to their home towns to give birth near their *own* parents, and receive post-natal care from their *own* parents, and then care for their *own* parents after their parents are old. Also, girls help raise their siblings and are understood to be valuable in this role. So the Japanese have a saying "ichi hime ni taro" which translates as "First a girl and then a boy" (okay, literally it's more like "first a princess then Joe"). To me, any system that is not matrilineal creates perverse incentives; women deserve the care of their own flesh and blood when they are giving birth or when they are old, since if you must receive care from a family member, your own family is probably going to be better for you, most of the time, then the family you married into or the family your children married into. This is how the most valuable people in the chain of human care are turned into garbage, because they aren't allowed to give care to the people who must invest all the effort in raising them, but must care for strangers who haven't actually done anything for them personally. Add to this dowries, which explicitly render women as burdens on the family that raised them, and the incentives are *all* wrong. For societies that talk about how much warmer and family-oriented they are than Western ones, they really have stacked the deck in favor of cold, resentful mistreatment of people.

In the interest of protecting "culture" why is it that the most heinuous of misogynisic practices are allowed ot flourish- all in the name of diversity. Why are a females rights to being treated as a human being subordinate to the rights of anachronstic ideal handed down, which have no economic value whatsoever.

i have never understood how blatant disregard for women's rights carried on in the most lberal of places all in the name of protecting cultural sensitivities- FGM, now this... it just carries on....

Samhita,

Thank you for posting this. We have done many articles on this issue as examined by Deepali Gaur Singh from every angle you can imagine. It's worth it to read through Deepali's analysis and what the underlying issues are from her perspective.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/tag/sex-selective-abortion

Was the juxtaposition of this article and the previous one about the winners of the Siemens Competition intentional (especially considering that Ms. Jain is Indian American)?

I'm with sgzax. It's not like there aren't *lots* of Indians and people in the Indian diaspora who are opposed to sex-selective abortion. The feminist movement in India is pretty damn vibrant (here's one example).

Yes, it's frustrating to see this happening, but when these stories are posting I feel like there's often an undercurrent of 'we should show these backward people how to live'. It's insulting for feminists in the US and UK to simply condemn the cultural practices of immigrant groups without consulting the people from that group who actually understand the culture and are trying to change it. I think the best thing I can do as a white feminist in the US is to support Indian and Indian American feminists- without marching in and telling them what to do.

Seriously - this is where pro-life and pro-choice groups in the UK could serve a common purpose: Saving women. Improving opportunities for women.

Allow these women to continue to exercise their right to choose, while organizations in the community promote the value of women in society. Education, not intimidation. Also, join hands with the UK right to life groups to provide support or find homes for girls who are born but given up for adoption by their parents. Hopefully, right to lifers will take in a large portion themselves.

Trying to place 1,500 babies (not that will be born) in 17 years is not a whole lot, considering one to two hundred children are matched with families for adoption each year in the same England and Wales already:

http://www.adoptionregister.org.uk/adoreg/default.asp

The bad news is there are already "more than 4,000 children across the UK needing adoption each year":

http://www.mkweb.co.uk/localnews/displayarticle.asp?id=53814

Find a way to promote an increase in adoptions. Learn from, or get assistance from the St. Francis' Children's Society adoption agency, or the British Association for Adoption & Fostering, described in the link above.

How nice is that? Could the two sides actually find a way to work together? Who will make the first move?

> Another measure that could be taken to allow a female fetuses a chance at life could be what was done in China: develop a market for international adoption of Indian babies. British families could adopt British born babies, and Westerners can adopt babies from India, the way Westerners adopt South Korean and Chinese babies.

Seriously - this is where pro-life and pro-choice groups in the UK could serve a common purpose: Saving women. Improving opportunities for women.

Allow these women to continue to exercise their right to choose, while organizations in the community promote the value of women in society. Education, not intimidation. Also, join hands with the UK right to life groups to provide support or find homes for girls who are born but given up for adoption by their parents. Hopefully, right to lifers will take in a large portion themselves.

