Missing women

According to Amartya Sen, even though women make up the majority of the world's population, the proportion of women in each country's population varies drastically from country to country, with various countries having fewer women than men. To capture this divergence from natural sex ratios, the count of "missing women" is measured as a comparison of a country's male-to-female (or female-to-male) sex ratio compared to the natural sex ratio. Unlike female mortality rates, estimates of missing women include counts of sex-specific abortions, which Sen cites as a large factor contributing to the disparity of sex ratios from country to country. Sen's original research found that while there are typically more women than men in European and North American countries (at around 0.98 men to 1 woman for most countries), the sex ratio of developing countries in Asia, as well as the Middle East, is much higher (in number of males for each female). For example, in Mainland China, the ratio of men to women is 1.06, far higher than most countries. The ratio is much higher for those born after 1985, when ultrasound technology became widely available. Using actual numbers, this means that in Mainland China alone, there are 50 million women "missing" – that should be there but are not. Adding up similar numbers from South and West Asia results in a number of "missing" women higher than 100 million. However, later authors pointed out that Europe tended to have higher rates of male mortality due to multiple wars and generally risky behavior. As a result of this disparity between countries, American demographer Coale re-estimated the Sen's original numbers of missing women using a different methodology. Using data from his Regional Model Life Tables, Coale found that the natural male-to-female sex ratio, accounting for different country fertility rates and circumstances, had an expected value of 1.059. Using the number, he then arrived at an estimate of 60 million missing women, much lower than Sen's original estimate. He also noted a problem with the Regional Model Life Tables; they were based on countries with higher female mortality, which would bias Coale's numbers of missing women downwards. Furthermore, Klasen and Wink noted that both Sen's and Coale's methodologies were flawed because Sen and Coale assume that optimal sex ratios are constant across time and space, which they are often not. Klasen and Wink also noted that similar to both Sen's and Coale's results, Pakistan had the world's highest percentage of missing girls relative to its total pre-adult female population. On the other hand, Guilmoto in his 2010 report uses recent data (except for Pakistan), and estimates a much lower number of missing girls in Asian and non-Asian countries, but notes that the higher sex ratios in numerous countries have created a gender gap – shortage of girls – in the 0–19 age group. On the other hand, in Mainland China, rural areas have a larger missing women problem than urban areas. Mainland China's regional differences lead to different attitudes towards the one-child policy. Urban areas have been found to be easier to enforce the policy, due to the danwei system, a generally more educated urban population – understanding that one child is easier to care for and keep healthy than two. In more rural areas where farming is labor-intensive and couples depend on male offspring to take care of them in old age, males children are preferred to females. Instead of policy expanding women's opportunities for gainful employment policy, from 1979 onward the one-child policy has added upon the son preference causing the largest number of missing women in any country. As parents are eager to have sons and are allowed only one child, some first born females are not reported with the hope that their next child will be a son. The numbers cited for the sex disparity in Mainland China is likely very exaggerated, as birth statistics is skewed by late registrations and unreported births of females: for instance, researchers found that census statistics of women in later stages of their life do not match with the birth statistics, possibly accounting for 25 million of the 30 million missing women commonly cited. In the other direction, migration, especially to GCC countries, has become a larger issue for sex ratio estimates. Because many male migrants move across borders without their families, there is a large influx in the number of males, which would bias the sex ratios towards more missing women, even when there are not. ==Causes==

Sen's original argument Sen argued that the disparity in sex ratio across eastern Asian countries like India, China, and Korea when compared to North America and Europe, as seen in 1992, could only be explained by deliberate nutritional and health deprivations against women and female children. These deprivations are caused by cultural mechanisms, such as traditions and values, that vary across countries and even regionally within countries. Due to the inherent bias toward male children in many of these countries, female children, if born despite many instances of sex-selective abortion, are born without the same sense of priority given to men. This is especially true in the medical care given to men and women, as well as prioritizing who gets food in less privileged families, leading to lower survival rates than if both genders were treated