Talk:Missing women

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 January 2022 and 13 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Berenice Mondragon (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Dgriswold605.

Nearly orphaned

At the moment, the only articles that link to this article are Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide, Emily Oster, Amartya Sen, and Human sex ratio. There are doubtless more articles that could link here, so please help de-orphan the article! +Angr 05:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Added a few more links. There's information on this scattered throughout several articles. Part of the purpose here is to have a central article just on this phenomenon and to focus on the research. I also hope to get some graphs going but that'll have to wait a few days.radek (talk) 06:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Dead link

The link to http://0090224084450/Rendered/PDF/WPS4846.pdf in ref #11 is dead. Since you didn't give a full citation with reference information, I don't know how to find what it's supposed to be. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Solved. Bastin 13:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing women due to toxoplasmosis?

"Czech parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr has found that latent toxoplasmosis infection of mothers can change sex ratio up to 2.6 males per female born.[15] This could, at least partly, explain the phenomenon of missing women."

You're not serious about that, are you?

May I qoute from the article on toxoplasmosis:

"It is estimated that between 30% and 65% of all people worldwide are infected with toxoplasmosis.[42] However, there is large variation between countries: in France, for example, around 88% of the population are carriers, probably due to a high consumption of raw and lightly cooked meat. [43] Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil also have high prevalences of around 80%, over 80%[44] and 67% respectively. In Britain about 22% are carriers, and South Korea's rate is 4.3%.[25]"

So only 4.3% of the population in South-Korea are carriers of toxoplasmosis, and yet South-Korea is among those Asian countries with a significant percentage of missing women. On the other hand in France, Brazil, Germany have 80% or more of the population is a carrier of toxoplasmosis, and yet a problem of "missing women" is not heard of in those countries.

So the "toxoplasmosis-leads-to-missing-theory" is obviously nonsense and I suggest it to be removed from the article.--213.196.250.2 (talk) 06:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC) Robert

Underreporting

Parts of this article make it sound as if there are only two explanations competing in this question (Sen's argument about family planning, and Oster's about hep B), and as if the only ways family planning affects the gender disparity is through getting people to kill girls (infanticide, sex-selective abortion, or malnutrition). Another potential explanation that has been proposed, though, is that female births are simply not reported, but the girls are still raised and taken care of. See, for instance:

• Zeng Yi et al., "Causes and Implications of the Recent Increase in the Reported Sex Ratio at Birth in China," Population and Development Review, 19: 2 [June 1993]. (summarized here if you don't have access)
• Merli, M. Giovanna; Rafferty, Adrian E. "Are Births Underreported in Rural China? Manipulation of Statistical Records in Response to China's Population Policies". Demography, 37: 1 (Feb., 2000)
• Merli, M. Giovanna. "Underreporting of Births and Infant Deaths in Rural China: Evidence from Field Research in One County of Northern China". The China Quarterly 155 (1998).

This should probably be worked into the article. Most of the above sources (as well as a forthcoming one by an old professor of mine, which makes the argument that underreporting is the main explanation for missing girls) present the three main competing explanations as underreporting, sex-selective abortion, and infanticide. rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:47, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Lede

The edit warring between 79.97.171.208 and Halaqah needs to stop. Undoing one another back and forth ([1][2]) is not an appropriate way to resolve a content dispute. Both of you please discuss your disagreement here and we will work out a consensus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not a content dispute. We have a content dispute at Slavery in modern Africa. After that started (s)he began wikistalking me, undoing my edits and calling all of them vandalism. 79.97.171.208 (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It is a content dispute. Why waste time fighting over who's behavior is right or wrong when you can just bite the bullet and resolve the issue? rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It is not a content dispute. Halaqah's stalking me and undoing all of my edits. He has no interest in this particular article or its content, only in undoing my edits because of a personal grudge. If you don't believe me, look at our edit histories. 79.97.171.208 (talk) 19:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't care about your respective editing histories. If either of you want to have a say in the wording of the lead paragraph of this article (I am not interested in hearing complaints about others), you need to participate in discussion here. If either of you reverts one another without explanation again, that editor will be blocked for edit warring. Wikipedia operates on consensus, you can't just keep undoing one another without discussing the issue. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Name

The current name is rather "newspaper-ish". I'd suggest something like the sex ration in Asia or gender imbalance in Asia. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:04, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Disease factors

There's a paper looking at age and corresponding disease as significantly contributing to the "missing women" http://www.nyudri.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/driwp47.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jchyip (talk • contribs) 06:16, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Revisions

I am revising this article as part of a course assignment. I plan to remodel the structure of the article by changing the names of the headings from

