Preference for boys persists among 2nd generation South Asian parents, study finds

2018/06/23 Leave a comment

Alarming that preference carries through to the second generation:

Where are all the girls?

A new Ontario study has found the preference for boys among South Asian parents persists among second-generation families born and raised in Canada, pushing the male-to-female ratio to 280 boys born for every 100 girls.

Previous research showed that women born in India, who already had two daughters, gave birth in Ontario to 196 boys for every 100 girls — compared to just 104 boys per 100 girls among non-South Asians — but the new finding surprised even the researchers.

While immigrants tend to assimilate over time, “from the evidence we see, this suggests it is different when it comes to the preference for sons,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Susitha Wanigaratne, a social epidemiologist and post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

The study, published Thursday in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, examined live births to first- and second-generation mothers of South Asian ethnicity between 1993 and 2014, based on data from the institute, the immigration department and the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s Discharge Abstract.

Almost 10,300 live births to second-generation South Asian mothers and 36,687 live births to their first-generation counterparts in Ontario were identified.

Among the second-generation South Asian mothers with two previous daughters and at least one prior abortion, 280 boys were born for every 100 girls, which was greater than the male-to-female ratio among their first-generation peers. The report suggests both groups of mothers are likely taking part in sex-selective abortion in Ontario.

The researchers looked at many different combinations of order, number and gender of births, but found third births among mothers with two previous daughters revealed a significant increase in the male-to-female ratios.

Born and raised in Brampton, Manvir Bhangu, founder of a non-profit group that promotes gender equity among South Asians in Greater Toronto, said she was both shocked and saddened by the findings.

“Even though you were born and grew up in Canada and are highly educated, you still can’t get away from the culture. You are surrounded by it. South Asian women carry the honour of the family on their shoulders for their parents and in-laws,” said Bhangu, 26, of Laadliyan Celebrating Daughters. (Laadliyan, in Punjabi and Hindi, means beloved daughters.)

“It comes down to having a place at home and in the community. It makes a big difference in your presence in the family whether you give birth to three boys or three girls. It’s easier to be loved and wanted by the people around you with three boys. People do make nasty comments if you have three girls,” added Bhangu, a co-author of the study. “The bottom line is keeping the family name alive.”

The report said it appears South Asian immigrant parents emphasize educating their second-generation daughters out of the need to uphold the image of a “model minority,” as hardworking, disciplined and successful, as well as the desire to restrict the girls’ social engagements outside of the home in order to limit western influence and improve marriageability.

“Studies in India have shown that higher maternal education is either not associated with son-biased sex ratios or that it is associated with greater knowledge of and access to sex-selective technology,” the report said.

“This situation among second-generation mothers certainly exemplifies a ‘double burden’ whereby women are educated and work outside the home but are also expected to maintain their traditional roles within the family.”

Both Wanigaratne and Bhangu hope the study can get the community to start a dialogue about gender equity and culture.

Source: Preference for boys persists among 2nd generation South Asian parents, study finds

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Why the anti-abortion movement is embracing gender equality

2016/04/21 Leave a comment

Martin Patriquin nails it:

No pro-choice type himself, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at least pragmatic enough to stamp out any anti-abortion rumblings emanating from the socially conservative recesses of his party.

But gender equality is another story entirely. While we may be a cautious bunch on the issue of abortion, we Canadians are wildly, flamingly liberal on equality of sexes—94 per cent in favour of it, according to but one recent poll.

Pro-life types have cannily glommed onto sex-selective abortion as a means to demonstrate the evils of the pro-choice narrative run amok. They’ve rebranded the practice “gendercide,” and one politician amongst the ranks has attempted (unsuccessfully) to introduce a motion condemning it. They’ve appointed more female spokespeople. Twenty years ago, women who received abortions were murderers. Today, they are more likely to be victims.

It’s part of what University of Ottawa researchers Kelly Gordon and James Saurette call the “pro-woman” rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement. “Anti-abortionists have been losing since 1969 [when the Canadian government liberalized abortion laws],” Gordon told me recently. “They’ve been viewed as being very anti-woman. This is a strategic shift. Concentrating on sex-selective abortions is a far more sympathetic discourse.”

Enacting a law against sex-selective abortion would be folly. In India, a country of 1.2 billion, there were all of 20 convictions between 1994 and 2010, according to the government report. But then, preventing sex-selective abortions isn’t the goal of pro-lifers in this country; prohibiting abortion outright is. Gender equality is just a useful vehicle to this end.

A useful vehicle, and a Trojan horse. Restricting reproductive rights would be far easier with an existing law banning what amounts to an aberration of the practice. By draping itself in the flag of gender equality, the anti-abortion movement is rehashing a debate it lost long ago. It’s a savvy and cynical move, and should be recognized as such.

