OF WOMEN, MEN AND SEX ratios!

by Dr. Romulo A. Virola 1

Secretary General, NSCB

In celebration of Women’s Month and the International Women’s Day

last March 8, we gratefully remember the heroism of many great
Filipinos before us like Melchora Aquino, Gregoria de Jesus,
Gabriela Silang, Trinidad Tecson and Prinsesa Purmassuri. We
pay tribute to the contribution of women in nation-building and we are
proud to be one of probably very few countries to have had two
women presidents.

On the other side of the world, an Ivy League boss was quoted to have
attributed the fact that women keep away from mathematics and
science to “differences in availability of aptitude!” If he had said that in
our country, I cannot imagine kng sng kngkngan cya pplutn! And
deservedly so!

Being more scientific-minded than that Ivy League man, Statistically

Speaking looks at interesting patterns of sex ratios and other gender
statistics to assess gender differentials in some important aspects of
our life. These statistics tell us stories. Hopefully, they contribute to an
enhanced appreciation of the role of statistics in decision-making, so
that when we speak, we make sense and our choices are always
informed. But first, some facts and/or theories/hypotheses:

1. Women live longer than men.

2. Mortality among baby girls is higher than among baby boys.
3. In the family, women get less priority than men for college
education.

I have private explanations for some of the

above, but let us see if Philippine
demographics support them.

According to the NSO, at birth, Filipino women

are expected to live longer than men: 70.1
years for women and 64.1 years for men, a
good six years longer for women to enjoy the
much more interesting and infinitely safer
Baywalk along Roxas Boulevard. If you
haven’t been there, I urge you to take your family one of these days!
Now, suppose Civil Registration records show that you are already a
sixty year-old woman, no matter that you look like you are fifteen
years younger, as some of our friends do, thanks to the science or art
of Vicky Belo! Based on the 1995 Gender Specific Life Tables of the
NSO ( the 2000 Census-based tables are not available) you are
expected to live about 19 years more. Sixty-year old men, on the
other hand, have only 17 years left to enjoy the magically hard power
of some medicine! A simple case of who is the stronger sex? Dunno,
but what maybe interestingly threatening to the Filipino male is that
this gender differential on life expectancy has been widening lately. In
1995, women were expected to live only 5 years and three months
longer than men, and before that in 1990, slightly less than 5 years
and 3 months. But don’t you worry; unless you prefer to be awed by
mechanical statistical modelers, this certainly does not mean that in a
hundred years, many twenty-seven year old grooms will be spending
their honeymoon with 50-year old brides!

So you thought death rate among baby girls was higher than for baby
boys? Wrong! Data from the 2003 National Demographic and Health
Survey of the NSO show that for every 1000 baby girls born alive, 25
will die before they reach their first birthday and 34 will not live to
celebrate their 5th birthday. Among baby boys, the mortality is higher:
35 before age one and 48 before age five!

Population sex ratios (number of males per hundred females) differ

among countries. Generally, the sex ratio is about 104 at birth and
falls as a cohort ages. In some countries there are more men than
women: Bangladesh, China, India and the Philippines. But in
countries/administrative regions like Cambodia, China Hongkong,
China-Macao, and Indonesia, there are more women than men.
Extended periods of war/armed conflict, for obvious reasons, lead to
sex ratios below a hundred, such as in Cambodia where in 1998, there
were only 93 men for every 100 women. But what may be a cause for
alarm, is that in some countries, age-specific sex ratios in the younger
ages are far from the national sex ratio. For example, in China in
1999, while the national sex ratio stood at about 104 men for every
100 women, among infants ( 0-1 year of age) and among under-five
babies, there were 119 and 120 boys,
respectively, for every 100 girls. In Hongkong
in 2000, while nationally, there were only 95
men for every 100 women, among infants and
among under-five babies, there were 108 and
107 baby boys, respectively for every 100
girls! Similar patterns were found in Macao, and to a lesser extent, in
Indonesia!

