Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15636231

by tokenadult • 16 years ago

91 94 16 years ago

lionhearted4• 16 years ago

I just finished Genji Monogatari, a work from 12th Century Japan. It follows Prince Genji from being born to an low ranking concubine of the Emperor and follows his adventures, and how he gets exiled, and returns, and eventually becomes Emperor himself. Very interesting read.

Anyway, at one point in the book, he meets a family in the countryside where the mother had died and the father was working off in another city, leaving one last elderly grandparent in the care of a 10 year old girl. Genji took her, raised her, and she became a member of his household. About 10 years later, after Genji's wife died, he actually married her.

Anyway, it'd be totally politically untenable to loosen the adoption restrictions, and going as far as to allow adoptive parents to compensate the family would never happen. It'd be just politically impossible due to perceptions involved, and maybe that's a good thing. Still, infanticide is no good, and I wonder if there's other solutions if we could broaden our perspective.

greenlblue9• 16 years ago

Girls in general are better people and killing them is plain stupid.

riffic2• 16 years ago

I agree with this.

greenlblue9• 16 years ago

Honestly, why would anyone take offence at this and downvote? Most of human history has been dominated by men and it has been war after war after war. Throw in the several male prophets whose followers have created several religions and the subsequent strife and women win by at least 1000 points. At this point it shouldn't even be an issue which is the better gender.

allenbrunson• 16 years ago

Even if true, it's a very polarizing thing to say. It drags the conversation towards an unhealthy, flamey place.

Tichy3• 16 years ago

Hitler was also cheered on by women. There are plenty of examples of women doing evil things. Just a couple of weeks ago I think there was a female amok runner.

Also, men and women face different challenges in wife. For example I suppose in many primitive societies, if one tribe raided another, the enemy men were killed, but the enemy women were taken home and being married (just one example).

araneae6• 16 years ago

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in your post. It's obvious that you think that the reason that men have been the head of wars is innate, biological determinism. Yet men have also been the ones who developed science and technology. On HN, almost all of us are men. Is that also due to innate, biological determinism? If not, how do you explain the fact that all the things you dislike about men are innate, and all the things you like are not? And if yes, how can you say that women are better than men? Do you not value science, technology, and entrepreneurship?

wooster4• 16 years ago

It's fairly easy to see that this is going to be one of the great causes of worldwide instability in this century. Many of these societies will be left with little choice in the face of political and societal forces but territorial expansionism, civil war, totalitarianism, or cultural suicide.

kiba2• 16 years ago

The European and the Japanese is declining in population. Greece is already bankrupt.

The United State government is racking up extraordinary debt, backed with little saving. If it keep doing that, we may entered not just stagnation but collapse.

There is also the agriculture crisis in Africa as a certain fungus ravages crops all over. It has already spread to Iran, I heard.

The 21st century certainly hang in the balance as we flirt with danger.

barrkel3• 16 years ago

US government debt actually isn't very high, nor are interest payments very high compared to GDP. And racking up extraordinary debt is the correct counter-cyclical response to an extraordinary recession. Governments shouldn't be reducing spending or increasing taxes when the economy hits hard times. Instead, it should reduce spending and maintain or raise taxes when the economy is doing well.

And Greece isn't bankrupt. You can't reasonably say that a country is bankrupt until it starts defaulting on its loans.

riffic2• 16 years ago

the end is nigh!

jvdh• 16 years ago

You are a being very pessimistic.

Europe and Japan declining in population? I find that hard to believe. Do you have figures to back that up?

Greece bankrupt? Even if it were true, any negative consequences of that will be mitigated by the EU. And a country in turmoil will only have a positive effect on birthrate.

Fortunately there was a lot less danger at the end of the 20th century when there were still nuclear weapons at the ready all over the globe.

Tangurena• 16 years ago

I disagree. In a country with no form of social security, the closest thing to keep you from starving in old age are sons [1]. The older generations would riot if China started waging a war that took their sons - and thus their old age pensions away.

China's current massive population is the consequence of Mao's belief that the Chinese could outbreed any nuclear war. The one-child policy is an attempt to get China back to a sustainable population size, which, for China's land and resources is about 1/2 the current size.

Notes: 1 - Women marry into other families, and so one would lose the support in old age, as the resources earned by the daughters would go to the family she married into.

sebastianavina• 16 years ago

just think about it for a moment... This women, in the vast mojority, will marry with the most succesful men they find... Most of them with education and a Degree... As the new chineses society, educated in general, they will have one or two kids... but the natality will go down... and all the young men that don't find a girl, either become depressed, and a social problem, or move away... Any way, all this men, that can't find a women to copulate, and can't have kids, eventually will get older, and the state will need to give them social security and health care... this is boyes are going to be a huge problem in the chinese society... Both as a social problem when they become men within their 20-30 years, and when they reach the jubilation age...

klenwell• 16 years ago

"Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children, as it does in China and India. A rising population of frustrated single men spells trouble."

