Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

Special thanks to Peace Corps Volunteer, Sean Li, for ALL of this information below!

Mara Hvistendahl book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, claims that a steep rise in abortion of females has led to huge gender disparities, which could likely cause very dangerous global problems, and that contrary to conventional wisdom, female abortions have actually increased as societies in developing countries have become wealthier.  Such gender disparities lead to problems like increased prostitution, child marriage, sex trafficking, sex tourism, polyandry (usually brothers/cousins sharing one bride), arranged marriages between men from richer countries and women from poorer countries, and drastically increased male violence, especially among the lower classes.  Hvistendahl further claims that Western organizations, both governmental and private, share blame for providing for and pushing abortion in developing countries over the past 4-5 decades. 


The problem of gender disparity isn't only limited to Asia; Albania is cited as a country that also faces this problem and it's important to understand this issue.

Financial Times book review, 13June2011

Data about gender disparity:

-normal male/female sex ration is 105 boys per 100 girls

-in China it's 121/100, in India it's 112/100

-Albania's sex ration is 110/100 

-"The wealthier parts of developing nations often see the most skewed ratios, showing that modernization and progressive views on female children do not always go together."

-"Bachelor nations are dangerous for women too.."
-"But even if wiser policies follow it will take a generation for these unbalanced nations to get their populations back in balance. And in that time, those millions of angry, unmarriageable men could cause plenty of havoc."

Bloomberg News book review - "Aborting Girls Leaves Too Many Men, Not Enough Brides", 19June2011
-"More than 160 million women are missing from the Asian population. And as the young lads born in place of girls mature, generations of men won’t find mates, fueling problems from violence to bride trafficking to health afflictions"
-"The existence of these “surplus men” isn’t news. Hvistendahl ... presents a thoughtful, smartly researched overview of medical developments, policymaking and cultural trends that combined to upset the global sex ratio. Interviews with doctors, demographers and the author of 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb” add engaging first-person accounts."

-"'Development was not supposed to look like this,” Hvistendahl writes. 'For as long as they have speculated about the status of women, social scientists have taken for granted that women’s position improves as countries get richer.'"

Wall Street Journal book review - "The War Against Girls", 24June2011
-"But oddly enough, Ms. Hvistendahl notes, it is usually a country's rich, not its poor, who lead the way in choosing against girls. 'Sex selection typically starts with the urban, well-educated stratum of society,' she writes. 'Elites are the first to gain access to a new technology, whether MRI scanners, smart phones, or ultrasound machines." The behavior of elites then filters down until it becomes part of the broader culture. Even more unexpectedly, the decision to abort baby girls is usually made by women, either by the mother or, sometimes, the mother-in-law.'"

-"The economist Gary Becker has noted that when women become scarce, their value increases, and he sees this as a positive development. But as Ms. Hvistendahl demonstrates, 'this assessment is true only in the crudest sense.' A 17-year-old girl in a developing country is in no position to capture her own value."

Washington Post book review, 2July2011

-"Feminists blame the gender imbalance on patriarchal cultural prejudice against girls and daughters. But Hvistendahl, who has not only done her research but has also carried out extensive investigative journalism in several countries, blames much more complex geopolitical and economic forces, including imperialist political decisions, American medical technology and the drive for population control."

Guardian UK book review - "Sex selection and the rise of Generation XY", 17June2011
-"The bias towards boys has been estimated to have caused the "disappearance" of 160 million women and girls in Asia alone over the past few decades.The pattern has now spilled over to ... the Balkans and Albania, where the sex ratio is 115/100."

The Economist book review, 6Aug2011

-"Sex-selective abortion is one of the largest, least noticed disasters in the world."