In the case of the Philippines, in the 1970 census, there were fewer
men than women: 99 men for every 100 women; but in all the
subsequent censuses, the sex ratio has been hovering around 101 –
102 men for every 100 women. To a much lesser extent we exhibit the
same pattern of higher sex ratios at younger ages: in 2000, for every
100 infant and under-five girls, there were about 106 and 105 boys,
respectively. As mentioned earlier, in the Philippines, the mortality
among baby boys is higher, explaining the decline in the sex ratio in
the older ages.

I guess everybody notices that we see more Lolas than Lolos walking
in the park with their apos. ( I hope many of us find time to
experience the sheer joy of spending our golden moments with them
little rascals!). Among our 70-74 year-old grannies, NSO says there
are about 83 Lolos for every 100 Lolas. As time passes by, we will be
losing more of our Lolos than our Lolas, so that by the time they get
to be between 80-84 years of age, we will have only 69 Lolos for
every 100 Lolas! So you kids out there, take good care of your Lolos!
And know what, when they get to be 90-94 years old, should they all
be free to marry as many as they can, each Lolo can date two Lolas!
Only question is, what can he do on those dates?

What about education? Some of us think that in family decisions about

who to send to school when resources are tight, the priority is less for
girls because “mag-aasawa lang sila!” Let us see what gender
statistics on education have to say!

In the elementary school, enrolment has

always been in favor of boys: about 51 % are
boys and 49% are girls. This is not surprising
because among primary school-age
population, the sex ratio is about 104: 52
boys for every 50 girls. The sharing has not
changed much since schoolyear 1982-83 to
schoolyear 2000-2001, although the share of
boys has decreased a tiny bit. In high school,
however, the scenario is reversed: enrolment
is already in favor of girls at 51 % compared to 49% for boys, even if
the sex ratio among high school-age population remains in favor of
boys at about 51 to 50. Just like for the elementary level, while the
sharing has not changed much, the share of boys has also been very
slightly dwindling. But in higher education, the women are much more
favored: in schoolyear 2001-2002, 56% of those enrolled were women
and only 44% were men. This, despite the fact that among 15-19 and
15-24 age-groups, the sex ratio is practically even at 100.46 and
99.92, respectively. Is this a case of women being more interested in
acquiring education? Or women being smarter than men? Guys, you
must help me explain this!

And now for other gender statistics.

According to the 2003 National Nutrition Survey of the Food and

Nutrition Research Institute, there are more women than men who are
either too thin or too fat! For every hundred women, about 14 are
underweight and 6 are obese. For men, it is 11 underweight and 3
obese! I dread speculating on the reasons! But with us losing in
education, it looks like in the battle of the sexes, we are winning in
health, after passing the 5-year old mark! Score: One all? I am not
sure. Because even if more women are either too fat or too thin, why
do they live longer? Two-Zero then?

Beijing 1995, Beijing Plus Five and Beijing Plus Ten, notwithstanding,
the enormous potential of Filipino women as partners in economic
development remains untapped! The October 2004 Labor Force Survey
of the NSO indicates that while for every 100 Filipino men, 83 are
active in the labor force, only 47 out of 100 Filipinas are participating
in the labor force. Four possibilities: women are lazier (not true, you
chauvinist le-lechonin!); or women are still doing much of the
housework ( I thought many of my friends had long been
domesticated!); or many of our women have left to work overseas
(possible since they are excluded from the labor force population); or
the LFS is not able to accurately capture the economic status of
women, especially in agriculture ( possible since respondents may
think that women are not doing work when they help in the farm!).
More serious however, is, despite the strong advocacy of women
groups, the labor force participation of women has gone down from 49
in 1995 to 48 in 2000 to 47 in 2004. Among men, it was 82 in 1995,
80 in 2000 and 83 in 2004.