Ultimately, of course, the way to curb sex-selective abortions is roughly the same as curbing the frequency of abortions in general—not through legislation, but education. This country’s long-diminishing abortion rate is the best testament to this fact.

Source: Why the anti-abortion movement is embracing gender equality

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Attitudes, inequalities at root of ‘missing’ girls: Balkissoon

2016/04/16 Leave a comment

Denise Balkissoon on the study showing a prevalence of Indo-Canadian sex selection abortions:

But it’s short-sighted to brand this an immigrant problem or to react by restricting women’s rights. This is a problem of tradition and history, and modern Asia is troubled by it, too. While India and China are scrambling to find real fixes, the Journal noted that South Korea seems to have turned around a centuries-old preference for boys in a single generation.

Sex-selective abortions took off in South Korea after 1980, when ultrasounds became widely available. By 1990, the Journal notes, 116.5 boys were born for every 100 girls (the average in most Western countries, including Canada, is 105 boys to 100 girls). Korean advocates for women and girls didn’t respond by attempting to restrict reproductive freedom. Instead, they targeted issues of women’s inequality; for example, pushing for legislation to allow families to use the mother’s surname, instead of the father’s, as was traditional. The government was also persuaded to subsidize child care up to the age of 5, and to give incentives to companies offering paternity leave. The results were extraordinary: By 2014, the ratio of male to female babies was at the 105-to-100 level that health experts consider natural.

If we want the same result for Canada’s South Asian babies, this is the template to follow. Restricting access to health information or abortions might help to fix the numbers, but it’s the stories behind the numbers that matter.

I don’t just want the “right” number of girl babies to show up every year. I want to end discrimination against the girls currently living with parents who had them reluctantly, and to make sure that women have options if they’re abused for not producing boys. I want senior citizens to know they’ll be taken care of even if their sons don’t bring home wives, and I want 35-year-olds to feel valued by their communities whether or not they have partners.

Maybe the result of all that would be fewer abortions in Canada. But that’s not the goal we should prioritize.

Source: Attitudes, inequalities at root of ‘missing’ girls – The Globe and Mail

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Indo-Canadian women give birth to far more boys than women born in Canada

2016/04/13 Leave a comment

Interesting and disturbing study:

The research, presented in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the online CMAJ Open, looks at more than 6 million births in Canada and reveals that a greater presence of boys among Indian-born mothers may in part be linked to abortions in the second trimester, when parents can learn the baby’s sex.

The birth data was compiled from databases administered by Statistics Canada and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto between 1990 and 2011, and 1993 to 2012, respectively.

“The main implication is that among some immigrant communities, males are placed at a higher value than females. This is not just about abortions, it is about gender equality,” said lead author Marcelo Urquia of St. Michael’s Hospital. “I hope that this is conducive to a respectful debate on the value of girls and women in today’s Canadian society.”

His study newly exposes a relationship between induced abortions and the previously reported large numbers of boys among Ontario’s Indian community, said Urquia, noting the data likely explains an imbalance in the rest of Canada too. Some of the “deficit” of girls may be due to “implantation of male embryos,” said Urquia, but the data is insufficient.

While the natural odds of having a boy over a girl are slightly higher, they are consistent across the globe: up to 107 boys for every 100 girls. But Indian-born mothers living in Canada with two children had 138 boys for every 100 girls. In Ontario, that number inflated even more among Indian-born women with two daughters, who then gave birth to 196 boys for every 100 girls.

After abortions, the numbers rise dramatically: 326 boys after one abortion, 409 boys after multiple abortions, and 663 boys for every 100 girls following multiple abortions in the second trimester, when doctors can determine the sex of the fetus.

Miscarriages, or spontaneous abortions, were not linked to the births of more boys, the study found.

The implication is that the disproportionate ratios are a result of “sex discrimination fuelled by son preference” among people from Asian countries, particularly India, whose immigrants have the highest documented male to female ratio in the world, the study says. The new research focuses on immigrants from India as they contribute the most to immigrant births in the country, though disproportionate male births have been observed in other communities as well. The research found an imbalance among Chinese immigrants, but this could not be linked to abortion.

Data did not indicate how long Indian immigrants had lived in Canada and whether that impacted the sex ratio. Nor did it indicate what country the baby’s grandparents were from. These are questions for future research, said Urquia.

“We are currently looking at whether the skewed sex ratios diminish with time after immigration. The idea is that exposure to a more gender equal environment, such as Canada, will result in placing more value on females over time,” he said.

