Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on India's Gender Imbalance

Abstract

India is one of a number of countries mostly East and South Asian that record anomalous male-dominated sex ratios at birth. Under-enumeration of girl children may be partly responsible but the larger cause is the selective abortion of female fetuses in societies showing strong cultural or economic preferences for sons over daughters. Fetal sex determination became simple with the development of ultrasound technology. The sharp rise in the ratio of boys to girls in the youngest population age groups seen in the Indian censuses of 1981 1991 and 2001-especially in the northwestern states of Punjab and Haryana-coincides with the spread of this technology notwithstanding that its use for this purpose has been outlawed since the early 1990s. (Abortion is legal in India but the principle of parental sovereignty in reproductive decisions is overruled in this case in the name of the collective interest.) In a recent speech Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called attention to the gender imbalance and supported a nationwide campaign to end sex discrimination in this gray area of national concern. The Prime Ministers speech was delivered on 28 April 2008 to the National Conference on Save the Girl Child New Delhi a meeting organized by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It is reprinted below. The Prime Minister describes selective abortion of a female fetus as a reprehensible practice. Its origin is found in the patriarchal mindset its prevalence ascribed to unscrupulous and unethical conduct on the part of some medical practitioners offering sex determination services. The remedy he says lies in education and empowerment of women. While that may well be the case in the longer run cross-sectional research findings are less than supportive. The gender imbalance is positively associated with parental education and social status-whether linked to greater affordability of sex determination services or to the enhanced agency of higher-status parents in reproductive decisions. The text of the speech can be found at http://pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=677.