Trying to place 1,500 babies (not that will be born) in 17 years is not a whole lot, considering one to two hundred children are matched with families for adoption each year in the same England and Wales already:

http://www.adoptionregister.org.uk/adoreg/default.asp

The bad news is there are already "more than 4,000 children across the UK needing adoption each year":

http://www.mkweb.co.uk/localnews/displayarticle.asp?id=53814

Find a way to promote an increase in adoptions. Learn from, or get assistance from the St. Francis' Children's Society adoption agency, or the British Association for Adoption & Fostering, described in the link above.

How nice is that? Could the two sides actually find a way to work together? Who will make the first move?

> Another measure that could be taken to allow a female fetuses a chance at life could be what was done in China: develop a market for international adoption of Indian babies. British families could adopt British born babies, and Westerners can adopt babies from India, the way Westerners adopt South Korean and Chinese babies.

I think this attitude exists among Western people as well. When my cousin and her husband decided to have children (both white and under 30), they planned on having one. Until it was a girl. Then he pressured her into another one. It was another girl. He was PISSED. I mean seriously. She did not want a third child, but he pressured her into having it, and all we heard for 9 months was, "If it's another girl, we're putting it back in" and all KINDS of other awful sexist jokes in front of his (all)female family and two young daughters. He also said that she was going to have another child if they had a third girl. The third was a boy, and he treats that child so differently from the girls. They don't even exist in his mind. And he's enforcing all of the negative aggressive-masculine traits on the boy. It's awful.

nerdalert,

My mom has a friend like that. Her husband kept pressuring her to keep trying for a boy and they only ended up having five girls until he finally gave up.

I met a guy like that, he was only 18 when I knew him but he had decided it didn't matter how many kids there were until there was a boy, there would *have* to be a boy.

That said, feminism will eventually fix this problem. India is doing not too badly :) on the feminism front as was mentioned previously. Until then, the society will suffer not having enough "matches" for their men.

I'd be reeeeally leery about trying to work with anti-choice groups, A Male. Their rhetoric may be about saving women, but their actions? Not so much. And they only want to work with other groups when *they* get to control the agenda.

Also, the whole idea of a 'market for Indian babies' is REALLY problematic-- children of color aren't commodities!

In a couple of generations their population is going to drop dramatically with such a disproportionate number of males to females. Like Samitha said, they're being extremely shortsighted.

My only brother is the youngest of three. When he was born, my dad got a lot of "hey, now you finally have a boy to carry on the family name." To which he would constantly roll his eyes. It's ridiculous how important boys seem to be. And on top of that, they have to be manly, or they will never be accepted. A woman who becomes a doctor nowadays gets much less scorn than a man who stays at home and takes care of the kids. My incredibly awesome feminist male cousin made the point once that perhaps a good way to get more feminist men is to push the point that men are also hurt by our sexist stereotypes. While the point is likely not new to most people, I was amazed at how he was contemplating that at only 15.

This is interesting, I recently read about a research study regarding international adoption, that states Americans overwhelmingly request female babies when allowed to make a sex preference. Why are westerners more interested in adopting girls?

i don't know, rachel, but if were going to have kids ever, i would probably adopt, and if i were going to adopt internationally, i would probably try to get a girl from a country where women have it even shittier than they do here. i don't know if that's a motivation for others or not, but it makes sense to me.

The solution to this problem is easy to find, though it's hard to apply.

The UK should actively make a stand and condemn many aspects of this culture, no matter how big a tantrum people want to throw.
Their misogyny and sexism is engraved in their culture. There's simply no other way.

What the British have done until now is to equate "MULTICULTURALISM" with "MORAL RELATIVISM", a.k.a. "anything goes". They won't be able to maintain this position forever, that's for sure.