The October 2002 NSO Survey of Overseas

Filipino Workers estimated 502,000 women
and 554,000 men working overseas. With
close to 48 % share of overseas employment,
when this is added to employment in the
domestic economy, the overall labor force
participation rate of women should be higher. This, in fact, is a
possible explanation for the dwindling labor force participation rate in
the domestic economy among women! The same NSO survey shows
that it is the younger Filipino women who work overseas ( modal age
group is 25-29) compared to men, who are mostly 45 years of age or
over. Most of our women OFWs go to Hongkong, while Saudi Arabia is
still the most favored destination among men OFWs. But even if our
OFWs contribute about 10% to our GNP, I do not like this OFW trend
as it is the women who generally are able to provide better direction in
our family lives. They are leaving for financial gains but sacrificing the
future of their children in other, possibly more important aspects,
particularly education. The DepEd tells us that in the High School
Readiness Test administered to our first year high school students,
average scores of our children range from 32 to 38% in English,
Science and Math! As Mareng Winnie would say, susmaryosep!
Where does our future lie?

PARIS 21 ( Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21 st

Century has just come up with an interesting document “ Measuring up
to the Measurement Problem: The Role of Statistics in Evidence-based
Policy-Making.” If you wish to benefit from the true and immense
power of statistics, read it. It is available on the PARIS 21 website at
http://www.paris21.org.

Now-a-days you will not see a single week without an article about female feticide in
Indian dailies and magazines. Center for Social Research (CSR) in its annual report says
‘Family tradition and dowry system emerged as the two major causes of female
feticides’. This quote is one of the favorites of Indian feminazis as well. Here is a
common man’s arm-chair research and analysis about this issue based on the available
historical census data of India in comparison with two other countries China and USA.

Graph given below shows the sex ratio of India from 1901 till 2001 as in CSR annual
report which startled me and triggered this analysis.
Indeed it is a steady decline in the number of women over the period of hundred years.
Obviously it gave birth to umpteen questions in my mind. The one that dominates every
other question was

“What is the ideal sex ratio?”

But I couldn’t find any realistic answer for that. Anyone can say 1:1, but is that some
where close to reality? Will it be sane to say at a given date and time the number of girls
and boys on a particular geographical region will be equal if there is no sex selective
abortion? Do we have any mechanism to find the exact figure at the given point in time?
Absolutely NOT. I know the whole extended family of Pythagoras will stand up and say,
‘hey I have a formula to figure that out’.

Usually sex ratio is determined either based on the actual population or by cohort
method. To me either of these methods doesn’t seem fit to come to a conclusion because
the so called missing females may be due to take birth the next day of census.

Still I tried to understand why the graph above looks so pathetic. To get a deeper
understanding lets take a wider look at the whole scenario.
This is the data for the same period of time showing the population as a whole along with
total number of men and women according to each census. I assume you would have
noticed the remarkable difference in number of men and women started in early or mid
60s. Until then the graph goes neck to neck though women were slightly less in number.

My point is, if we take the conclusion of CSR in its face value, i.e., family tradition and
dowry system are the major cause of female feticides, then why is the number of females
less during the first half of the century when we didn’t have any available sex
determination technologies? I know CSR and feminazis are going to play the different
card, ‘female infanticide’ and ‘dowry death’.

Before we try to digest that theory lets compare our population trend with that of United
States of America. The reason why I chose USA is because it is pretty diverse with multi-
ethnic as well as multi-racial communities; hence there are no social structures which
may influence everyone.
Does that make your eyes wide open to see the same trend in early or mid sixties on the
graph? But here the number of males came down after 1960! Except during the
American civil war (1861–1865), which resulted in massive death of men, the number
women were less than the number of men; not to mention the fact that men outnumbered
women consistently through out 19th century!
Apparently, the sex ratio was similar or even lower than that of India mostly in 19th
century and even during early decades of 20th century.

Was there a remote chance of dowry or family tradition in order to make this happen?

Why do we need Herculean formulas made out of thin air to prove something that doesn’t
exist? Well, I’m leaving those questions to the readers.

Now the most conspicuous question is

what was the reason for the significant imbalance in the sex ratio from 1960 onwards
world wide?

One who believes it is because of the selective killing of female fetus in India should also
be willing to believe there was selective killing of male fetus in USA.

