NEW DELHI - As the global population hits seven
billion, experts are warning that skewed gender ratios could fuel
the emergence of volatile "bachelor nations" driven by an
aggressive competition for brides.
The precise consequences of what French population expert
Christophe Guilmoto calls the "alarming demographic
masculinisation" of countries such as India and China as the result
of sex-selective abortion remain unclear.
But many demographers believe the resulting shortage of adult women
over the next 50 years will have as deep and pervasive an impact as
climate change.
The statistics behind the warnings are grimly compelling.
Nature provides an unbending biological standard for the sex ratio
at birth of 104-106 males to every 100 females. Any significant
divergence from that narrow range can only be explained by abnormal
factors.
In India and Vietnam the figure is around 112 boys for every 100
girls. In China it is almost 120 to 100 -- and in some places
higher than 130.
And the trend is spreading: to regions like the South Caucasus,
where Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia all post birth ratios of more
than 115 to 100, and further west to Serbia and Bosnia.
Global awareness of the problem was raised back in 1990 with an
article by the Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen
that carried the now famous title: "More Than 100 Million Women Are
Missing."
Demographers say that figure is now more than 160 million -- women
selected out of existence by the convergence of traditional
preferences for sons, declining fertility and, most crucially, the
prevalence of cheap prenatal sex-determination technology.
As many as half a million female foetuses are estimated to be
aborted each year in India, according to a study by British medical
journal The Lancet.
"Earlier villagers had to go to the city to get a sonogram
(ultrasound)," said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the
non-profit Population Foundation of India. "Today sonographers are
going into the villages to cater to people who want sons."
Even if the sex ratio at birth returned to normal in India and
China within 10 years, Guilmoto says men in both countries would
still face a "marriage squeeze" for decades to come.
"Not only would these men have to marry significantly older, but
this growing marriage imbalance would also lead to a rapid rise in
male bachelorhood... an important change in countries where almost
everyone used to get married," he said.
How that change might manifest itself is hotly debated, although
nearly everyone agrees there is no foreseeable upside.
Some forecast an increase in polyandry and sex tourism, while
others predict cataclysmic scenarios with the rise of male-surplus
societies where sexual predation, violence and conflict are the
norm.
A particularly alarmist note was sounded several years ago by
political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, who wrote
that Asian countries with too many men posed a security threat to
the West.
"High-sex-ratio societies are governable only by authoritarian
regimes capable of suppressing violence at home and exporting it
abroad through colonisation or war," they said.
Mara Hvistendahl, a correspondent for Science magazine and author
of the recently published "Unnatural Selection", says fears of
full-scale wars are unfounded, and points out that India remains a
thriving democracy, despite its shockingly high gender
imbalance.
However she does agree with the underlying premise.
"Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women
are not nice places to live," Hvistendahl stressed.
"Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent," she said,
adding that leaders in both China and India have spoken of the
threat gender imbalance poses to social stability.
UN agencies have issued similar warnings about the correlation
between a scarcity of women and increases in sex trafficking and
marriage migration, albeit with certain caveats.
"The data is really limited," said Nobuko Horibe, Asia-Pacific
director of the UN Population Fund. "It is very likely that this
marriage squeeze would lead to these phenomena... but it's very
anecdotal at this stage."
But while more and more red flags are being raised over the
long-term implication of skewed sex ratios, few solutions are being
offered.
Sex-selective abortion is illegal in both China and India, but
officials say the law is incredibly difficult to enforce.
There is "no silver bullet", admits Guilmoto, who believes the
first priority is to make sure the problem is properly publicised
-- and not just in the developing world.
"In some countries in eastern Europe, people are absolutely not
aware of what is going on," he warned.
- AFP /ls