I don't know how common the pressure to have a boy is in the US; I personally felt a very powerful desire to have a girl, and I might not have had two bio-children if the first one had been a girl. If women themselves want girls, that's not external pressure, but it would tend to equalize the sex balance if men want boys and women want girls.

The problem in a society is when *both* sexes want boys.

Personally I cannot comprehend why anyone would actively seek to have a boy unless they are living under a patriarchal system that devalues girls. Girls are easier to care for at pretty much any age (people say that they're harder to deal with as teens, but I point at my husband's many dead male teen friends who died in car accidents, my brother who nearly got expelled from school, and every male teen I ever knew, all of whom illegally stole road signs, and I think a little drama and "You don't understand me!" pales in comparison), and much more likely to be your friend and turn to you for advice and help as an adult; they are also much more likely to visit you, care for you, and generally watch out for your interests in your old age than your sons are. This is because America is still sexist enough that the caretakers are women, but not so patriarchal that women are expected to break all ties with blood kin in favor of marriage kin. So I can see why a man would want a boy, I guess, but I can't imagine why a woman would want one if she had to make a choice. I love my boys and I wouldn't change them for anything, but had I had a girl, I wouldn't have kept trying until I got a boy; whereas having had a boy, I tried again in hopes of having a girl.

And I'm a geek. Statistically I'm more likely to have interests in common with my boys than my girls (though I try my best to get my girls interested in geeky things.) For a woman who is into traditionally feminine stuff, like my mom, girls seem much preferable. (In fact the great tragedy of my mother's life is that she had two nephews, two sons and a daughter, and her daughter was a geek who didn't share her interest in clothes, makeup, cooking, or anything else feminine; she's finally forgiven me for being so non-girly because I've given her a girly step-granddaughter and a girl baby granddaughter to dress in pretty clothes :-)).

So I don't really put a lot of value on anecdotal evidence of individual guys in America who want sons; I think women in America want daughters, and it shows in the adoptions. And no one seems to want one sex badly enough to abort for it, or at least not in any great numbers. It's cultures where girls are really devalued in specific ways that produce serious sex imbalances.

This isn't good. But when I read the quote I want to know more.

The alarming revelation by the BBC's Asian Network radio station on Monday comes as Oxford University population experts declared they had found at least 1,500 Indian girl children "missing" from birth statistics in England and Wales in the last 17 years.

It's a bit less alarming if there are 1500 aborted and 150,000 born. It'd also be less alarming if it was a declining trend than an increasingly common practice.

In either case it's still bad, but just how bad it is doesn't seem entirely clear.

I'm not bothered by this practice very much. The way I see it, 1. There's more men to go around for us ladies, which is a good thing because men do tend to kill themselves off in droves. 2. There will be an equalization eventually where parents realize that in order to ensure the continuation of their lineage they have to have girls, because boys have no chance of landing a wife.

Their misogyny and sexism is engraved in their culture. There's simply no other way.

What exactly are you suggesting should be done, Mary Tracy? And if you've managed to uncouple the misogyny and sexism from what you love about your own culture, what on earth makes you think Indians can't do the same?

Is anyone else alarmed by the creeping racism in this discussion?

Sailorman is on the right track: just how big a problem is this, in context?

Answer: it's hard to quantify precisely, but we can make a good estimate, and the conclusion is "Not a very big problem, and likely self-correcting."

First, the problem comes to fewer than 100 "missing" female babies per year in the whole of the UK, which is hardly a crisis.

As for the percentage of pregnancies involved, we would need to know the total number of pregnancies in that same time period in the target population. The UK's official statistics do not break down birthrates by ethnicity (at least where I can find them), but the overall birth rate is currently 1.86 children per woman per lifetime, or 60.2 children per women aged 15-44 per year. (These numbers are higher than in 26 years previously, but, as immigrant populations commonly have a higher birthrate than native ones in industrialized countries, let's assume they're accurate for ethnic Indians in the UK.)