Obliviously or intentionally, CSR and all other international agencies that fund for the
female feticide campaign, brushed the fact “Family Planning” under the carpet. It was
by the end of fifties, countries around the globe started promoting birth control
techniques like condoms and pills, which evidently have made severe damage to the
natural balance in sex ratio. Remember, there were no prenatal sex determination
techniques during the sixties; even in the present century these sophisticated technologies
are affordable only to the rich. Further more the earlier methodologies used for prenatal
sex determination require the fetus to be at least 16 to 20 weeks old in order to get
accurate results! At that stage abortion is almost impossible or at the high risk of
mother’s life. Such incidents of mass death of women due to abortions were never
reported either in India or China.

Historical census data of China is not internationally accepted due to misreporting of

birth; more over they started taking census only by 1953. But considering the huge
population, the one child policy (publicly announced in 1979), and its strict enforcement
should be a valid reason for the imbalance in their sex ratio if such an imbalance ever
existed. Still history asserts that 94 females for 100 men (as per 2008 data), is not an
alarming ratio. Simply blaming on son preference, patrilenial social structure and dowry
system seems to be very cheap and low grade remarks to achieve devious goals.

Read more: http://prassoon.instablogs.com/entry/female-feticide-a-mysterious-

propaganda/#ixzz0ljEM3NZm

Married life blues: Women settle down late, choose younger men

2010/03/11
Suganthi Suparmaniam
suganthi@nst.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: Get married and have babies. This advice to Malaysians was given
by the National Population and Family Development Board to arrest the continuing
decline in the fertility rate of the country.

The board expects the fertility rate to drop to 2.05 per cent in 2015 if more women opt to
stay single and those who are married delay or do not want to have babies.

Board director-general Datuk Aminah Abdul Rahman acknowledged that getting married
and having children were matters of personal choice but the decline in fertility rate had
become worrying and of deep concern for the government.

A 1995 survey had shown a fertility rate of 3.4 children per woman. Ten years later, the
number had decreased to 2.4 children. In 2007, it was 2.2 children.

“And this is mainly because of late marriages. The more you delay, the less your chances
of having a baby.

It’s a worldwide trend,”Aminah said after opening the Consultative Forum in Population
Strategic Plan 2 here yesterday.

Because of this, she noted a growing trend of child adoption in the country.

The Women,Family and Community Development Ministry intends to have more

premarital courses to help couples adjust to each other and teach them what to expect in a
marriage.

It will also hold parenting courses together with non-governmental organisations.

Aminah, who met her counterpart from Norway at a conference two days ago, said the
Norwegians had noted a similar trend in their country in the 1980s.

“When they noticed the low number of marriages and declining fertility rates, they
introduced legislation to help women balance work and family life. When you legislate,
people are compelled to follow.

“It took Norway some 40 years to do it but we don’t have to wait that long. All we have
to do is to take the best practices from countries all over the world and learn from them.”

She said the declining fertility rate was more noticeable among the higher educated ones
and working people.
Because of education, women were also finding it difficult to find a compatible partner.

They were forced to marry someone who was less educated or with lower qualifications.
Some also married men younger than them.

Aminah said while women put off marriage because they were unable to find compatible
partners, men say marriages are getting expensive.

“Why is it so expensive now to get married? Are dowries and wedding expenditure more
important than the marriage itself?”

Sex Selection and Women’s Reproductive Rights

J. Hughes
Ethical Technology

Posted: May 10, 2007

J. Hughes
Responding with alarm to the U.S. Supreme Court decision
permitting the banning of late-term abortions reproductive rights
activists have insisted that any restrictions on a woman’s right to choose must be fought.

For instance South Carolina is considered legislation that would require pregnant women
to undergo an ultrasound and view images of their embryo before being permitted to have
an abortion. South Carolina already has the toughest climate for abortion rights in the
United States, causing the number of clinics in that state to drop from 14 to 3 in ten years,
with a 50% drop in abortions. Forcing women seeking abortions to view an ultrasound
would presumably deter even more women from seeking them from the dwindling
number of providers.