1. Background and Sen’s original contention
2. Dismissed Hepatitis B virus explanation
3. Cultural, economic and social considerations
4. Further developments

To the following:

1. The Problem
2. Causes
3. Measurement issues
4. Consequences

Under “The Problem” I plan to include a more complete explanation of Sen’s argument than the current entry. Also, the current article only mentions Sen’s and Oster’s arguments what is causing the missing women with supporting material for Sen from Das Gupta. However, under-reporting and other kinds of disease have also been suggested as possible reasons for the missing women. I would like to cite recent research that contradicts Sen’s original statement that regions in sub-Saharan Africa have, “a substantial excess of women,” in comparison to the East-Asia countries and include some specific paragraphs describing the phenomenon of the missing women framed in the differing regions (India, China, Bangladesh, and the Middle East). Lastly, I plan to generally update the article by citing more recent sources and creating more internal links (such as son preference, women’s health in India, etc). If anyone has any feedback/ advice please feel free to let me know. Nathan.cheever12 (talk) 04:10, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

New article looking for suggestions

I am working on a new article with a similar focus as this one, and this is also part of my course assignment. My article is about missing women in China. Compared with this article, I concrete the missing women problem to a specific country, China. Since the problem in China has its own context, such as one-child policy in the past and the recent changed policy, I’d like to work on a new article rather than to revise this one. But I still want to get some suggestions here on mine. I plan to start my article from the following points:

1. Leading paragraph
2. Causes
3. Consequences
4. Policies

This outline looks similar with the revision of my classmate above, but I think we’ll talk about this problem from different perspectives. In my first section, except the general description of the missing women concept and background in China, I also plan to post some data of the trends in China in the past decades. In cause section, I want to state this problem from three aspects, Chinese historical and traditional culture, one-child policy, and sex-selective abortion. For the consequences section, I want to introduce from these four points: wifeless men, rape, trafficking, and female labor force shortage. Under the last section, policies, I’d like to introduce the most recent policy change on controlling population in Beijing, which probably will influence the sex ratio of new born in China. In terms of my plan above, are there any suggestions you think will make my new article better? Thanks. Yangtana Li (talk) 20:52, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Review

The is a very well written article and I think you did a very good job on the additions. Expanding on Sen's theory and including differing theories has improved the article and offered better insight into the problem. I think the consequences section could be expanded in the future. I would like either more consequences mentioned or what is there to be expanded upon. I do know there is a professor from BYU (Valerie Hudson) who has done some work on the consequences in South Asia (you may have already come across this). Her work has focused on China and the fact that missing women could lead to increased violence, etc. Otherwise, I think you have done an exceptional job in adding to the article Jaccarlton (talk) 19:20, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Comment

I think you've done a really good job on expanding Sen's and others' theories on missing women, especially some debates which gives me a quite clear sense of what were scholars' viewpoints of missing women. Since you've added more content since the first draft, I think more subtitles might help to improve, because now some sections seems to be really long paragraphs. For example, maybe you could consider to split out some subtitles from "Sen's original argument" under the cause section, some of them are talking about children——the next generation and some are about women. In consequences part, I think more factors might be added in the article, like violence and aging problem. The last thing, don't forget the article I mentioned to you last time, which is talking about how women's well-being matters that of children. I'm not sure that article will help, but it's a choice. ^o^ Yangtana Li (talk) 23:40, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Feedback

You have developed the article nicely. I think adding the two articles I mentioned earlier (on son preference in India vs Bangladesh and the Tamil Nadu case of rising education of women resulting in more missing girls) would strengthen the article. You need to work on adding links in the sections you added. You should consider splitting long paragraphs and sections (or revising the text to make the presentation more concise).BerikG (talk) 07:36, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Response

Thank you all for the above feedback. I will expand on the "Consequences" section, add in sub-titles to break up the "Sen's original theory" section, and create links inside the article. Nathan.cheever12 (talk) 03:34, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Further Considerations

As made obvious by the first graph on the front of this page, gender inequality and the "missing women" as discussed by Sen are not problems specific only to Asia. It would be cool to have some development of the idea that this gender disparity is prevalent in other parts of the world as well, and maybe some discussion of the cultural and historic context in which this kind of phenomena can come to exist, even across continents. Emily.johnson135 (talk) 04:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

That's true there are Asian countries which have more females like Uzbekistan. In Andora and Albania there are more males than females.--Gregor Straßler (talk) 16:46, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Is the Mongolian overplus of women a myth?

