October 11 was declared as International Day of the Girl Child by UN in 2011. This is a day to recognise girls' rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. Women around the world face multitudes of problem that starts even before birth (ie sex selected abortion) and continues throughout their lives in different forms (eg genital mutilation, child marriage, nutritional treatment, dowry system, spousal abuse, discriminatory wage system and so on). Similar to Millennium Development Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have a separate clause for girls (Goal 5) that encompasses targets to ensure rights of women within and outside their households. However, none of the targets focus on sex selected abortion that resulted into mission of millions of daughters in China and India alone. This article focuses on differences in interventions that resulted in different outcomes for sex ratio in India and China compared to Bangladesh.
Population sex ratio is the number of males per 100 females. The global trend shows balancing sex ratio while India and China still have plenty to catch up. The rising trend of population growth resulted in taking population control policy in developing countries since mid-20th century. This led to fertility reduction in most of these countries. Together with patriarchal social norms and practices, such policies led to different phenomena like imbalance in sex ratio and missing babies in India and China. In these two countries, the practice was adopted forcefully compared to deliberate social campaign in Bangladesh.
The People's Republic of China, with world's largest population and second largest economy has population sex ratio of 106 (males for 100 females). According to Chinese Population Censuses (2010), the sex ratio at birth shows even frailer finding with increasing trend from 108 in the early 1980s to 118.1 in 2010 (compared to world average of 107). Even it was recorded to be 130 in some provinces, such as Jiangxi and Shaanxi. On the other had in its neighbouring country, the Indian Population Census (2011) shows slight better population sex ration recently with 940 females (against per 1000 males) in 2011 compared to 927 females in 1991. But it still lags behind the rate of 1901, when India had 972 females for 1000 males. Nevertheless, child sex ratio in India continues to be male biased. In last fifty years, the child sex ratio in India has deteriorated from 976 girls (for 1000 boys) in 1961 to 918 girls in 2011.
China and India have another common feature; degrading sex ratio when the number of offspring in a family increases. In China, male-female ratio for second child increased from 105 to 143 since 1981 and 156 for third child (Chinese Population Census, 2010). In India, Jhaet al (2006) shows that the sex ratio for the second birth when the preceding child was a girl tended to be 131.75 (males for every 100 females) and 139.08 for the third birth. While in opposite case, the sex ratio was quite low (90.74 and 85.03 respectively) for second or third births, if the previous child was a boy.
Often surprising but true, a country with much lower per capita income and literacy rate; Bangladesh shows substantial improvement compared to the other two. The sex ratio has fallen from 109 in 1950 to 106.4 in 2001 and to 100.3 in 2011 (Population Census of Bangladesh 2011). Unlike the other two countries, the progress in sex ratio has also extended to the under 5-age group. As a result of massive social campaign and family planning policy of government, fertility rate declined from around 7 children at the start of the 1970s to 2.6 in 2011. Contrary to other two countries, the declining fertility resulted in equalising population sex ratio in Bangladesh.
The causes of rising population sex ratio:
Without human intervention, 102 to 106 boys are born for every 100 girls. In biological science it is proved that, more male children can be result of young fathers, tough times or heavier and healthier females at the time of conception. But the much higher sex ratio of India and China certainly proves that their sex ratio is outcome of unnatural selection or human made. The tools of preventive check were implemented in the developing countries since 1950s. Among these three developing countries, India was the first to adopt the family planning policy in 1950s, followed by China in 1979 (known as Once Child Policy) and Bangladesh.
Though fertility declined dramatically in all the three countries, the difference between the China and India with Bangladesh was that the former two were forced, while the latter was result of participatory social transformation and campaign. China is the only country in the world that has punished its people for violating family planning policy. This has led to a phenomenon of "missing girls" or "missing daughters" as Amartya Sen calls it. The three decades since the policy has been in place, the Chinese government claims to have prevented 400 million births. Poverty, job market discrimination, discriminatory nutritional treatment at early age, patriarchy, use of sex identification technology etc are considered to be some of the major causes of such imbalance in sex ratio in different seminal works.
Bangladesh: unique case of improvement
Female infanticide is not claimed to be absent, but reduced far enough in Bangladesh. The role of female education and constant social campaign through civil society dramatically changed the scenario in Bangladesh. Besides, the shifting of health seeking behaviour and lesser application of sex identification technology played important role in this regard. Amartya Sen in his books constantly portrayed the trend setting role of non-government organisations like BRAC, Grameen Bank and other NGOS to uphold female engagement in social and economic life of rural Bangladesh.
Female Education: a gauge of progress
India's improvement in overall population ratio since 2001 can be justified in terms of its increasing overall female literacy rate. Since 2001, female literacy rate increased 10.9 per cent, compared to only 5% for male. Kerala and Puducherry where sex ratio is more balanced, are also the states that have higher female education (91 % and 81%). While Daman and Diu & Dadra and Nagar Haveli are the bottom two states in terms of sex ratio where female literacy rates are also very poor (79% and 66% respectively).
Better performance in terms of both population sex ratio and sex ratio at birth in Bangladesh can be attributed to better female access to education compared to India. According to the study of Kabeer (1984), women with secondary or more education show fewer biases towards sons. Bangladesh advances far better than India in both primary and secondary female enrolment. According to World Bank statistics, literacy rate of youth females in Bangladesh (81%) is higher than Indian females (74%). Census of India 2011 shows that in some states in India, female literacy rate is below 50 per cent. The contraceptive prevalence rate is also much higher in Bangladesh (61%, compared to 55% in India).
Conclusion:
China shows perverse sex ratio both at birth and population level, while India has improved in the latter but continues to vitiate in child sex ratio. Bangladesh on the other hand has reached natural level of sex ratio at both levels. Different factors contributed for perverse sex ratio. National policies (eg family planning or one child policy etc) as well as social norms and practices (eg patriarchy and dowry etc) played a massive role in imbalance of sex ratio in these countries. On the other hand, the evidence from Bangladesh shows that forceful and coercive means are not the solitary ways to get things done. Rather, community participation through social campaign and female education can play effective roles to reduce both fertility rate as well as imbalance in sex ratio.
The writer is Master's student, Department of Development Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia. E-mail: [email protected]
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