One would think that the obvious pro-choice position would be that a woman has a right
to know the contents of her womb with any test she chooses, including ultrasound, but
should not be forced to have one, just as she should have the right to continue or
terminate her pregnancy with or without that information. But this is far from obvious to
a bioconservative minority within reproductive rights activism.
Responding to the slowly shifting sex ratios in India and China where male-biased sex
selective abortion is widely practiced a global bioconservative alliance has emerged to
demand harsh punishment for providers of ultrasound and abortion in those countries.
Some activists would like to see sex selective abortion banned worldwide. These
demands are popular across the political spectrum, since religious conservatives welcome
any restriction on reproductive freedom, and progressives have contempt for the
patriarchal attitudes that lead to male preference. The language of millions of “missing
girls” and widespread “foeticide” has equated sex selective abortion with the murder of
girls and ethnic genocide. The argument is also advanced that the changing sex ratio in
those countries will have bad consequences for women and social stability.

India and China, under increasing international pressure, have stepped up the
criminalization of ultrasound and abortion, as have countries such as Vietnam, South
Korea and Taiwan. In India doctors can be, and are being, imprisoned for providing
women ultrasound and abortion, unless they are at a high-risk of having a pregnancy with
congenital anomalies.

Disability extremists have in turn seized on the unpopularity of sex selective abortion to
argue that aborting feti with congenital abnormalities is a form of discrimination against
the disabled, and should also be banned.

Even the humanist movement is subject to this form of bioconservative coercion, as a

recent article in the IHEU journal on the tragedy of foeticide in India attests, insisting that
the restrictions on reproductive choice be enforced with no mention of reproductive
rights.

Briefly, then, I want to recapitulate the arguments for women having the right to choose
what kind of child they have, including its gender, whether they live in the affluent North
or India or China.

First, however, I feel obliged to point out that I had no preference for boys or girls when
my kids were feti, and I have contempt for the patriarchal attitudes that lead to boy
preference. But people bring all kinds of attitudes that I dislike to their reproductive
decision-making, and the question is whether our disdain for a patriarchal prejudice
warrants contravening women’s reproductive liberty.

One of the more disingenuous aspects of the debate about sex selection is that very few of
the activists in the North demanding bans on sex selection in the developing world
promote such bans in their home countries where they would be far less popular. Insofar
as their arguments hinge on the alleged harm done to the unconditional love of parents
for children when parents make choices about the kind of children they have, this would
apply equally to Americans or Germans choosing their children’s genders.
This argument for “unconditional love” leads naturally to questioning the ethics of
contraception, however, which only Catholics do; if unconditional love of parents
requires accepting without question whatever God sends your way, then you shouldn’t
choose how many kids to have either. Parents who use contraception, sex selection or any
fertility regulating technology are alleged, by this argument, to devalue all their children
into commodities. In fact, the research has consistently shown that “children of choice”
produced through fertility treatments are as or more loved than the children produced by
the usual methods which require far less commitment and forethought.

Bans on gender selection have little other rationale in the developed North, since research
on gender preference in developed countries, Europe and North America, show only a
slight gender preference if any. (Gender preference in Japan actually favors girls three–
to-one, although it is rarely practiced there 1, 2.) Few parents in the developed world
express any interest in using sex selection, and the majority of those who do want to use
it want it to “balance” their families, to have both a daughter and son in the family.
Consequently the overall effect on gender balance in the developed world would barely
dent the 51%/49% female-to-male ratio which currently makes it harder for women to
find mates.

If it is in fact the obligation of the state to ensure that there is a perfect 50/50 gender
balance - so that every man and woman in society can find someone of the opposite
gender - then male preference sex selection should in fact be state policy in the developed
North until we achieve such a balance. As much as some of us would like to have been
able to insist that the federal government had an obligation to make sure we found a sex
partner I don’t really think that is a state obligation.

