Gender disproportions and female foeticide

In relation with US President Barack Obama's recent visit, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced wide-sweeping reform to address the female foeticide problem, growing in India past decades. As fetus imaging technology has advanced more and more pregnant women in India checking the sex of their unborn child and then, if it is a girl, aborting it. As a result of this, while overall ratio of females to males (feminity ratio) in India gradually improving, the same ratio among newborn babies deteriorating dramatically. If in mid-1970 there was about 94 newborn girls per 100 boys, now its only 90 (and in some areas even worse - check the graph and map of India states) and this is definitely what the United Nations call the "emergency proportions". According to some studies about 2,000 girls are killed every day in India, either by abortion or soon after birth. Breaking this practice – that continues despite laws against it – is part of a shift by Mr. Modi to boost the economy through what he calls “women empowerment.” His campaign is called “Educate the Girl, Save the Girl”.

But this medieval-era female foeticide practice continues not only in India. The China and some other developing Southern Asian nations are the same. And compare what happens in those countries with a situation in developed Asian economies, such as Japan or South Korea.

It must be said that gender disproportions differs significantly around the World. For example, in ex-USSR territories picture is opposite: while feminity ratio among newborns close to normal, the same ratio among total population remarkable higher (due to higher male mortality rates and less male life expectancy). And the countries where gender disproportions, being almost not represented among children, growing by enormous grade for older ages, but in other direction - towards increase of males proportion - are Middle Eastern ones, especially Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman. E. g. in UAE there are about 97 girls per 100 boys 0-1 age and for total ages the number is about 44 only! Some explanations on so called "missing women of Asia" phenomenon could be found in works of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.

Where all these women disappearing in Middle East?