Missing Women Research Articles

Can conflicts and natural disasters account for the surplus of older men in Pakistan?

ABSTRACT The number of missing women in the population of Pakistan in 2015 amounted to approximately 4.4 million. The age distribution of this male surplus (i.e. in the 40+ population) suggests that the collective exposure of selected birth cohorts to deleterious events (i.e. conflicts and natural disasters) may have precipitated a surge in female vis-a-vis male mortality. To analyse this, this paper first collects gender and age disaggregated (wherever possible) mortality statistics arising from conflicts and natural disasters that have occurred throughout the history of Pakistan (since independence) and evaluates their impact on the sex ratios (male/female) of the population by age. Subsequently, it analyses the historical sex ratio pathway by age to assess how these events may have caused deviations from the pathway. The analysis reveals that conflicts and natural disasters (independently or in the aggregate) have had no impact on the missing women phenomenon in Pakistan and hence cannot explain the surplus of men in the country. Nevertheless, it points to the severity and persistence of the missing women phenomenon in Pakistan, especially among the elderly (60+) population. It also indicates the likely endurance of the phenomenon in future cohorts of elderly population in the country.

The Welfare Effects of Social Assistance Programmes for Women in India

The literature has established that the alarming female poverty rate in India is a crucial factor contributing to ‘missing elderly women’. This paper examines the role of an unconditional cash transfer programme (the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme – IGNOAPS) implemented in India on household expenditure on education, medical expenses and food items when the programme recipient is an elderly woman. The paper uses the longitudinal household-level data (2004–05 and 2011–12) released by the India Human Development Survey and utilises a quasi-experimental framework of propensity score matching combined with fixed effects to estimate the effects of the pension amount received by elderly women on disaggregated consumption expenditure. The findings of this research suggest that women’s access to IGNOAPS has a positive effect on consumption expenditure on nutrient-rich food, while the pension amount also increases education and medical spending. The results obtained in the paper are explained through the elderly women’s increased bargaining power and the income effect. The results remain consistent after addressing concerns about endogeneity using an instrumental variable. The study provides evidence that elderly women’s access to IGNOAPS reduces household food poverty and improves other welfare dimensions in the household.

African Story Time: An Exploratory Study of Narrative as a Reporting Technique in U.S. News Coverage Of Nigeria’s Missing Girls

News reports about nearly 300 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls spread globally in April 2014. Ongoing updates on the tragic incident permeated social media through digital advocacy efforts. Though research on U.S. news coverage generally indicate underreporting regarding missing women of color and negative reporting on African current events, news of Nigeria’s missing schoolgirls managed to make waves in U.S. media and elicit longstanding compassion and interest among readers. This study explores the use of narrative storytelling by U.S. news outlets as a way to create commonality, engage audiences in public interest communications and encourage the story’s resonance among U.S. readerships.

Missing Women, Gender Imbalance and Sex Ratio at Birth: Why the One-Child Policy Matters

In this paper, we show that the one-child policy has played a significant role in the decline of China’s fertility. The one-child policy had reduced China’s fertility rate by an additional 11.5%, based on a year-on-year comparison with the case if China had not implemented the policy. The methodology we introduced in estimating the number of “missing women” improves on the method employed in Anderson and Ray (2010). Our findings suggest that the one-child policy resulted in a total of approximately 11 million missing women in China, and contributed to more than 50% of its outstanding gender imbalance. The adoption of the one-child policy has prevented around 50 million births, and is confirmed to be the major cause of China’s highly skewed sex ratio at birth.

Missing Women in STEM in China: an Empirical Study from the Viewpoint of Achievement Motivation and Gender Socialization

Although women are increasingly earning degrees in STEM, they remain under-represented in these fields. An empirical study was undertaken to explain the phenomenon of missing women in STEM in China from the viewpoint of achievement motivation and gender socialization, using data from the Third National Survey on the Social Status of Chinese Women. One-way ANOVAs were used to compare the achievement motivation and two stages of gender socialization among the male and female college students in STEM majors in China. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to examine the effects of the two stages of gender socialization on achievement motivation. Results showed that the phenomenon was due to lower achievement motivation of women than that of men in STEM majors. The gender differences were gradually shaped by two stages of gender socialization. In the social construction of gender roles, lower career expectations from parents and gender stereotypes from the culture negatively impacted women’s achievement motivation. In the internalization of gender role expectations, traditional gender role attitudes hindered the advancement of women’s achievement motivation. Therefore, an atmosphere of gender equality should be created in order to stop the outflow of women from the STEM pipeline.