The demand for a ban on sex selection thus suggests yet another serious bit of
doublethink for progressives: it is based on normative ideas that about sexuality and
family that progressives have otherwise tried hard to critique and discard. Not every man
wants or needs a woman, and not every woman needs or wants a man. If there are fewer
women than men, or vice versa, it will be irrelevant for some, and others will adapt.
Individual reproductive expectations, and sexual desires and identities can and do adapt
to availability. The evidence is clear that sexual preference is only in part biologically
determined, and that situational factors play some role. Many men become “situationally
gay” in boys’ schools, prisons or the military. In the developed world growing numbers
of people are bisexual, remaining single or forming alternative family structures, and in a
world with hooking-up, polyamory and virtual sex, those who can’t find a single person
of the opposite sex to form a long-term monogamous bond with have plenty of
alternatives. Polyandry, one wife with several husbands, has been practiced by Tibetans
and other societies, and could be re-introduced. Openness to gay sex, porn and non-
marital sex are also growing rapidly in the developing world, to the consternation of
religious and neo-Maoist Puritans.

Another reactionary strategem of the opponents of sex selection in the developing world
is the reification of the unattached male as a violent rapist and criminal, a “surplus male,”
as exemplified in den Boer and Hudson’s 2004 book Bare Branches: The Security
Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. It is of course true that areas with more
young men than young women, like the early American West, have a higher crime rate,
and that marriage and family has a stabilizing effect on male risk-taking. (It is equally
true that there is a high rate of violence in poor African-American neighborhoods that
have a skewed female-to-male ratio in favor of females.)

But it is quite extraordinary for purported progressives to argue that women should be
denied reproductive choice in order to ensure that there are enough girls in the next
generation to marry and pacify violent males. Why not propose instead that males be
taught non-violent conflict resolution and punished harshly for rape? Would male
predominant societies really go to war to kill their excess males and bring home brides as
booty? If removing women’s reproductive freedom were the only method to prevent such
a dystopian future it might be warranted, but fortunately there are many alternative
policies to address “surplus males” from international peace-keeping, to male emigration
and female immigration, to male behavior modification.

Most directly governments should and are changing the economic incentives that lead to
male preference in abortion. In 2003 the Indian government began to give homeless
women with girls twice as much welfare assistance as women with boys, and legislation
is pending in the Lok Sabha to provide free medical and education assistance to all of
India’s girls, contingent on their attending school and remaining single to the age of 18.
China is offering parents with one or two girls old age pensions as a selective incentive to
have girls.

Actually, providing universal old age security would probably be even more effective at
eliminating boy preference. A major source of parental desire for sons is the weakness of
social welfare provision for senior citizens, and the far greater likelihood that a son will
have income to provide for his parents. Expanding educational and employment
opportunities for girls, and providing a state pension system, would go a long way to
reduce male gender preference.

Another argument propounded against sex selection is that male preference sex selection
reduces women’s political influence in society by reducing their number, which is of
course true. But it does not follow that their rights are any less likely to be respected if
they are 45% of the population than if they are 51%. Many minorities have fought for and
won rights from majorities in the developed North, as well as in the developing world,
from India’s scheduled castes to non-Han Chinese. Civil rights do not and should not
depend on population proportion. The logic of that argument would be that we should
advance the rights of the disabled, GLBT, or an ethnic group by working to increase their
proportion in the population. That’s bad social science and worse public policy. The
defense of women’s rights begins with the defense of their right to control their own
bodies, not from their proportion in the population. Securing women’s reproductive
rights today is essential for ensuring their rights in 2025.

Pro-choice opponents of sex selection again display their doublethink when they use
terms like “missing girls” and “foeticide.” As Catholics and other opponents of
reproductive freedom rightly point out, why is it foeticide only when the fetus is a girl? If
there is a two-to-one ratio of aborting female feti to aborting male feti in India, leading to
tens of millions of “missing girls” doesn’t that mean there are millions of “missing boys”
as well? Reproductive rights are weakened every time an opponent of sex selection
argues as if aborting a female fetus is equivalent to the murder of a girl person. It is not.

