Where have all the women gone?                                           

by Alison Palmer

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Missing Women

As many as 200 million women and girls around the world are demographically “missing” according to the United Nations. “Missing women” are those who – all things equal – should be alive but aren’t. The inevitable conclusion is that all things are not equal.

In cultures where boys are preferred, selective abortion and infanticide are known to lower the numbers of females. China and India have the most prominent reputation for this gender bias at birth and for the mistreatment of young girls. But despite their similar numbers of missing women (1.73 million in China and 1.71 million in India in the year 2000 alone), these two countries’ stories are very different from one another. In many ways, India has more in common with sub-Saharan Africa. The story of this third region is less well-known for the issue, but women are missing there on the same scale as in the two Asian countries (1.53 million missing women in the year 2000).

Siwan Anderson wondered whether there was more to the story of missing women. Dr. Anderson is an economist and a member of CIFAR’s Institutions, Organizations and Growth program. Using data from the United Nations and World Health Organization, she and her colleague discovered that, while gender bias at birth does exist, it only accounts for a fraction of the colossal numbers of missing women.

“Our estimates suggest that excess female mortality is a much more universal phenomenon than previously thought,” Dr. Anderson explains. “We find that the majority of missing women disappear at an adult age, when parental preferences for male children should not be having a direct role.”

Dr. Anderson’s analysis reveals that a large number of missing women in India and China died as adults. (66 per cent in the former, 45 per cent, in the latter.) There is, indeed, more to the story.

The concept of missing women was first presented in 1992 by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. He used sex ratios to determine absolute numbers of missing women. He estimated the numbers for each country by calculating how many extra women would be alive were they receiving “similar care” to men, as happens in most developed countries.

The term “similar care” can be interpreted in many ways. In addition, many other factors also influence the high incidence of female death. Take the case of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The vast numbers of women dying of HIV/AIDS are not solely a reflection of a lack of similar care. Relative differences in cultural and sexual norms are major factors as well – men as a group are vastly more promiscuous than women, and as a result, many more women get infected and die.

Non-contagious diseases can also complicate the story. In the case of cardiovascular illness, a common killer of women in India , excess female deaths may result from unequal treatment, but also from differential incidence and genetic susceptibility between males and females.

Dr. Anderson sought to unravel some of these complexities. She identified the causes of female death in different age categories, country by country.

Some researchers hypothesize that high numbers of missing women result from the “epidemiological transition” – differing disease compositions between developing and developed countries.” This theory suggests that women in developing countries initially suffer from more infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS; as countries develop, women suffer from more chronic and degenerative ailments, such as cancer.

But Dr. Anderson’s results reject this hypothesis. When she compared the death rates of men and women by age, and further by age and disease, she found that there are missing women within each category. This indicates that despite a changing disease composition, there is still excess female mortality in all diseases – epidemiological transition cannot explain the phenomenon of missing women. Instead, Dr. Anderson believes that an overwhelming proportion of all female deaths are the result of inequality.

Dr. Anderson’s data show that vast numbers of women in India die from preventable diseases and from poor medical care during childbirth. Others are victims of “injuries,” such as fires, which are really deliberate acts of violence against women. Many of these are likely dowry deaths, where young brides are killed if their fathers do not pay sufficient money to the men they have married.

Discrimination is about more than access to medical care and violence against women. In China , a woman kills herself every four minutes. According to the World Health Organization, China is the only country where women are more likely to commit suicide than men; this number is particularly high in rural areas, where many women poison themselves with pesticides.


Thanks very much for your comments. Regarding missing women in Canada - possibly there are. It is a topic which is currently being researched and there is tentative evidence that girls are missing at birth among South Asian and Chinese immigrants. It is a good point that this data should be used to inform the Millennium Development Goal on gender.
Posted By: siwan anderson
2009-02-24 9:05 AM
Missing Women in Canada?
Are there missing women here in Canada as well? Is anyone conducting follow-up research on sub-Saharan African, Indian and Chinese women when they immigrate to Canada?
Posted By: Fiona Nelson
2009-02-23 10:58 AM
Mr.
In regards to this line: "Instead, Dr. Anderson believes that an overwhelming proportion of all female deaths are the result of inequality." It is interesting to note that one of the Millennium Development Goals is to "Generate gender equality, and empower women." This is strong evidence of the importance of this goal and even more reason why the governments of the world should keep their promise of achieving these goals in 2015 and 2025. This data should be utilized.
Posted By: Mark McCormack
2009-02-22 8:35 AM


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