Why Is This Happening?
The gender imbalance of China started in 1979, with the application of the One Child Policy. This policy was applied as a measure to moderate the immensely high (and continually rising) population within China. It promotes late marrying and late child-bearing, and allows urban couples to have only one child, and rural couples to have two. The government has, and will continue to heavily enforce this rule.
It became a problem quite immediately, because couples now "had to" produce a male offspring. Gendercide, in particular, started occuring because poor rural farmers, who had little to no money, could not afford to not bear a son. Female children were considered weak and inadequate by nature. A female could not possibly run a farm; the main source of income for a family within the farming community. Seeing as these families generally could not afford an abortion, nor did they have accessible health care, the births were "illegal", meaning they went undocumented. Therefore there would be no record of the birth and the girl child could therefore easily be discarded. In this way, the family could "try again" in hopes of producing a male child. This happened sometimes in urban communities as well, but many baby girls were discarded discreetly by the hospitals themselves who delivered them (if the child was legal but unwanted). If birthing a second "illegal" child, the child would be directly killed in order to enforce the One Child Policy. Below is an interesting link, with a devestating example of this. It is a must-see in order to truly comprehend the extent of this problem.
With the introduction of abortion and prenatal sex-selection, gendercide became less common within urban communites. It still remained prevalent in impoverished areas, however. Now that people could foresee a female fetus, they could choose to discard it beforehand. With this new technology, the gender imbalance became even more drastic.
"You can take medicine to end the pregnancy," he said matter-of-factly. "Otherwise you have the baby and if it's a female, you try to find another family who will take it, or you just put it up for sale." -Liu Yihong
The root cause to this problem, however, is not the gender imbalance itself, nor the appauling act of killing numerous little girls. It is the incredibly low societal status that is associated with women. Because it is a patriarchal, or "male-dominated" society, women posess little to no value. They are seen simply as housewives, useful for tending to the home and to the children. This is incredibly detrimental to the women, who, even from a young age, are taught their stereotypical roles. This is detrimental to the men, also, who do and will continue to devalue the women in their lives without a second thought. Because these societal views are so deeply engrained, it is a nearly impossible aspect to change.
"You can take medicine to end the pregnancy," he said matter-of-factly. "Otherwise you have the baby and if it's a female, you try to find another family who will take it, or you just put it up for sale." -Liu Yihong
The root cause to this problem, however, is not the gender imbalance itself, nor the appauling act of killing numerous little girls. It is the incredibly low societal status that is associated with women. Because it is a patriarchal, or "male-dominated" society, women posess little to no value. They are seen simply as housewives, useful for tending to the home and to the children. This is incredibly detrimental to the women, who, even from a young age, are taught their stereotypical roles. This is detrimental to the men, also, who do and will continue to devalue the women in their lives without a second thought. Because these societal views are so deeply engrained, it is a nearly impossible aspect to change.
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