The epidemic of “missing women and girls” is the discussion of how several societies around the world have a clear preference for sons. To them, a baby boy is the gold standard, whilst a baby daughter would be the runners up prize; and so we see the death, neglect and disappearance of such girls. The story is an important one, but so too it is incomplete in the usual way… it ignores the other side of the story. Because yes, in other countries, such a thing as a ‘daughter preference’ exists too, yet is never discussed, and as always, falls through the cracks of compassion and advocacy. In fact, in a study of 650,000+ women across 50 developing countries, whilst it was found that 17.7% of women did indeed have a son preference… 12.8% had a daughter preference. That’s a difference of 5%… is that really enough for ‘missing women and girls’ to be a global issue, whilst ‘missing men and boys’ remains something that doesn’t exist, is not discussed, and would likely be laughed and sneered at, if it was? And we see this not just in child birth, but adoption too – where countless boys (especially black boys) are left behind and looked over, due to the unspoken ‘daughter preference’. So yes. What about our missing sons? What do you think? ~ Variations in attitudinal gender preferences for children across 50 less-developed countries Images by Kateryna Hliznitzsova, Diana Polekhina, Taisaii Shestopal from Unsplash. #genderequality

2024-02-23