Asia's missing girls: technology that lets pregnant women know the sex of their babies--combined with a traditional preference for sons--has caused a gender imbalance across much of Asia.

• Author: Simons, Craig
• Position: International

In a one-room teahouse tucked between dark-green rice paddies in China s Szechuan province, Luo Yang, a 53-year-old farmer in Deep Peace Village, puffs on a bamboo pipe and says boys are better than girls, "Everyone wants a son, he says.

Until recently there wasn't much that anyone could do about having sons or daughters. But then in the 1980s, ultrasound scanners--which are used to check the health of developing fetuses, but also show their sex--became widely available across Asia.

Suddenly it became easy for women to find out if they were going to have a boy or girl. And in countries like China, India and South Korea, women began selectively aborting female fetuses--millions in India alone in the last 20 years, according to the census commissioner. The result is a serious gender imbalance in all three countries.

China now has the world's highest gender disparity among newborns: 117 boys are born for every 100 girls. That is well above the natural ratio of 105 boys for every 100 girls (which is also the ratio in the United States). In some parts of China and India the imbalance is almost as high as three boys for every two girls. Across Asia, the gender imbalance translates into millions of "missing" girls.

"It's a humongous problem," says Valerie Hudson, a professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and co-author of a book on the topic. "Without a balanced sex ratio in a society, you're courting disaster."

Underlying the gender imbalance are centuries-old Asian attitudes about women, researchers say. Until well into the 20th century many Asian women couldn't work outside their homes, go to school, or decide whom they would marry. While sons were cherished, girls were often neglected, poorly cared for when they got sick, and sometimes abandoned.

The governments of China, India and South Korea have all banned the use of ultrasound to determine gender. But the laws are hard to enforce, because the women who take the tests and the doctors who perform them keep them secret. In Deep Peace Village, Luo says villagers can get the test at a nearby clinic, with no questions asked, for about $6.

A QUESTION OF ECONOMICS

Asian women have made great strides in the last half century. In China, for example, men and women are now equal under the country's laws, arranged marriages have been banned and women are getting good jobs.

So why, especially in rural areas, do many Asians still favor boys? It's largely about economics--particularly economics rooted in cultural traditions about women.

"Mostly, Chinese worry that if they don't have a son, no one will take care of them when they are too old to work," says Wu Shaoming, director of a women's studies institute in Chengdu, China. The Chinese government does not provide welfare or free medical care to peasants. What's more, Wu says it is common for women in the countryside to move to their husbands' villages after marriage, providing no support to their own families.

"It's good to have a boy," says Luo, the farmer in Deep Peace...