With 1.3 million ethnic Indians in the UK, and assuming half are women and half those are between 15-44 years, that would be 604,500 births in just 15 years out of the nominal 30-year fertile period, based on lifetime fertility, or 586,950 births, based on annual birth rates.

Against this baseline birthrate, 1500 selective abortions out of about 600,000 pregnancies over 15 years is about a quarter of a percent of pregnancies affected by this practice - again hardly a crisis. Fudge the numbers a bit using altered assumptions if you like, even multiply the number of sex-selective abortions by several times to account for under-reporting - but the bottom line can't be any very large impact on overall female birth rates even in that one community, to say nothing of the UK in general.

Also, though the article notes that the practice persists among first-generation native-born ethnic Indians, not just immigrants, I would bet that the incidence of the practice is still heavily skewed toward immigrants. I would strongly suspect that, like most anti-progressive practices in immigrant communities, it is much less prevalent in the first native-born generation, and negligible in the second.

Add to that the grave dangers in restricting women's reproductive autonomy, or the right to choose, in any degree, and the best policy in response to sex-selective abortion by non-Western immigrant populations in Western countries may be to do nothing. Available evidence, for the UK at least, suggests that the problem - though notable and troubling - is likely negligible in impact, and very probably limited in inter-generational persistence. This is not to say that public education campaigns, and a general improvement in women's status, are not important, but the danger of the immediate situation may be overblown.

nerdalert--stories like that are especially funny considering that it is the man who genetically determines the sex of the fetus.

Personally I cannot comprehend why anyone would actively seek to have a boy unless they are living under a patriarchal system that devalues girls.

...

but I can't imagine why a woman would want one if she had to make a choice.

If I had a boy I wouldn't have to constantly fight the PINK! PRINCESS! SPARKLY! crap from all sides. I love "masculine" activities like martial arts, racing, engines and weaponry - things that when you get your daughter into it you're setting yourself up to be harassed relentlessly for "indoctrinating" your daughter and of course if your daughter is as into these activities then she'll probably grow into an adult with similar feelings of frustration and rage at (a) being constantly pigeonholed and judged as NOT being good at these things until proven otherwise and (b) women are unfortunately smaller, slower, and weaker than men. I'm stronger than some men and hit better and harder than most men. I'm still weaker than someone with the same genes as me but an XY rather than an XX.

Not that I'd be sad if I had a girl but if I had a choice I'd rather have a boy. IF I was having children! lol

Girls are easier to care for at pretty much any age (people say that they're harder to deal with as teens, but I point at my husband's many dead male teen friends who died in car accidents, my brother who nearly got expelled from school, and every male teen I ever knew, all of whom illegally stole road signs, and I think a little drama and "You don't understand me!" pales in comparison)

Fenriswolf:
A boy isn't likely to be raped or sexually assaulted, but what if he's a perpetrator? :shudder: I'd hope that my influence as a mom would take care of that, but who knows.

Your concerns about girls can be applied to boys as well. If your boy is into ballet or dollies he'll be attacked and harassed as well. You'll be accused of "feminizing" him. Sigh. If you're raising a child as a feminist you're going to be attacked no matter the sex of the child.

"I am not sure how easy it would be to change those attitudes, as an American. Perhaps the answer is scholarships?"

http://www.hindu.com/2005/03/09/stories/2005030909320600.htm

"HYDERABAD, MARCH 8. Declaring the Government's commitment for the uplift of women, the Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, today announced the launch of an insurance scheme from next month for parents who undergo family planning operation after the birth of a single girl child.

"Speaking at an official function organised on the International Women's Day, he said under the scheme, an insurance policy of Rs. 1 lakh would be paid to the girl on attaining the age of 20 years.

[*]

"The existing scheme of payment of Rs. 5,000 to parents of a girl child and providing scholarship of Rs. 500 in the seventh and 10th classes was not really benefiting them, he said. The new scheme also envisages payment of an annual scholarship of Rs.1,250 for four years beginning at the age of nine..."

