Why are the 'Missing Women' Missing?

For every 100 women, there are 105 men across the globe. 

A possible explanation could be biological – a skewed sex ratio during conception than at birth. Back in the 19th century, when contraception and sex-selective abortion were unacceptable and unknown, there was an excess of males during the time of conception, as concluded by this 2019 study. However, a 2015 study refutes claims of a skewed gender ratio at the time of conception, leaving factors such as sex-selective abortion during the later months of pregnancy as a potential cause of male-biased sex ratios at birth. 

Households in Asian developing countries, notably India and China, are accountable for such biases. Families have a strong preference for at least one son due to the prevalence of patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems. Not only deprived but even the wealthier families in India, China, and South Korea have shown a preference for a male child. Discrimination towards the female child is a consequence of the dowry tradition that plagues Indian society, more so in rural parts of the country. 

To establish this trend as a phenomenon, Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen coined the term ‘missing women’ in a 1990 article for the New York Review of Books. This term -missing women – in itself was not as stark as the estimate supporting this claim. A total of 100 million women were missing. Further, while India alone accounts for 40 million, China accounts for another 41 million missing women.

Not everywhere are the women missing. While the women to men ratio were as low as 0.94 (94 women for 100 men) in Asia, it was much above 1.05 (105 women for 100 men) in Europe and North America. In Kerala, a state in south India that favorably compared with many developed economies, the missing women phenomenon is non-existent. These differences in gender bias, according to Sen, were a result of discrimination against women in providing adequate nutrition and medical care, increasing their mortality. 

One hundred million women – never born or never lived. This figure, if true, is overwhelming and terrifying. However, economists have argued that though this calculation is an approximate measure of the prevailing gender bias, most of the missing women are of adult ages.

Missing women are ‘missing’ due to many reasons. In South Asia, injuries inflicted by fire cause 100,000 death every year. In East Asia, a similar number of women die each year from suicide. There is also a high prevalence of maternal mortality in developing countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, HIV/AIDS epidemic has been the cause of around 600,000 excess female deaths each year. Lack of adequate medical care and inequitable access to the women population is the root cause of such trends. Most of the missing women are missing due to disease-by-disease effects in these developing countries. Similar healthcare to men and women, as posited by Sen, could reduce these deaths at large as women tend to live longer than men. Evidence supporting this claim is limited, but a combination of biological, behavioral, and environmental factors are at play.  

Not to mention, the COVID-19 pandemic is a cause of more than 205,000 deaths in India as of 30th April 2021. Interestingly, around June 2020, female mortality was higher, but recent data shows an increased proportion of men deaths. However, reporting of sex-disaggregated data is varied and irregular. Further research and analysis will reveal the impact of the pandemic on the scale of missing women. 

The focal question remains whether economic development is the answer to bringing back these missing women. With increased access to modern methods of contraception and abortion, fertility rates have reduced. Education and an increased network of employment opportunities for women have led to low fertility rates, but the male preference for children remains. As a large proportion of the population belongs to the rural parts of India, where women remain a caregiver confined within the household, she falls prey to the patriarchal beliefs of conceiving a boy.

Still, from the 1950s till the present, average fertility rates have fallen from 6 to 2.3 children per woman in India. Rapid urbanization, emerging metropolitan lifestyles, and partially successful family planning campaigns have a significant role to play in this drop. In China, the fertility rates saw a steep decline from 6 to 1.6 children per woman, during the same period, partly due to the infamous One-Child Policy. 

In a paper titled Fertility Decline and Missing Women, economist Seema Jayachandran confirms the hypothesis that a decline in fertility rate has exasperated the skewness of the sex ratio – the number of men per woman increased. This anomaly owes to the dual effect of preference of a smaller family and that of a son, leading to sex-selective abortions. Higher levels of education, such as secondary and university education, an area where developing countries of the likes of India fall behind, could reduce the willingness to consider sex selection because the family has a preference for a specific gender. 

Other intricate socio-cultural factors such as caste and class, which prevail in most marginalized regions of India and China, will continue to be a barrier to the preference of the male child. Only with time and the development of a conducive social and economic environment will these cultural prejudices against the otherwise ‘missing’ female child disappear.