Special Report on Missing Girls in East Asia on International Women's Day

Noted journalist Aarti Dhar in her research article in "The Hindu" observed that the problem of “missing girls'' – a scenario where more boys are born than girls, as girl foetuses are presumably aborted, and women die from health and nutrition neglect – is growing in the Asia Pacific. Birth gender disparity is greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born for every 100 girls.

She further says that China and India together account for more than 85 million of the nearly 100 million “missing'' women estimated to have died from discriminatory treatment in health care, nutrition access or pure neglect – or because they were never born in the first place, “Power, Voice and Rights – A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific,'' a report brought out by the United Nations Development Programme in Delhi to mark the International Women's Day said.


Some Hard Facts from the Report

> One-tenth of women in the region report being assaulted by their partners,

> Majority of women who do work – up to 85 per cent of South Asia's working women – are engaged in unstable low-end work in the informal economy.

> Few women hold property.

> Although women predominate in agriculture, they head only 7 per cent of farms, compared to 20 per cent in most other regions of the world.

> The region is far behind where it could be on basic issues, such as protecting women from violence, upholding entitlements to property – even allowing people to divorce in an informed and reasonable way.

> Few countries have adopted or implemented laws prohibiting violence against women, despite widespread evidence of discrimination and assault.

> Nearly half of the countries in South Asia, and more than 60 per cent of those in the Pacific, have no laws against domestic violence.

> Nor are there many provisions against sexual harassment in workplaces,

> Though 30 to 40 per cent of working women report experiencing verbal, physical or sexual abuse,

> Too often, customs or religious beliefs have become a rationale for laws and legal systems to ignore or soft peddle or even justify issues such as discriminatory inheritance practices and the multiple forms of violence that specifically target women.