"Have they learned nothing from China? In a couple decades the men are going to be 'importing' women from other countries."

How many of the people struggling to get daughter-in-laws think "If only I had daughters too, my sons could marry them?"

How many of them think "If only I had daughters too, some of the local boys could marry my daughters instead of other local girls and then those local girls would be available for my sons to marry?"

How many of them just think "If only everyone else in the village had more daughters, my sons could marry those girls"?

"'I think the best Westerners can do is provide support to groups within the culture that seek to improve the status of women.'

"...Every culture has problem, Western and non-Western. We're coming together to try to find the best solution. And that means that sometimes we'll have to condemn the practices of non-Western cultures and simply have no tolerance for them."

Ah, but groups within the culture that seek to improve the status of women are condemning those practices themselves! You may agree with sgzax on this more than you thought you did at first. ;)

* I was clueless about lakhs so I searched and found this:

http://coinmill.com/INR_USD.html

"Large amounts of Rupees are expressed in lakh rupees or crore rupees. A Lakh Rupee is one hundred thousand rupees and a crore rupee is ten million rupees."

Ah, yes, I forgot to add that too. You know these moms are going to want to marry their sons off to good Indian brides and there won't be any. It is really shortsighted
It's a real problem in India today. The male population is overtaking the female. In a way, though, it's ironically increasing the value of girls.

"In the interest of protecting 'culture' why is it that the most heinuous of misogynisic practices are allowed ot flourish- all in the name of diversity."

...and when customs are contradictory, why do cultural relativists defend the more sadistic one?

For a non-forced-abortion example: Egyptian culture includes forcing FGM on kids and Iranian culture includes calling FGM barbaric. Guess which custom gets the "it's not cruel, it's part of their culture" treatment and which gets the "it's so intolerant!!!" treatment...

"What exactly are you suggesting should be done, Mary Tracy? And if you've managed to uncouple the misogyny and sexism from what you love about your own culture, what on earth makes you think Indians can't do the same?"

Excellent points. You don't need to condemn the culture or go "we're condemning half the culture" to condemn a *custom* that is the problem.

When the problem is devaluing daughters, condemn the devaluation of daughters. Condemning Indian cultures (including ones that don't devalue daughters) while ignoring Western cultures that devalue daughters too misses the point.

For another problem, when the problem is sexual torture, condemn sexual torture. Condemning porn (including porn yaoi manga that was not made with torture) while ignoring off-camera sexual torture is missing the point.

"Is anyone else alarmed by the creeping racism in this discussion?"

Yeah, me too.

In response to the racism cropping up in this thread, not all of Indian culture is misogynistic or horrible. Please keep that misconception out of this discussion. Punjab is only one of the states in India, and it is a cultural issue in that particular area. Of course, there are other areas of India where this practice is carried out, but it is a particular problem in the Punjabi community.

Also, Indian is far too diverse and varied to make any gross generalizations like those made by marytracy9. Please refrain from them, people.

sorry, I meant Indian CULTURE in the second paragraph.

"It's a real problem in India today. The male population is overtaking the female. In a way, though, it's ironically increasing the value of girls."

...but increasing the value of girls as in having parents respect them more? Or increasing the value of girls as in driving the bride price* up when supply shrinks and demand stays constant?

* I thought dowries were pretty much bride prices with negative numbers. For example: if her parents go from paying $5000 to paying $1000 to getting paid $2000 in dowry negotiations, then *either* that's like her bride price going from -$5000 to -$1000 to $2000 *or* I suck at math.

"In response to the racism cropping up in this thread, not all of Indian culture is misogynistic or horrible."

Right on!

For that matter, not all of "Indian culture" is even one culture. I got the impression that India is more diverse than Europe.

"Punjab is only one of the states in India, and it is a cultural issue in that particular area."

