Sex Ratio Imbalances in Asia: An Ongoing Conversation Between Anthropologists and Demographers - Guilmoto, Christophe Z.; Srinivasan, Sharada; Li, Shuzhuo (Scarce Women and Surplus Men in China and India)
This chapter provides a synthesis of the debate between demographers and anthropologists around the issue of sex selection. The story began in the 1980s when field studies hinted that the strength of gender bias observed in local communities was likely to translate into tangible numerical imbalances. It took years for statisticians to confirm that the unusual rise in the sex ratio at birth detected in several countries was not fictitious, but a product of gender discrimination. Demographers later reacted by forecasting a marriage squeeze due to the mounting surplus of young adult males. Turning the tables on anthropologists, they further asserted that this unprecedented squeeze threatened to disrupt the traditional matrimonial system, a claim revisited by this volume’s contributors. The chapter traces this ongoing dialogue between two disciplinary fields that have both distinct and complementary capacities for unpacking the rationale and mechanisms of gender bias.
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