(Re)sketching the theorizing around “missing women”: imageries of the future, resistance, and materializing aspects of gender

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent sex ratio data indicate that the number of “missing” women and girls has reached approximately 200 million. This is a significant increase since 1990, when roughly 100 million women and girls had “disappeared.” What are the contemporary discussions concerning the widespread practice of the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals? Moreover, how should we, as scholars of law and global politics, name and theorize these “missing” bodies? Despite decades of rigorous scholarship on the connections between sex, gender, and “missing” bodies, there appears to be no agreed understanding of the current and ongoing elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals. In this article, we go beyond some well-argued and thought-provoking elaboration and critique of the concept of gendercide to further inquire: what claims should be secured to establish a solid theoretical base for further research on the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals? By building on – in empirical terms – the case of India, our suggested answer to this question rests on two main arguments. First, to capture the motivations and practices of the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals, the productive and materializing aspects of gender should be further interrogated. Second, we argue that previous research has failed to include a temporal dimension to the debate around the “missing” women. We should embrace the imagined emotional encounters with the future, mainly on the part of parents or other family members who perform the sex-selective practices. By integrating these two arguments, we conclude that rethinking the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genitals also means rethinking the resistance to its practices.