Tuesday, March 09, 2010

What happened to holding up half the sky?


International Woman's Day (yesterday) was not a good time to read The Economist -- the cover story really made me sit up. It wasn't so much the topic -- gendercide -- or even the fact that China and India had abnormally high male sex ratios at birth. It was the fact that Singapore was also among the Asian (read paternalistic) countries with a skewed male sex ratio that was above the natural rate. At no point did it even imply that Singaporeans kill unwanted baby girls, it merely pointed out that distorted sex ratios are not confined to the poor, uneducated, illiterate agrarian societies because distorted sex ratios also exist in affluent societies such as Singapore. Now I'm stunned. Is there something happening in my backyard that I'm not aware of?

1 comment:

The Cat's Whiskers said...

Very interesting. Thanks for the heads-up.

Do you think parents in Singapore using artificial insemination are allowed to choose the sex of their child?