Birth gender disparity is greatest in the region China, India together account for over 85 million of the nearly 100 million “missing'' women The problem of “missing girls'' – a scenario where more boys are born than girls, as girl foetuses are presumably aborted, and women die from health and nutrition neglect – is growing in Asia Pacific. Birth gender disparity is the greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born...

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still...

Monica Das Gupta is a senior social scientist at the World Bank. Her field research in Punjab, when she was at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, established that sex differentials in child mortality in rural Punjab persisted despite relative wealth, socio-economic development including rapid universalization of female education, fertility decline, and mortality decline. Amartya Sen’s writings drew attention to female foeticide and infanticide in Asia that led to...

Winner of a national award for Bitter Chocolate, an eye-opener book on child sexual abuse, author-activist Pinki Virani tells Nandita Sengupta the nation has let down its children in the Ruchika Girhotra case. You have said that government response to the Girhotra case is appalling. In the national outrage on Ruchika, government has missed the woods for the trees. I'm appalled that the law minister says we will now strengthen...

A moving report titled Gender Violence in India by Prajnya, a civil society organization, says that violence against women is on the rise in India. Close to 13.3% of total crimes against women are reported from just one state, Andhra Pradesh. (See the link below) The report, which uses the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), tells us that honour killings are often reported as torture or caste...