Intensifying Masculinity of Sex Ratios in India: New Evidence 1981-1991

Abstract

Highlighted by sensational titles such as "The endangered sex" (Miller, 1981) or "More than 100 million women are missing" (Sen, 1992), studies have long drawn attention to the unfavourable life chances of females versus males in various parts of East and South Asia. This female disadvantage is particularly concentrated in infancy and childhood years, and is rooted in longstanding social patterns of preference for male children. Practices regulating the numbers of female children in a family included female infanticide, abandonment or outadoption
of girls, under-reporting of female births, and selective neglect of girl children leading to higher death rates among them. Lately in China and South Korea, pre-natal sex determination techniques and selective abortion of female foetuses are increasingly implicated (Asia-pacific Population Report, 1995; Johansen and Nygren, 1991; Park and Cho, 1995; Zeng Yi et al, 1993).