Talk:Missing women

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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, it's just a choice. Yangtana Li (talk) 23:40, 20 April 2014 (UTC)