equally. Missing women: adults According to Sen's cooperative conflict model, the relations within the household are characterized by both cooperation and conflict: cooperation in the addition of resources and conflict in the division of resources within the household. These intra-household processes are influenced by perceptions of one's self-interest, contribution and welfare. One's fall back position is the situation for each party once the bargaining process has failed and also determines the ability of each party to survive outside of the relationship. However, because of sex-selective abortions, the sex ratio at birth in countries with high proportions of missing women have ranged 108.5 in India to 121.2 in Mainland China. This is because families have a preference for sons; a decrease in fertility would mean that families would no longer have children of multiple sexes, but rather a single male child. Furthermore, in a study contrasting India and Bangladesh, researchers found that India's declining fertility caused a large intensification in son preference and thus an increase in the number of missing women, while declining fertility in Bangladesh led to less missing women. Regions with higher rates of Hepatitis B infection tend to have higher ratios of male to female births for biological reasons which are not yet well understood, but which have been extensively documented. While the disease is fairly uncommon in US and Europe, it is endemic in mainland China and very common in other parts of Asia. Oster argued that this difference in disease prevalence could account for about 45% of the supposed "missing women", and even as high as 75% of the ones in mainland China. Furthermore, Oster showed that the introduction of a Hepatitis B vaccine had a lagged effect of equalizing the gender ratio towards what one would expect if other factors did not play a role. It is the skewed female-male ratios among second and third born children that account for the bulk of the disparity. In other words, if Hepatitis B was responsible for the skewed ratio then one would expect it to be true among all children, regardless of birth order. However, the fact that the skewness arose less among the later born than among the first born children, suggested that factors other than the disease were involved. Das Gupta pointed out that the female-male ratio changed in relation to average household income in a way that was consistent with Sen's hypothesis but not Oster's. In particular, lower household income eventually leads to a higher boy/girl ratio. Furthermore, Das Gupta documented that the gender birth order was significantly different conditional on the sex of the first child. If the first child was male, then the sex of the subsequent children tended to follow the regular, biologically determined sex pattern (boys born with probability 0.512, girls born with probability 0.488). However, if the first child was female, the subsequent children had a much higher probability of being male, indicating that conscious parental choice was involved in determining the sex of the child. Neither of these phenomena can be explained by the prevalence of hepatitis B. They are, however, consistent with Sen's contention that it is purposeful human action – in the form of selective abortion and perhaps even infanticide and female infant neglect – that is the cause of the skewed gender ratio. Oster's theory refuted Part of the difficulty in discerning between the two competing hypotheses was the fact that while the link between Hepatitis B and a higher likelihood of male birth had been documented, there was little information available on the strength of this link and how it varied by which of the parents were the carriers. Furthermore, most prior medical studies did not use a sufficiently high number of observations to convincingly estimate the magnitude of the relationship. However, in a 2008 study published in the American Economic Review, Lin and Luoh utilized data on almost 3 million births in Taiwan over a long period of time and found that the effect of maternal Hepatitis B infection on the probability of male birth was very small, about one quarter of one percent. This meant that the rates of Hepatitis B infection among mothers could not account for the vast majority of missing women. The remaining possibility was that it was the infection among fathers that could lead to a skewed birth ratio. However, Oster, together with Chen, Yu and Lin, in a follow-up study to Lin and Luoh examined a data set of 67,000 births (15% of whom were Hepatitis B carriers) and found no effect of infection on birth ratio for either the mothers or fathers. As a result, Oster retracted her earlier hypothesis. Other diseases In a 2008 study, Anderson and Ray claim that other diseases may explain the "excess female mortality" across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. By comparing relative death rates of females to males in developed countries to the country in question, Anderson and Ray find that 37 to 45% of the missing women in mainland China can be traced to pre-birth and infancy stage termination factors, whereas only around 11% of India's missing women were caused by similar factors, pointing to the fact that the loss is spread across different ages. They find that by and large, the main cause for female deaths in India is cardiovascular disease. "Injuries" is the number two cause