The missing trans women of science, medicine, and global health

The missing trans women of science, medicine, and global health

Missing Women in India: Gender-Specific Effects of Early Life Rainfall Shocks

We link over a century of monthly precipitation data (1911–2011) to the population by gender and age at the district level in the 1991, 2001, and 2011 Indian censuses to study how early-life (around birth year) rainfall shocks affect cohorts’ population sex ratios. Using an approach (from Bhalme and Mooley 1980) that generates separate indices for excess (wet) as well as negative (dry) rainfall shocks and adjusts for the level of persistence in monthly shocks, we find that both too much and too little rainfall are associated with lower relative female population. The results are robust to using alternative rainfall shock indices and different sets of fixed effects. We estimate about 1.156 million missing women due to differential effects of early-life rainfall shocks, which is about 3.01% of the total estimate of 38.46 million missing women (average over 1990, 2000 and 2010) from Bongaarts and Guilmoto (2015). Our results suggest the need for targeting aid for weather shocks towards girls, especially in regions with indicators suggesting stronger male preference.

Ancestral ecological endowments and missing women

This paper examines the relationship between ecological endowments in antiquity and contemporary female to male sex ratios in the population. It is found that there are proportionately more missing women in countries whose ancestral ecological endowments were poorer. This relationship is shown to be strong even after ancestral plough use, the timing of the Neolithic Transition, and many other potentially confounding factors are controlled for. Similar results are also obtained using district-level data from India.

Missing Unmarried Women

Abstract That unmarried individuals die at a faster rate than married individuals at all ages is well documented. Unmarried women in developing countries face particularly severe vulnerabilities, so that excess mortality faced by the unmarried is more extreme for women in these regions compared to developed countries. We provide systematic estimates of the excess female mortality faced by older unmarried women in developing regions. We place these estimates in the context of the missing women phenomenon. There are approximately 1.5 million missing women between the ages of 30 and 60 years old each year. We find that 35% of these missing women of adult age can be attributed to not being married. These estimates vary by region. India has the largest proportion of missing adult women who are without a husband, followed by the countries in East Africa. By contrast, China has almost no missing unmarried women. We show that 70% of missing unmarried women are of reproductive age and that it is the relatively high mortality rates of these young unmarried women (compared to their married counterparts) that drive this phenomenon.

Why Are Older Women Missing in India? The Age Profile of Bargaining Power and Poverty

Almost half of missing women in India are of postreproductive ages. Can intrahousehold gender inequality and asymmetry in poverty explain a portion of these missing women? Using a natural experiment, I link women’s intrahousehold bargaining power to their mortality risk. Using a structural household model, I estimate the age profile of women’s bargaining power and construct women’s relative poverty rates. I find that women’s bargaining power declines with age, with older women’s poverty rates closely matching their mortality rates by age. This suggests that many missing women might be accounted for by measuring poverty at the individual rather than the household level.

Excess under-5 female mortality across India: a spatial analysis using 2011 census data.

Excess female mortality causes half of the missing women (estimated deficit of women in countries with suspiciously low proportion of females in their population) today. Globally, most of these avoidable deaths of women occur during childhood in China and India. We aimed to estimate excess female under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) for India's 35 states and union territories and 640 districts. Using the summary birth history method (or Brass method), we derived district-level estimates of U5MR by sex from 2011 census data. We used data from 46 countries with no evidence of gender bias for mortality to estimate the effects and intensity of excess female mortality at district level. We used a detailed spatial and statistical analysis to highlight the correlates of excess mortality at district level. Excess female U5MR was 18·5 per 1000 livebirths (95% CI 13·1-22·6) in India 2000-2005, which corresponds to an estimated 239 000 excess deaths (169 000-293 000) per year. More than 90% of districts had excess female mortality, but the four largest states in northern India (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh) accounted for two-thirds of India's total number. Low economic development, gender inequity, and high fertility were the main predictors of excess female mortality. Spatial analysis confirmed the strong spatial clustering of postnatal discrimination against girls in India. The considerable effect of gender bias on mortality in India highlights the need for more proactive engagement with the issue of postnatal sex discrimination and a focus on the northern districts. Notably, these regions are not the same as those most affected by skewed sex ratio at birth. None.