With this new research, it’s no longer a question of whether prenatal sex discrimination exists. It is evident over the last two decades across Canada. The “real question,” said researcher Abdool S. Yasseen III in a published commentary on the studies, is “why this practice persists, particularly in a Canadian society that espouses sex equality.”

For Baldev Mutta, CEO of Brampton’s Punjabi Community Health Services, it’s a question he and other community leaders will have to face. With this new research, he says, it is “time for some soul searching,” in the country’s Indian community.

Source: Indo-Canadian women give birth to far more boys than women born in Canada | Toronto Star

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Selecting Boys Over Girls Is A Trend In More And More Countries

2015/08/28 Leave a comment

Worrisome trend:

But in some countries the balance is tipped unnaturally toward an overabundance of boys, an imbalance that is likely to last through the reproductive years. Several things have combined to lead to what researchers call “missing women.”

Many countries have a deep-seated cultural preference for sons over daughters. Inexpensive blood tests that can determine the sex of a fetus as early as seven weeks have been developed. And countries around the world have imported ultrasound equipment. “Ultrasound is available even in very poor countries,” says Hudson. “The Chinese government actually imported ultrasound machines mounted on carts in the 20th century, so that even the most remote village would have access to this technology.”

In 1995, only six countries had such a marked imbalance of boys to girls. Today, 21 countries have a skewed sex ratio favoring boys. The growth of gender imbalance in only two decades points to widespread acceptance of modern technology that can predict the sex of the fetus, according to Hudson.

Technology has enabled even the poorest of countries to bypass the natural gender balance. “It’s largely due to the abortion of females,” says Hudson. “But it’s also due to passive neglect, such as underfeeding, underimmunization, and failing to take girls to the doctor when they’re sick.” Abortions of females can happen before anyone in the community notices a pregnancy, she says. And when girls are abandoned or neglected so severely that they die, it often doesn’t create much of a stir among people who understand the preference for boys.

“No one raises it as a public issue within the community, so while it’s not secret, it isn’t commented upon,” says Hudson.

The result of sex-selective abortions, infanticide and neglect of baby girls, according to the United Nations Population Fund, is more than 117 million “missing” females in Asia alone, and many more around the world.

And for every missing woman, there is a surplus man who will never establish a family. “Men are unable to marry,” Hudson says, and frustrated, single men are more likely get into trouble. “It leads to instability. In masculinized societies, there are issues such as rising violent crime rates, increasing rates of gang activity and rebel group activity, increasing prostitution and trafficking, and greater constraints on the movement of women.”

One country with a tradition of preferring male offspring has successfully corrected the imbalance. “South Korea is the only country I know of that has clawed back its abnormal sex ratios back to the normal range,” says Hudson. And it did this not by trying to change culture, tradition, hearts or minds — but by changing laws.

In South Korea, sons were responsible for performing ancestral rites and for the care and support of elderly parents. When the government began promoting a two-child norm in the 1970s, Hudson wrote in Foreign Policy, the ratio of boys to girls climbed to a peak of 116.5 to 100 in 1990. That’s when the South Korean government began to overhaul laws that favored sons. Women gained full rights in inheritance and in heading families. The government enforced a ban on prenatal sex testing. A pension system was established so that neither sons nor daughters were fully responsible for the care of the elderly. And today, South Korea’s ratio of boys to girls reflects nature’s average.

But a growing number of countries continue traditions, policies and practices that favor sons over daughters. “These trends do not bode well for the stability and security of nations, regions and even the international system,” says Hudson. “There is a real price to be paid for the devaluation of female life.”

Source: Selecting Boys Over Girls Is A Trend In More And More Countries : Goats and Soda : NPR

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Stop using ultrasound to determine sex of fetuses, urge doctors, radiologists

2014/03/26 Leave a comment

Interesting article on sex selection ultrasounds (seems to be an issue in the Indo, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Philippine communities). Sad combination of cultural preferences for boys, enabling technology, and the usual self-serving justification by the entrepreneurs offering the service:

Alla Boulavkina, a registered diagnostic medical sonographer and owner of Tri-Cities 3D Sono Image in Vancouver, which offers non-medical fetal ultrasounds, said the scans improve bonding between parents and babies, and that she limits exposure times. “I know how to do it correctly.”

Boulavkina offers gender determination, starting at 20 weeks’ gestation only. Demand for the service, she said, is growing.

“Everybody wants to know, ‘boy or girl?’ Not just to start shopping … it takes time to be mentally ready for the baby,” she said.

“It’s very important to know. It helps people to prepare and be happy. Because sometimes daddy wanted a boy, and then he sees girl, and he’s not happy, and it’s no good for the family. In this case, it gives time to slowly be prepared.”

Stop using ultrasound to determine sex of fetuses, urge doctors, radiologists.

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