In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright discusses this in addressing the social benefits of egalitarian, pro-monogamy social values. As a kind of real world experiment illustrating the meliorating effect of marriage, consider this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/all-you-...

In the 1970s, the PLO reigned in the radical militant young men in Black September by marrying them off.

Apart from the obvious horror of infanticide, this is what I find most unnerving about the widening gender skew in these countries.

Mz• 16 years ago

The American West was "Wild" until women started showing up in adequate numbers to provide wives for men instead of just whore houses.

e40• 16 years ago

I get a 404 on that link.

sruffell• 16 years ago

I don't have anything new to say about the larger societal issues raised in this article, but as a father of a young daughter, this article certainly made me feel sad for all the daughters who aren't given a chance.

kls• 16 years ago

No doubt, I read this article with my 2 year old daughter in my lap and my 3 year old son sitting in the other chair and cannot imagine choosing her over him or vice verse. It really makes you wonder how much societal norms affect things that seem like basic human tenants.

Jun8• 16 years ago

Exactly! I don't have a daughter but the story resonated so powerfully that I cannot think of anything else this morning.

This would be an interesting case to discuss with proponents of cultural relativism (pretty much everyone in academic circles), along with bride burning in India and female circumcision in Africa: I see absolutely no way you can defend it.

_bfhp• 16 years ago

What a blow against the Online Ads cause: I start to read the article, and a "subscribe now" popup slides right over the first paragraph. Nice.

jpcx012• 16 years ago

It's the economist so I'll put up with anything they throw at me since they have such good content. Plus the ad was for their own product, and not some 3rd party crap.

I guess I'm just happy whenever I can actually access an article there. I thought they put up a pay wall a few months back.

scorciapino• 16 years ago

Meh, this is a war against MEN.

In a society with such a gender imbalance, women can be more picky and some men are left without hope of getting a partner. Without a partner, what are they going to focus on life, if not work? And who is gonna get their money when they die?

Communists may be evil, but they aren't stupid, so it's unlikely they haven't foreseen this.

orborde• 16 years ago

It's only great for the women who aren't murdered at birth. I'm not sure there's a clear winner in this gender war interpretation of yours.

EDIT: Did the math and concluded that for a normal sex ratio of ~103 to turn into one of 120, you'd have you be losing 14 of every 100 females through either prenatal abortion or unreported killing at birth.

hga2• 16 years ago

Actually, things tend to get really ugly for girls in a society where they become a scarce and valuable resource for their families. E.g. their value is in what can be extracted in the marriage market (note the comments on how this is skewing savings in the PRC), not in what they intrinsically are.

All in all I'd have to say this helps explain why the PRC is ramping up their police state (e.g. see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870424050457458...)

lionhearted4• 16 years ago

> Communists may be evil, but they aren't stupid, so it's unlikely they haven't foreseen this.

I'm in Cambodia right now. Communists are, in fact, quite stupid in addition to being evil. However, that doesn't really pertain to the infanticide thing, which is more a characteristic of very poor areas than communism.

wooster4• 16 years ago

I have a friend whose mom told her: "I wish I'd left you to die when you were born." She's Chinese, and a successful Chinese-American entrepreneur.

I can't even begin to imagine what a mindfuck that must be.

billpg• 16 years ago

My favorite story is of someone who sold a treatment that guaranteed boys, offering a full money back guarantee if you had a girl. Half his customers were fully satisfied.

Quite clever I thought.

hga2• 16 years ago

A note on South Korea:

It is by far the most Christian nation in Asia: 29% in the 2005 census and the largest (vs. 23% for Buddhism and 46.5% no religion). This is going to have very strong effects on social attitudes towards women and means what happened there in reversing this problem very probably won't elsewhere. Certainly not the PRC with its suppression of religion (of any non-Party dominated mass organization) and likely not in India with its well entrenched two major religions and their focus on each other.

araneae6• 16 years ago

If we wait long enough, this problem will fix itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle

Too bad evolution is so slow.

Retric• 16 years ago

Humans don't have a 1:1 M/F ratio. It starts at ~1.05:1 at birth and with men dieing off sooner.

Rexxar• 16 years ago

The 1.05:1 probably permits to have a 1:1 ratio at the age of reproduction in a pre-industrial societies.

akgerber• 16 years ago

As China grows economically what is the likelihood of it simply allowing female immigration and thus pass this problem off to poorer nations?

rsheridan6• 16 years ago

Where are you going to find that many women? Nowhere but Africa, or possibly Latin America. That would lead to an interesting culture clash.

Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls

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