Speaking of the Punjab, I also had the impression that the split goes both ways: the Punjab doesn't include all of India (Andhra Pradesh State, Kerala State, etc.) and India doesn't include all of the Punjab (after 1947 it was split into India's Punjab State and Pakistan's Punjab Province). Is this true or did I get it wrong?

Sarah,

I am well aware that children are not commodities, but this is already how they can be handled: one can choose a sperm or ova by their donor profiles, they can select a surrogate mother, they can select the "just right" child of someone else's for themselves from an adoption directory, maybe even from another country.

I am saddened that there are so many children in need right here in our own communities (bless my neighbor the long time host mother), but putting babies up for adoption, to another country, if necessary, is just one alternative to abortion for gender selection, which I find appalling, no matter what rights people have. The same for men pushing their partners or women feeling pressured to give birth to babies with the preferred gender (usually a boy). I am fortunate I just happened to want one of each, and my wife wanted a daughter, too, because that's how it turned out.

Experience in China has shown that they could more quickly offer girls for international adoption than educate the public to value women in society, even with approaches as blunt as, Have a girl - she'll care for you when you get old, or media warnings that 70 million Chinese men may grow up to never find a wife.

"2. There will be an equalization eventually where parents realize that in order to ensure the continuation of their lineage they have to have girls, because boys have no chance of landing a wife."
I agree that people aren't going to want to solve the problem themselves- they are going to want someone else to solve it, by having more girls while they themselves have boys. That's basic human nature.

And I disagree that the value of girls is going to go up because they need to be brides- in China, there has been more grave robbing and prostitute kidnapping/murder so that they can have an "after death marriage" because, from what I understand, in China one must be married into the great beyond, and one doesn't necessarily need to be married while alive.

"'2. There will be an equalization eventually where parents realize that in order to ensure the continuation of their lineage they have to have girls, because boys have no chance of landing a wife.'
I agree that people aren't going to want to solve the problem themselves- they are going to want someone else to solve it, by having more girls while they themselves have boys. That's basic human nature."

Basic human nature including the anti-incest instincts.

I wuldn't be surprised if "have daughters so your sons can marry" messages elicit a "but I don't want my sons to marry my daughters" gut reaction in a lot of their audience at first.

Some people in the audience would probably try to figure out the message ("they can't really mean incest, can they?"), do the extra math, and realize "if I have daughters, the odds of other men marrying them and not marrying someone else's daughters go up, and the odds of *those* girls being available for my sons to marry go up too."

Some other people in the audience would probably just tune out the message altogether...

One thing that is likely: a war between China and India at some point in the next twenty years to "use" the excess male population. At the rate female births are declining in these countries, there will be a huge surplus of young men who will never marry because there are not enough women, and the traditional way of handling this has always been to have a bully little war.

I don't like the idea and I certainly don't support it, but I can all too easily see China and India beating each other up over Tibet or Kashmir or something else. But unless both countries start importing women for their sons to marry, I wouldn't be at all surprised if demographic pressures result in something extremely nasty.

I agree that selectively aborting female foetuses is sexist but I disagree that it's out of synch with the aims of free access to abortion. "Trust women" is practically the motto of Feministing.

The suggestions that "they", the British-Indian community, should realise that they are damaging their communities for the future are evidence of a racial double-standard. I think it's asking a lot of young people having children to take into consideration the projected effects on population in 20 or 30 years' time.

I'm strongly opposed to cultural relativism but I don't think laying into someone else's culture just to make us feel better in our righteous anger is fair or is ever going to make any beneficial changes. I don't think "having no tolerance" for something is going to make much headway with an issue that is done in secret - a point on which the comparison to FGM stands. I don't think selectively aborting is anything like as appalling as violence against women.

I'm quite surprised to see the article defining female foetuses as unborn women. That sounds familiar.

