where have all the women gone_ - the hindu

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20/13 Where have all the women gone? - The Hindu

ww.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/where-have-all-the-women-gone/article5039291.ece?homepage=tru

Opinion Lead

Published: August 20, 2013 00:15 IST | Updated: August 20, 2013 01:24 IST

Where have all the women gone?

Vani S. KulkarniManoj K. Pandey

Raghav Gaiha

Overcoming son preference in India remains a daunting challenge as even educated women are prone to it

Have women fared better than men, and girls better than boys in the last decade or so? In the din over a dramaticreduction in poverty in the period 2009/10-2011/12 that is unlikely to die down, deep questions about the

discrimination and deprivation that women face from the womb to the rest of their lives are either glossed over or,worse, just ignored.

The Sen norm

Amartya Sen sought to capture the cumulative impact of multiple forms of deprivation that women face over theirlives in an intuitively appealing measure of missing women. It aims to capture womens adversity in mortality andto better understand the quantitative difference between (1) the actual number of women, and (2) the number we

expect to see in the absence of a significant bias against women in terms of food, and health care. First, the differencbetween the sex ratio norm of women per 1,000 males and actual sex ratio is computed. Second, multiplying it by thnumber of males, the number of missing women is obtained. This is an absolute measure. A relative measure requiredivision of missing women by surviving women. In the same way, absolute and relative estimates of missing girls arecomputed.

Dr. Sens original estimate of missing women in India in the 1980s was 37 million in a global total of more than 100million missing women. Another estimate is lower for India (23 million) in a total of 60 million in selected countries

based on the western demographic experience. More recent estimates point to higher numbers of missing women.The important point, however, is not that the differences are large but the fact that gender bias in mortality takes anastonishingly high toll (Sen, 2003).

The sex ratio rose in India from 932.91 per 1,000 males in 2001 to 940.27 in 2011, implying a decadal growth of 0.7per cent. Using the same norm that Dr. Sen used, our estimates of missing women rise from 46.35 million in 2001 to49.73 million in 2011, an increase of 3.38 million. The decadal increase was thus 7.30 per cent. As the number ofmissing women depends on the difference between the sex ratio norm and the actual multiplied by the number ofmen, a narrowing of the difference between these ratios was more than compensated for by the larger number of meHowever, as a share of surviving women, there was a reduction from 9.33 per cent in 2001 to 8.48 per cent


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implying a decadal reduction of 9.17 per cent.

Rural and urban picture

Disaggregation into rural and urban missing women reveals an interesting picture. The sex ratio in the rural areasrose slightly, from 946 in 2001 to 947 in 2011. The absolute number of missing women rose from 28.35 million to31.30 million, an increase of 2.95 million. This implies a decadal increase of 10.40 per cent. However, the share ofmissing women declined from 7.9 per cent to 7.7 per cent, a decadal reduction of 2.53 per cent.

The sex ratio rose from 900 in the urban areas in 2001 to 926 in 2011, a decadal increase of 2.89 per cent. Yet theabsolute number of missing women increased slightly from 18 million to 18.42 million a decadal increase of 2.33

per cent. This is a fraction of the much larger increase in rural areas. However, the share of missing women declined from 13.3 per cent to 10.20 per cent a decadal reduction of 23.30 per cent. This is considerably larger than the

reduction in rural areas.

The sex ratio (girls/1,000 boys) in the age group


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make matters worse.

(Vani S. Kulkarni is a research associate in sociology, Yale University, while Manoj K. Pandey is a doctoralcandidate in economics, Australian National University, and Raghav Gaiha is a visiting scientist, department ofglobal health and population, Harvard School of Public Health.)

Keywords:women issues, sex determination,women adversity,women deprivation, maternal deaths,womenempowerment, sex imbalance

Printable version | Au g 20, 201 3 12 :25:34 PM | http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/where-have-all-the-women-gone/article5039291 .

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where have all the women gone_ - the hindu

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