Theodora Bosanquet, Virginia Woolf, and the Missing Women

Perhaps because academic Jamesians focus, in studies of James’s reception in the first two decades following his death, on constructions of James within a then virtually all-male academy, important responses to James by women who were not academics—notably Theodora Bosanquet and Virginia Woolf—have shrunk into the background of discussions of James’s critical reputation during the interwar years. A just assessment of responses to James in the years following his death would feature, not de-emphasize, these “missing women,” whose commentaries on James have proved far more valuable than the oft-discussed work of Van Wyck Brooks and Vernon Louis Parrington.

“Hasta la Madre!”: Mexican mothers against “the war on drugs”

The Mexican government’s “war on drugs,” carried out with full support from the United States, has gained a visible media presence in the past few years, particularly because of extremely high levels of violence. This violence, however, has been largely represented in the media as a masculinized battle between cartels and military forces. Official discourses often insist that most victims are men directly involved in narco-trafficking, oversimplifying the nature of the violence (which is often created by military forces) and missing women’s presence among the victims as well in activist circles. This essay problematizes these misconceptions by examining the recent emergence of activism among Mexican women affected by the violence of the “war on drugs.” In particular, I analyze, first, how women who lost family members to this violence became active protestors of government policies and, second, the affective and political relations they forge as part of this activism. Based on fieldwork in Mexico City and the United States, I examine the trajectories and experiences of women involved in the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad) and The Mothers’ Network (La red de las madres). Specifically, I analyze the way that gender roles, kinship ties, and motherhood informs the experience of many activists but also the ways in which some of them make sense of their agency in their roles as sisters, daughters or indeed through their experiences of violence not expressed through an affiliation with kin.

Why Are Older Women Missing in India? The Age Profile of Bargaining Power and Poverty

Almost half of missing women in India are of post-reproductive ages. I show that intra-household gender inequality and gender asymmetry in poverty can account for a substantial fraction of these missing women. Using a natural experiment, I link women's intra-household bargaining power to their mortality risk. Using a structural model of households, I estimate the age profile of women's bargaining power and construct relative poverty rates for women. I find that bargaining power declines with age, and that women's relative poverty rates closely match their higher than expected mortality rates by age. This match is nearly exact at post-reproductive ages.

Soft targets: missing women, insidious violence and proxy performance

This article draws attention to a gestural poetics in activist screen culture where proxy performance, on behalf of missing women and schoolgirls, prompts a rethink of trauma theory’s distinction between working through and acting out. It looks closely at a triptych of short films by Anishinaabe film-maker, Lisa Jackson, where gestures – from writing, to hip hop, to singing the national anthem – ‘work through’ the structural violence of Canada’s policy of ‘killing the Indian in the child’. It turns, then, to the social media campaign, #BringBackOurGirls, focusing on its signature gesture ‘acted out’ by celebrities, activists and ad hoc groups on behalf of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in 2014. It argues that Jackson’s film trilogy facilitates the return of ‘the Indian in the child’ through affective performance, while #BringBackOurGirls participates in a gestural politics of equivalence.

Book Review: Higher Education, Leadership and Women Vice Chancellors

The paucity of women leaders in higher education continues despite advancement by women in other fronts of the educational pipeline. Today, more women are attending and graduating from college in the United States, but something occurs en route to the top-level leadership positions in these same college settings. The portrait of college leaders continues to consist of White men, as it has since the initial founding of universities. Paula Burkinshaw analyzes the situation of the missing women leaders in the United Kingdom, specifically in the position of Vice Chancellor. Burkinshaw’s long career in leadership development in university settings initially provided her with an awareness of the underrepresentation of women in top leadership positions. As she began her doctoral studies, she had an opportunity to ask “where are the women?” Her book builds on her dissertation research, which involved one-on-one interviews with 18 women who were vice chancellors.