The problem with the whole "shortage of females = increased value of females" equation is that the value tends to be based exclusively on a woman's function as a baby-maker. Even the posts here are raising this issue in terms of population decline, carrying on the family name etc ... so just imagine the tremendous pressure experienced by women of marriageable age in a male-dominated society!

I also agree that the custom of dowry is crucial to this situation: I recall seeing a billboard for an abortion clinic in India ten years ago that said "better 500 Rs. now that 50,000 later!" (in other words, cheaper to terminate a pregnancy than raise a daughter and then pay her dowry). Historically, dowry was something that only happened among upper class families. One of the insidious effects of upward mobility in South Asia has been that dowry is now a mark of status, and it's expected in all class groups. A groom's family can demand huge sums at marriage, and is also entitled to keep asking for gifts after the wedding. So for a struggling family, a daughter can represent a bottomless money pit.

The horrific phenomenon of bride-burning is linked to this too: a husband may murder his wife in order to remarry and get more stuff. If the practice of dowry could be discontinued, or even alleviated, then a daughter would not be such a terrible burden for a family.

Here are some India Times articles about dowry death: http://www.indiatime.com/category/dowry/

... I meant "male-dominated" in the sense of disproportionately more males, btw.

On the idea that this can be solved with international adoption: No. Adoption is not a reasonable substitute for abortion in any circumstance. A woman who wants to end a pregnancy is not going to be happy instead to continue the pregnancy she doesn't want, with all the associated risks, side effects, and complications, and then have the baby that she created with her own body, her child, taken away never to be seen again. I know the reasoning is horrible in these cases, but we are not helping women by forcing them to continue pregnancies or even by pressuring them not to get abortions when they already feel a lot of pressure not to have a daughter. We can only fight for better circumstances for women to stop sex-selective abortion, and better circumstances for women means the right to choose what happens to our own bodies, no matter what our reasons. I don't think there's anything we can do to directly stop it that won't betray our feminist principles. We just have to keep fighting for women everywhere.

We can only fight for better circumstances for women to stop sex-selective abortion, and better circumstances for women means the right to choose what happens to our own bodies, no matter what our reasons. I don't think there's anything we can do to directly stop it that won't betray our feminist principles. We just have to keep fighting for women everywhere.

And WITH woman everywhere. I think you're right, Marle. But it's important to remember that US/UK feminist can't just walk in and liberate women in other countries-- we have to respect the Indian women's movement and those women's ability to make their own decisions about how to fight. It was the 'white woman's burden' argument that led some mainstream feminist groups to support Bush's Afghan war, after all.

Mina, Radhika, rock on. :)

re: Indian culture, is it just Punjab.

It is true that India is more of a civilization than a country, with very different "national characters". For example, there seems to be numerous "young intelligentsia" that rejects customs like dowry and arranged marriage and in many ways has a more modern outlook than average Americans (to list two: quite openminded attitude to religion, girls freely choosing carriers in science and engineering). Perhaps they correspond to "metrosexuals" in America.

As American is a more difficult emigration target, I think that Indians we see in USA are disproportionally of that kind.

There seems to be also another part of the middle class that kind of magnifies old bad customs. As the amount of disposable money grow, dowries and wedding costs grow even more. There were also stories of young brides being mistreated when their families do not deliver enough gifts and of mutilation of disobedient young wives. It's like "when they are good, they are really, really good, and when they are bad, they are awful".

Indians definitely do not need Western help explaining them their social problems -- they have a very rich tradition of social activism.

"I agree that selectively aborting female foetuses is sexist but I disagree that it's out of synch with the aims of free access to abortion."

...or more accurately, selectively aborting one's own female fetuses. A pregnant woman or girl knows better than I whether she'd rather have a child of any sex, have a son, have a daughter, or not have any children.

Selectively aborting
someone else's female fetuses by pressuring her to stay pregnant until the sex can be detected then abort if it's female, OTOH, is out of synch with the aims of free access to abortion.