The map of sex ratio in the article shows obvious that there is no disblance between men and women in the Mongolian population.--Gregor Straßler (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Opinion/ Bias in the Intro

In the intro, the page suggests that Sen's explanation is the most accepted, but there is not citation for that conclusion. It seems more like an opinion or an academic conclusion rather than a fact for Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbarczak (talk • contribs) 23:09, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Suggested revisions

Title change: Most of this article talks about the phenomenon of missing women in general, rather than specific Asia-related phenomena. Given that there is very little Asia-specific analysis, it would make sense to retitle the article "Missing Women" instead. The current title neglects that many researchers believe there are large proportions of missing women in sub-Saharan Africa, and also biases the article towards only Sen's perspective that missing women are due to infanticide/neglect/sex-selective abortions, which are mostly prevalent in Asia. However, part of the article (the section "Other Diseases") has updated research from Anderson and Ray and Stillwaggon, who argue that cardiovascular disease (Anderson and Ray) and HIV/AIDS (Anderson and Ray, Stillwaggon) are larger driving factors, which are prevalent factors for African countries. The current title neglects any of this.

Leading section: The leading section should include a summary of both the "Other diseases", "Natural causes to high or low human sex ratio", and "Female abduction and sale" sections. These are all valid reasons for missing women that are not refuted within the Wikipedia article (unlike Oster's Hepatitis B analysis). The last sentence of the lead section that Sen's article is the most accepted analysis either (a) needs a cite or (b) should be deleted, given the prevalence of other theories.

Organizational issues: In general, I think this article is way overbalanced towards Sen. Most of the analysis is done in comparison with Sen's theory. While Sen is probably the most famous/well-known author in the citations, a lot of this article is structured as if it's Sen against each theory, which doesn't make sense unless Sen's theory really is the most well-accepted (which is a claim we need a source for).

On more specific organizational edits, I think we should move the paragraphs on how outside work doesn't always help women from the "Perspectives from female children" to the Perspectives from female adults" section, given that that argument is about employing adults rather than children. Instead, we should move "Sen's amended theory," which mostly deals with ultrasounds leading to higher sex-selective abortions, into the "Perspectives from female children" section. Furthermore, it would make sense to move the sex ratio world map figure to the "Problem and prevalence" section, rather than "Sen's original argument" (which ties into my worry that this article is too biased towards Sen).

It might also make sense to have a link to Intra-household bargaining in "Sen's original argument."

Lastly, I think it might be helpful to have a Solutions section. Various arguments are introduced throughout the article about how we can solve the missing women problem (increased education, it will naturally solve itself when there are too few women, etc.). Consolidating these together would be organizationally helpful, given that we have a "Causes" and "Consequences" section, but no "Solutions" section.

Fact checking:

• Section: Perspectives outside of southeast Asia
  • Berik and Bilginsoy also agree with Sen, and are not "contrary to Sen's original position." Their argument is that gainful employment helps us decrease the male-to-female sex ratio, but unpaid employment does not help. This is the same as Sen's claim that Narsapur lace-makers do not gain more bargaining power because their employment is not viewed as useful or bringing more to the household.
• Last sentence of "Oster's theory refuted" - There is no need for the sentence talking about Levitt's praise of Oster's retraction of her hypothesis. It seems un-neutral.
• Section: "Female abduction and sale" - The last sentence that trafficking isn't a good explanation lacks a cite and (as someone noted on the article itself) is an improper conclusion.
• The table in "Estimates of missing women" comes from one source, which I would consider bias towards that source. This is because the point of that section is that there are conflicting estimates between researches on the number of missing women, and there is no explanation why the table necessarily picks one.

Missing citations:

• Das Gupta is cited multiple times throughout the article, but a link to her article and research never appears. At the most, there is a New York Times article summarizing Das Gupta, but we should have a direct citation. (Sections: "Subsequent research" nested in the Hepatitis B section, "Differences across countries/states")
• Citation 1 (of Sen's article) is broken, but the same article appears in citation 7, which works.
• Section: Missing brides - Cite 45 should be for the La Croix and d'Albis paper (which is what is being summarized), but instead leads to a different paper.
• Lead section second sentence: Needs a cite for technology being available since the 1970s for prenatal sex selection
• Section: Problem and prevalence - Introductory area: Need cite for argument that post-ultrasound technology, China's male-to-female sex ratio jumped higher.
• Section: Perspectives outside of southeast Asia - Needs cite for argument that sub-Saharan African women having more employment opportunities than Asian women
• Section: Sen's amended theory - Second-to-last sentence: Needs cite for women not being able to inherit property
• Section: Hepatitis B virus explanation: Need cite for claim that Hepatitis B causes more males to be born than females
• Section: Subsequent research (nested under Hepatitis B): Change the location of the cite to the first mention of Ebenstein, otherwise the location of the cite is confusing.