of female deaths in India. Both of these causes are far greater than maternal mortality and abortion of fetuses, though "Injuries" may be directly related to gender discrimination. She claims that a person's vulnerability to HIV depends on their overall health, and as misinformed practices, such as the belief that having sex with a female virgin will cure a male of AIDS, dry sex, and household activities that expose women to diseases contribute to weakening women's immune systems which leads to higher HIV mortality rates. Stillwaggon argues for increased focus on sanitation and nutrition rather than just abstinence or safe sex. As women become healthier the chances of an infected female transmitting HIV to a male partner decline significantly. suggest that conventional assumptions have been: • there are equal numbers of X and Y chromosomes in mammalian sperms • X and Y stand equal chance of achieving conception • therefore equal number of male and female zygotes are formed, and that • therefore any variation of sex ratio at birth is due to sex selection between conception and birth. James cautions that available scientific evidence stands against the above assumptions and conclusions. He reports that there is an excess of males at birth in almost all human populations, and the natural sex ratio at birth is usually between 102 and 108. However the ratio may deviate significantly from this range for natural reasons such as early marriage and fertility, teenage mothers, average maternal age at birth, paternal age, age gap between father and mother, late births, ethnicity, social and economic stress, warfare, environmental and hormonal effects. This school of scholars support their alternate hypothesis with historical data when modern sex-selection technologies were unavailable, as well as birth sex ratio in sub-regions, and various ethnic groups of developed economies. They suggest that direct abortion data should be collected and studied, instead of drawing conclusions indirectly from sex ratio as Sen and others have done. James's hypothesis is supported by historical birth sex ratio data before technologies for ultrasonographic sex-screening were discovered and commercialized in the 1960s and 1970s, as well by reversed sex ratios currently observed in Africa. Michel Garenne reports that many African nations have, over decades, witnessed birth sex ratios below 100, that is more girls are born than boys. Angola, Botswana and Namibia have reported birth sex ratios between 94 and 99, which is quite different than the presumed 104 to 106 as natural human birth sex ratio. John Graunt noted that in London over a 35-year period in the 17th century (1628–1662), the birth sex ratio was 1.07; while Korea's historical records suggest a birth sex ratio of 1.13, based on 5 million births, in 1920s over a 10-year period. Female abduction and sale by United States Forces Korea Evidence has shown that number of missing women may be due to other reasons than sex selective abortions or female migrant work. Specifically, female babies, girls and women have been preyed upon by human traffickers. Kidnapping and enslavement of women by the ISIS, especially of Yazidi women and other female prisoners also constitute human trafficking. In mainland China families are less willing to sell male babies even though they carry a higher price in the trade. Females born exceeding the one-child policy can be sold to wealthier families while the parents claim selling their female baby is better than other alternatives. Overseas adoption services for Chinese children have been involved in baby trafficking to reap the profits of donations from foreign adopters. One study notes that between 2002 and 2005 approximately 1000 trafficked babies were placed with adopting parents, each baby costing $3000. To keep up supply of orphans for adoption, orphanages and retirement homes hire women as baby traffickers. Under-reporting As discussed above, an additional cause of the missing women phenomenon is under-reporting—women or girls who actually are in the population, but are not included in population statistics because their parents didn't report their birth or delayed reporting it. ==Consequences==

Some research has also noted that in the mid-1990s, the observed trends reversed in regions of Asia where male/female ratios were high. In line with the studies of Das Gupta described above, as income increases the bias in the sex ratio towards boys decreases. Societal health Female discrimination and neglect does not just affect girls and women. Sen described the effects of female malnutrition and other forms of discrimination on men's health. However, for India and mainland China, this appears to be due to a fall in adult female mortality rates, relative to male adults, rather than a change in the sex ratio among children and newborns. In general, these conditions amount to widespread deprivations of women across East and South Asia. According to Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach, as millions of females are discriminated against they are being deprived of their essential capabilities to such as life, bodily health and bodily integrity, among others. According this framework, policy should focus on increasing women's capabilities even at the cost of changing long held traditions. Missing brides Some have speculated that the disparity in the sex ratio may affect the marriage