"And WITH woman everywhere. I think you're right, Marle. But it's important to remember that US/UK feminist can't just walk in and liberate women in other countries-- we have to respect the Indian women's movement and those women's ability to make their own decisions about how to fight."

Totally.

"Mina, Radhika, rock on. :)"

Thanks! :)

"re: Indian culture, is it just Punjab."

Meanwhile I'm reminded of an article about a similar preference for sons - and a reversal - in another state:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2864581.stm

"...The baby was surrendered to an organisation in the state of Tamil Nadu, set up to adopt abandoned female infants.

"He was born to 30-year-old Peruma a few days ago. This was the third male child born to the poor couple, who work as labourers earning low daily wages.

"They were disappointed that this was a male child as they were keen on having a female baby..."

I remember when I was in my Anthro program, how anyone who suggested that cultural practices needed to be changed was hopped on and accused of perpetuating the imperialist project. The lesson I learned from that? People will be suspicious, and sometimes rightly so, of cultural change unless the movement is led from within.

Want to echo what others said about leaving this issue for Indian feminists and social activists to tackle...especially considering the strong legacy of Western Cultural imperialism that has had continuing impacts to the present time.

sgzax

I witnessed two similar instances of what you experienced in your anthro department while I was in college.

One instance was an overbearing upper-class White feminist who was dressed down by a group of Korean female classmates who were active feminists for implying that the sexism in Korean society was the defining characteristic of Korean culture. They were not only offended at the patronizing tone she took, but also for perpetuating stereotypes which promoted Western culture by denigrating and orientalizing non-western ones.

This, however, does not only affect Westerners, but also Americanized immigrants/descendants of non-western immigrants who feel they are superior by the virtue of being more "Americanized". In another instance, I saw an upper-class suburban Chinese-American Maoist classmate get yelled at by some international Chinese classmates for praising cluelessly Mao Zedong's policies Cultural Revolution without realizing their own families suffered greatly as a result of those very policies. As some relatives of mine also suffered from those policies, I joined in the criticism of this and other sheltered upper/upper-middle class American Maoists who never had the experience of actually living under Mao's reign.

Update on the news, apparently the doctor, the "sting" operation exposed has had her license revoked. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7129268.stm
But the way the legal system works, she could go scot free.
Apparently she was indicted on a similar kind of charge 13 years ago also.

I look at it this way-- it's not a child when it is being aborted. It's not a woman, it's not even a girl. It's a fetus. So if they abort it because it doesn't have a Y chromosome, there's nothing wrong with that. They'll learn their lesson when their sons grow up, can't find any nice Indian girls, and in Britain at least, wind up marrying Western women who won't abort a fetus because it's female-- or the alternative, not marry at all, thus ending the line (and not having a nice daughter-in-law to care for them when they are old).

In the long run, they are only hurting themselves, and actually, they may be helping it-- fewer women, fewer children, less population, and India is very overpopulated. Meanwhile, the Indian feminists (with as much help as they like) can work towards improving the lots of women and hopefully things will work themselves out eventually.

As for the "wanting boys" thing, I'll admit I want a son. I also want a daughter. I want one of both and possibly a third. I personally would not in a million years abort a child due to their gender, but there have been a lot of studies about how having siblings of both genders helps children socially, and I know that having a brother and a sister both impacted my life a lot as a child. I think I want to adopt a son if I don't have any natural sons, or adopt a daughter if I don't have natural daughters. Even though I wouldn't plan my life around it, I can definitely understand the desire, especially if you already have children of one gender and don't want a large family.

That said, no one should be pressured into having children they don't want-- or aborting children they do want-- for the sake of wanting a boy (or even for the sake of wanting a girl, I've known women who said they would abort a male).

With 1.3 million ethnic Indians in the UK, and assuming half are women and half those are between 15-44 years, that would be 604,500 births in just 15 years out of the nominal 30-year fertile period, based on lifetime fertility, or 586,950 births, based on annual birth rates.free online games