Mjiang94 (talk) 23:20, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Mjiang94 (talk) 23:29, 8 April 2016 (UTC) (Made some additional suggestions.)

In addition to the above suggestions...

I'm currently enrolled in a feminist economics class where one of our projects is to update a Wikipedia article. I'd like to expand upon (a) the violence, human trafficking, and disease components of the missing women phenomenon, (b) missing women in African and other areas, and (c) solutions to the missing woman problem, which currently are not addressed in this article. Are there other components that people think are worth adding? 73.36.76.185 (talk) 19:22, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Feedback on recent revisions

Hey Mjiang94!

Overall, your revisions have helped make the article far more comprehensive—I really like your idea of changing the article title to “Missing women,” and I hope you’re able to do so!

One question I still have after reading the article is how states have responded to increased scholarly attention to this phenomenon. The “Policy solutions” sections provides an overview of suggestions made by academics, but are governments paying attention? Is there disagreement about how significant the “missing women” problem is? That might be one area to further consider.

Another way to make the article more comprehensive would be adding in Wikilinks to pages like “Mortality rate” and “Intra-household bargaining,” and ensuring that the Wikilinks to pages like “sex-ratio” and “one-child policy” occur at the first appearance of the term.

Your revisions, as well as the article overall, are very Sen-heavy. This isn’t necessarily a problem, given that he initially brought attention to the phenomenon and his viewpoint certainly remains one of the most significant. That said, you should be sure to try to cast as wide a net as possible as you continue to expand the “Policy solutions” section in particular.

Keep up the good work!--KAnds42 (talk) 06:42, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

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EU-27 about 5% more boys

This is caused by X-linked disorders. Since women get two X chromosomes, a defect on one is unlikely to have serious effects, but men only have one. This is why men have a much higher chance of being colorblind than women. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK115561/ https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_recessive_inheritance https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_agammaglobulinemia https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_severe_combined_immunodeficiency https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness

cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Missing_women#EU-27_about_5%_more_boys

There is a figure about the age up to 15 that can be quickly misread - as it is not showing the "Missing women" as per article title = if a country has more girls than boys, but relative to the world average. I knew the numbers for some EU-27 countries and first misread it and thought this can't be right. Maybe we can work to an additional paragraph showing the boys-girls numbers for the EU-27. Can we conclude the natural situation is that there is about a 5% natural overbirth of males (in Europe)? Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 01:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Belgium, 5% more boys than girls

Cf graph below 15 yrs - one has to be very attentive that this is not a "missing women" graph, but if a country has even more girls missing that the world average of 1.06. For Belgium, there are more boys than girls but indeed not as much as the 1.06 world average but 1.0443 - but that is still a lot in absolute numbers. Source: https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/population/structure-population it is very easy to have the right number, just click the strata you're interested in and you have the totals.

• Total 0-14 year age group
• 989.782 boys - 945.889 girls = -43.893 Missing women = Girls-Boys (negative number means there is too few girls)
• -4.43% Missing women/boys in % (negative number means there is too few girls)

So there's 43.893 boys who will not have a girlfriend. I wonder how this influences the happiness index, rapes, attitude of women?, Thy SvenAERTS (talk) 01:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Denmark, 5% more boys than girls

Source: https://www.statbank.dk/statbank5a/selectvarval/saveselections.asp

• Total 0-14 year age group
• 485571 boys - 460561 girls = -25010 Missing women = Girls-Boys (negative number means there is too few girls)
• -5.15% Missing women/boys in % (negative number means there is too few girls)
• Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 01:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

The Netherlands, 5% more boys than girls

Source: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/dashboard-bevolking/bevolkingspiramide

• Total 0-14 year age group
• 1392000 boys - 1326000 girls = -66000 Missing women = Girls-Boys (negative number means there is too few girls)
• -4.74% Missing women/boys in % (negative number means there is too few girls)
• Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 01:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Poland, 5% more boys than girls

Source: https://bdl.stat.gov.pl/bdl/dane/podgrup/tablica

• Total 0-14 year age group
• 3017934 boys - 2860400 girls = -157534 Missing women = Girls-Boys (negative number means there is too few girls)
• -5.22% Missing women/boys in % (negative number means there is too few girls)
• Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 23:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Tanzania, 3% more boys than girls

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1230397/male-to-female-ratio-of-the-total-population-in-tanzania/

• Tanzania recorded 103 male births per 100 female births

UAE, 24% more boys than girls

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1230397/male-to-female-ratio-of-the-total-population-in-tanzania/

• 224 males per 100 female

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-02

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2022 and 9 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Josegggggg (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Natrome2015.

— Assignment last updated by ACHorwitz (talk) 18:54, 24 October 2022 (UTC)