Most shocking about the feminist doublethink on the issue is the substantial harms to
girls that banning sex selection imposes. Patriarchal societies have routinely abused,
malnourished and murdered unwanted girls. Child and infant mortality for girls remains
far higher than for boys in India and China. Giving mothers a choice about whether to
bring a girl or a boy into their family reduces the likelihood that girls will be born into
families that see them as unwanted secondclass citizens. If all those “missing girls” had
been born into families that didn’t want them, millions of them would have suffered as a
consequence. Donohue and Levitt’s (2001) demonstration that the legalization of
abortion in the U.S. led to a decline in male juvenile delinquency twenty years later is
ample evidence of the beneficial effect of reproductive choice on parenting. This is the
flipside of every child being a wanted child; reproductive choice ensures that parents
don’t have, and subsequently neglect, unwanted children.

Another problem with the doublethink around sex selective abortion is that it dismisses or
underestimates the potentially positive impacts on the status of women that the changing
gender ratio is having in China and India. There is little empirical work on these effects
yet, but many anecdotal reports suggest that one immediate benefit of the changed gender
ratio is that women who would otherwise be considered unmarriageable are now able to
find partners. This includes disabled women, older women, widows, women who want
higher education and careers, and women of otherwise undesirable religious, ethnic and
caste backgrounds. As desperate men relax their expectations about what kind of bride is
acceptable, and women become more socially mobile, this will increase the options for
all women in sex ratio-shifted societies.
Another change in India has been the relaxation and even reversal of the expected bridal
dowry in India. Now would-be bridegrooms are either dropping any expectation of
receiving a dowry, or offering a dowry to the bride’s family. While this change has been
luridly described in the press as the growth of bride selling, the reporting ignores the fact
that tens of thousands of Indian wives were murdered in the 1980s and 1990s because
their husband’s family wanted to collect a second dowry. Removing the bridal dowry not
only protects wives from murderous in-laws, and improves their choices in the marriage
market, but reduces the dowry-burden incentives that cause families to prefer sons over
daughters in the first place.

A third beneficial consequence of the changing sex ratio has been state policy to
encourage families to have girls, such as the subsidies for girls in India and experiments
with free university tuition for girls in China. Affirmative action policies ensuring equal
number of boys and girls in higher education and employment would also benefit women
in a sex ratio-effected society.

Finally, the case against sex selection takes no account of the advance of fertility
technology, which will allow gender selection earlier in the pregnancy and even before
conception. Blood tests now enable sex determination as early as six weeks, and sperm-
sorting with in-vitro fertilization allows pre-conceptive sex selection. Eventually there
will be a pharmaceutical or contraceptive device which will allow parents to choose to
only conceive embryos of the desired sex without recourse to abortion or in-vitro
fertilization. Will the opponents of sex selection argue that these should also be
outlawed?

In conclusion, a woman’s right to know the contents of her own body, and to make a
choice about whether to continue her pregnancy or not, should be defended against laws
trying to stop prenatal sex selection, either in the developing world or in the developed
world. Restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom harm the interests of women and
girls, and ignore myriad social policy solutions, such as education and income incentives
to have girls and universal old age pensions, that provide better answers to the strains of
unbalanced sex ratios. The opponents of sex selection trumpet all accounts of increased
discrimination against women resulting from unequal sex ratios while ignoring growing
evidence of positive cultural change and women’s empowerment from women’s
enhanced marriage prospects. Opponents of sex selection reify a conservative
heteronormative model of sexuality, gender roles and family structure, while arguing that
unmarried men are social time bombs who can only be controlled by a wife. Eventually
the social policy dilemma around sex selection will presumably be made moot since
would-be parents will be able to use pre-conceptive technology to determine a
conceptus’s gender without abortion or in-vitro fertilization. But until the sex selection
argument unravels before technological innovation, women’s rights to control their
bodies must be defended against laws banning - or requiring - prenatal ultrasound and
abortion.

James Hughes Ph.D., the Executive Director of the Institute for

Ethics and Emerging Technologies, is a bioethicist and sociologist at
Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut USA, where he teaches health
policy and serves as Interim Director of Institutional Research and
Planning. He is author of Citizen Cyborg and is working on a second
book tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha. He produces a syndicated
weekly radio program, Changesurfer Radio.