market in such a way that may turn the tide of missing women. David De La Croix and Hippolyte d'Albis developed the Missing Bride Index and a mathematical model showing that over time, as rich and affluent families continue to abort female babies and raise male children and as less wealthy families have girls, more males will be more affluent and the prospects for women to marry will increase. They predict that prospects for girls in the marriage market may become so auspicious that bearing female children may be seen as a positive rather than a negative. Excess men Since the advent of sex-selective abortions via ultrasound and other medical procedures in the 1980s, the gender discriminations that have caused the “missing women” have simultaneously produced cohorts of excess men. Many speculated that this group of excess men would cause social disturbances such as crime and abnormal sexual behaviors without the opportunity to marry. In a 2011 study, Hesketh found crime rates to not differ significantly from areas with known higher populations of excess men. She found that instead of being prone to aggression these men are more likely to feel outcast and suffer from feelings of failure, loneliness and associated psychological problems. Others are using emigration to other countries like the U.S or Russia as a solution. Das Gupta, Chung, and Shuzhuo conclude that it is possible that China and India will experience a similar reversal in trend towards normal sex ratio in the near future if their rapid economic development, combined with policies that seek to promote gender equality, continue. This reversal has been interpreted as the latest phase of a more complex cycle called the "sex ratio transition". == Policy solutions ==

Policy solutions are complicated by the fact that patterns of "missing women" are not uniform in all parts of developing nations. Studies find large variations between missing women. For example, there is an "excess" of women in Sub-Saharan Africa rather than deficit: the ratio of women to men is 1.02. On the other hand, there is evidence suggesting that even in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, Western European countries did not face sex ratios as skewed as the ones we see today in various developing countries. Even between India and Bangladesh, two countries with similar levels of education and gender disparity today, there are differences in missing women: the same measures to improve female welfare in Bangladesh do much worse in India. Kabeer argues that this is the case because India is stratified by social caste, while Bangladesh is more homogenous; as a result, progressive ideas such as improving the welfare of women can more easily disseminate in Bangladesh. Much research has been conducted in this area. Education Findings from the Indian Census in 2001 suggest that women's increased educational attainment was associated with the rise in the female-to-male sex ratio of India. Thus, in some countries, increasing access to education has helped On the other hand, later studies of India showed that increasing education may actually worsen the missing women phenomenon. Employment opportunities Sen argues that a woman's opportunity to participate in the labor force affords her more bargaining power within the home. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where there are fewer missing women, a woman is generally able to earn income from outside the home, increasing her contributions to her household and contributing to a different overall view of the value of women compared to that of Southeast and East Asia. On the other hand, Sen notes that in Narsapur, India, lace-makers have less bargaining power from their labor because lace-making is done in the home and perceived as supplementary, rather than gainful, labor. However, women making cigarettes in Allahabad, India, were viewed as having gainful labor, which helped boost the community's view of women. Thus, if women become more economically productive themselves, it may alter the view of female children as economically unproductive as well. This may increase girls' chances of surviving to birth and receiving the care and attention during childhood that they need. Furthermore, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child noted the importance of children in measuring a society's level of equality, while the Fourth UN Conference for Women in 1995 developed the Beijing platform, which recognized the rights of the female child. In addition, due to international pressure, India and mainland China have both banned the use of ultrasounds for the purpose of sex-selective abortions. However, economists have found that banning sex-selective abortion where parents have strong boy bias can lead to increased female infant mortality. In 2014, Kabeer, Huq, and Mahmud used a comparison of India and Bangladesh to argue that cultural dissemination of progressive ideas boosting the place of women in society is key for solving the problem of missing women. They show that NGOs in Bangladesh, which are present in over seventy percent of Bangladeshi villages, can be a helpful tool to mobilize change and culture. On the other hand, they argue that culturally instituted inequities such as India's caste system, which stratifies its society, prevent the spread of more progressive ideas, and as a result, cause a higher prevalence of missing women. ==See also==