The missing women in STEM? Assessing gender differentials in the factors associated with transition to first jobs

Women remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce. We assess explanations for women's underrepresentation in STEM jobs, focusing on a cohort that came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, when women dramatically increased their representation in the scientific labor force. Data are from the NLSY79, and our analysis focuses on members of this cohort who received a college degree, with an emphasis on those who completed a degree in a STEM field. Our analyses test the extent to which college major, expectations to work in STEM, and family expectations shaped transitions into STEM occupations within two years of degree completion. Among those majoring in STEM fields there were no gender differences in transitioning into STEM jobs, though there were sizable differences in transitions to STEM employment by field of study. Of note are gender differences in associations between family expectations and transitions into STEM employment. The most career oriented women, who expected to marry late and limit fertility, were no more likely to enter STEM jobs than were women who anticipated marrying young and having two or more children. The men most likely to enter STEM occupations, in contrast, adhered to significantly more conventional gender ideologies than their female counterparts, expecting to marry at younger ages but also to remain childless. Results of our regression decomposition indicated that marriage and family expectations and gender ideology worked in opposite directions for men and women. Nonetheless, the majority of the gender disparity in transitions into STEM jobs was related to women's underrepresentation in engineering and computer science fields of study.

The Beautiful and the Cursed by P. Morgan

Morgan, Page. The Beautiful and the Cursed. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2013. Print.This young adult fantasy novel tells the story of a young woman named Ingrid Waverly. Ingrid is a seventeen-year-old living in London, England at the end of the 19th century. She is the daughter of a wealthy man. However, after becoming the heart of a scandal involving a mysterious fire, Ingrid moves with her mother and little sister to Paris, France. Ingrid’s twin brother Grayson has already purchased an old abbey there for the family to settle into. Ingrid’s mother intends to restore the abbey, and turn it into a gallery to showcase her art. Once in Paris, however, Ingrid quickly becomes steeped in a supernatural world.Upon arrival, Ingrid learns that young women have been going missing in Paris, as has her twin brother Grayson. Some of the missing women have been found dead and mutilated. Although her mother and the police seem unconcerned and believe Grayson is just gallivanting about the city, Ingrid has a deep connection with her brother and knows something is wrong. With the help of her impetuous younger sister Gabby, Ingrid begins investigating her brother’s disappearance. Gabby is also trying to discover her own identity as a young woman, and forge a deeper relationship with Ingrid, who has always been closer to Grayson. Through their investigation, the sisters quickly uncover a secret world of fallen angels, demons, and hellhounds, not least because the Waverly family is protected by a gargoyle.One of the statues of the old abbey is actually a gargoyle named Luc, who is duty bound by angels to protect the family living in the abbey. He disguises himself as a servant, but his true form is that of a stone monster. Although tasked to protect the entire family, Luc finds himself increasingly drawn to Ingrid, and develops feelings for her. Grayson’s disappearance is tied to Luc’s secret world. Grayson was kidnapped by a fallen Angel, and is being tortured with hellhound blood injections. Reluctantly, Luc becomes involved with the sisters’ quest. They are helped by the Alliance, a secret demon fighting organization. It becomes apparent that Grayson was kidnapped because he has special abilities, as does Ingrid, explaining her role in the scandal that forced her to leave London. The sisters must unravel this new world, their roles in it, and save their brother in time.The Beautiful and the Cursed is told in multiple viewpoints, which may deter some readers, especially when viewpoints change within the same chapter, or describe a repeated scene. It is the first book of a trilogy. The book’s mythology is well explained in approachable language. Morgan draws influence from both the Mortal Instruments series and the 1990s Gargoyles television show, but the book holds its own as original, and will appeal to female demographics. Themes explored include death, torture, forbidden romance, and a fantastical twist on angels and demons.Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Colette LeungColette Leung is a graduate student at the University of Alberta, working in the fields of Library and Information science and Humanities Computing who loves reading, cats, and tea. Her research interests focus around how digital tools can be used to explore fields such as literature, language, and history in new and innovative ways.

Comment "if you ask me..." - Profession: Tackling the tradegy of engineering's missing women

National Women in Engineering Day has come round again, but if firms really want to tackle skills shortages they need to take action throughout the year.

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