EVENTS

Date:	Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Time:	3:00 PM -- 5:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

 

Traditional Preferences, Modern Technology Spell Death for Asia's Baby Girls

 

 

WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 19, 2008--Where are Asia's baby girls? Countries such as India and China have biologically unnatural gender imbalances, a subject taken up by panelists at an AEI conference on September 17. Moderated by AEI's Nicholas Eberstadt, the event featured Ambassador Mark Lagon and Laura Lederer, both of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State, and the World Bank Development Research Group's Monica Das Gupta.

Lederer outlined the severity of this problem, noting that the underrepresentation of women is not a new phenomenon in Asia. But with the development of ultrasound technology in the late 1970s and early 1980s, gender disparities have increased dramatically. As Lederer noted, some doctors believe that 2 million girls are aborted each year "simply because they are female." In China, the gender gap amounts to 50 million people. The "son preference" is motivated by traditional values, such as the sentiment that sons are breadwinners while daughters are a financial burden and the importance of male lineages for property inheritance.

The increasing shortage of women now has social consequences, including human trafficking. Lagon noted: "These gender imbalances are exacerbating the demand for trafficking victims, particularly for women and girls as brides and for commercial sex," he said. Out of the estimated 800,000 people trafficked across international borders annually, 80 percent of the victims are female. In "bachelor villages" in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, females have been bought or kidnapped from abroad to become brides in these villages. Lagon provided three recommendations for governments seeking to stop human trafficking:

• Prosecute traffickers
• Protect the victims
• Prevent trafficking by raising public awareness

Das Gupta reiterated the importance of public awareness in preventing gender imbalance. She noted that in addition to increased female education and urbanization, access to cable television and changes in social norms have helped to reverse the gender imbalances in South Korea, which once had male to female ratios similar to those in China and India today.

This horrific "modern-day slavery" provoked by the drastic gender imbalances in Asia, Lagon said, is the worst kind of human rights violation. There is no reason for millions of girls to go "missing" every year.

--APOORVA SHAH and STEPHEN GUNTHER

For video, audio, and more information about this event, visit www.aei.org/event1796/.

For media inquiries, contact Véronique Rodman at vrodman@aei.org or 202.862.4870.

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