Around
140 MILLION
women worldwide are ‘missing’ as a result of son preference
Over
460,000
girls are estimated to go missing annually in India
DATA
SOURCES
Data insights are based on population-based household surveys representative at the national and/or sub-national levels.
1. WHO, Global, Regional and National Estimates for Intimate Partner Violence against Women and Global and Regional Estimates for Non-partner Sexual Violence against Women, 2021.
2. Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE-led Survey on Violence against Women, 2019-2020.
3. UNFPA, Preventing son preference and undervaluing of girls in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 2020.
4. Human Rights Watch, “I Sleep in my Own Deathbed”: Violence against Women and Girls in Bangladesh: Barriers to Legal Recourse and Support, 2020.
Jasbeer Kaur
Valuing girls equally starts at home
“My stomach was huge, so I knew that I was carrying more than one child. What I didn’t know was that they were going to be all girls,” says Jasbeer Kaur, smiling at her 23-year-old triplets, Mandeep, Sandeep and Pardeep.
“People here in my village often tell me, ‘Poor thing, you should have had at least one son instead of three daughters.’ And I tell them, spare me this rubbish!” she says.
Mandeep, Sandeep and Pardeep laugh when their mother tells the story. But they’re acutely aware that their very existence is something Jasbeer had to fight for.
At her ultrasound, Jasbeer recalls, “the doctor offered to perform an abortion, because she said it would be difficult for me to raise three daughters. For a few moments, I was scared, but God gave me strength to refuse, and I said no. When I told my mother, she said, ‘If I can raise daughters, so can you.’”
I am a woman, and I am proud of having raised these girls. … When people look at my daughters and see how bold they are, they say, ‘They are just like their mother’!
— JASBEER KAUR
Jasbeer’s husband and in-laws were not supportive. “They told me, ‘We won’t allow three daughters to be born in the house at the same time. Get an abortion or leave’.”
She left, and raised her daughters on her own.
Son preference harms girls and damages societies
A deeply entrenched preference for male children prevails across India. “People still think you need a son because, without a son, how can you carry forward the family’s name?” explains Rajveer Kaur, Jasbeer’s neighbour in her village in Rajasthan.
Son preference is prevalent in many societies around the world. It is a form of systematic discrimination against girls, rooted in social and gender norms that accord girls and women a lower status compared to boys and men.
Son preference can lead to gender-biased sex selection (GBSS), its most extreme manifestation, which skews a population’s sex ratios towards males. Where fertility is declining in a context of gender inequality, families may seek to select the sex of their offspring. The increasing availability of reproductive technologies may exacerbate the occurrence of prenatal GBSS. Prevalence is difficult to measure, but if more than 102-106 boys are born for every 100 girls, GBSS is likely occurring.
Son preference can also manifest in discrimination after birth, when caregivers neglect the needs of girls during the early years of life. For girls, this results in higher under-five mortality compared to boys, as well as poorer nutrition, health, education and overall increased vulnerability.
Since the 1990s, some parts of the world have seen up to 25% more boys born than girls. Such gender imbalances have a damaging demographic impact as well as individual consequences for women and girls. GBSS has been linked to increased intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion, trafficking and masculinization of society.
Some countries have sought to stem GBSS by restricting the use of modern technologies for purposes of sex-selection – as did India, in 1994. But bans often serve to push practices underground and curb broader sexual and reproductive rights.
© Arvind Jodha/UNFPA India
Standing up for girls
Effective approaches go after the root cause of son preference and GBSS: gender inequality. Key strategies include:
- Empowering women and girls by increasing access to education and economic opportunities, sexual and reproductive health care and other essential services.
- Engaging institutions, communities, families and individuals to change discriminatory gender norms, and raise awareness of the value and contributions of women and girls.
- Promoting gender equality within relationships and in parenting, and engaging men and boys.
- Changing discriminatory laws and policies, for instance to enable daughters to inherit property, and enforcing laws that prevent and provide redress for gender-based discrimination and violence. UNFPA leads the Global Programme to Prevent Son Preference and Gender-Biased Sex Selection, currently implemented in two regions, Asia Pacific (Bangladesh, Nepal and Vietnam) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia), and funded by the European Union and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
I think my daughters gave me strength. I feel daughters can also become our strength.
— JASBEER KAUR
The Global Programme supports global, regional and country-level interventions to enhance overall awareness and knowledge on son preference and GBSS, and support countries’ capacity to change social and gender norms that discriminate women and girls – and, ultimately, to achieve UNFPA’s transformative result of ending gender-based violence and all harmful practices.
In India, with support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNFPA partners with the government, civil society and others to address son preference, working with the judiciary, health sector, law enforcement, media, researchers and religious organizations.
Parents also play a key role in how daughters are valued and treated. Raising her children on her own wasn’t easy, but Jasbeer provided for her daughters, made sure they were educated, and raised them to know their own value.
“No one approaches girls for their views,” says daughter Sandeep. “But our mother consults us first. She asks us, ‘Tell me your views.’ It feels really good.”
For women in her community, Jasbeer is an inspiration. “If Jasbeer Kaur can raise three daughters on her own,” says Rajveer, herself the mother of two daughters, “Why can’t we raise daughters and enjoy our families’ support?”