(Art by Jillian Tamaki. Source.)

Gooood morning GBD!

So remember all those inspiring stories from last week’s article?  About women in some very tough circumstances facing their challenges and making better lives for themselves and their families?  Well here’s another article from that same series (the series is called Saving the World’s Women).

There is a phenomenon that the article refers to as the “daughter deficit” – the population gap between males and females, one in which males outnumber females by a ratio that is greater than expected.  This gap is commonly seen in countries where women are marginalized in some way.

So, a lot of people thought that the way to combat the daughter deficit was to foster development.  It seemed logical that if a country prospers, then its women would prosper as well – they would go off to get higher education, get higher paying jobs, and contribute to the nation’s overall development.  If women were better educated and empowered economically, then surely the daughter deficit would narrow, if not disappear.

But guess what?  It turns out that the opposite has happened.  Mind-boggling, right?  Why?  How?  If women are getting more education and earning more money, why is the daughter deficit getting worse?

Several ideas are floating around about that, all of them going back to the deeply ingrained cultural norms regarding gender.  Take, for instance, how marriage affects familial relationships.  In many societies, when a woman marries a man, she is formally considered to be part of her husband’s family and has very little contact with her own family.  So if a married woman has a paying job, using her income to support her husband’s parents would take priority over supporting her own parents.

On top of that, these same societies often consider the man or the husband to be financially responsible for his wife, his children, and his parents.  So, from the parents’ perspective, having more sons is a better proposition.  Some people might consider this a rather cold and calculating way to view family, but I think that’s just how things pan out when people do the best they can given the circumstances they find themselves in.  I mean, in this type of society, you could very well be screwed if you have only daughters because there will be no one to take care of you in your old age.

Anyway, because raising daughters would be like “planting a seed in the neighbor’s garden,” there is an economic incentive to have more sons than daughters.  If this is how things are done for centuries, then it’s not surprising that families with more sons have higher status because they have more breadwinners, and thus, more wealth.

So back to the original puzzle – why would advancing women’s development end up making the daughter deficit worse?  It turns out that if women become wealthier, they often use those resources to reinforce these cultural norms.  See, if you’re a poor mother, then you’re going to struggle to support your children no matter what – it doesn’t make much difference whether they’re sons or daughters.  If there isn’t enough money, then sons and daughters suffer equally, more or less.  But if there IS enough money, then there’s the freedom to prioritize.  Money gives people choice.  So maybe the sons will be fed better, or get their vaccinations, or whatever.  In short, sons have a better chance of being healthier and surviving childhood.

And then there’s the technology that people with money have access to.  Even though abortions based on gender are illegal in many parts of the world, they are still widely practiced under the radar.  In fact, current technology makes abortions even easier to carry out because it can tell you what the gender will be very early on in the pregnancy.

And THEN, there’s the fact that wealthier families have fewer children.  If you’re a college-educated woman with a career, then you don’t have as much time or energy available to raise children.  So you have fewer children, and the pressure’s even greater to have at least one of those few children be a son.

So why am I bringing all of this up in the first place?  Well, last week’s article highlighted not only inspiring women, but emphasized how empowering women economically is going to save the world.  It talked a lot about microlending programs and education.  So here’s my question:  In societies where men are considered the primary financial support of the family, is it possible to empower women economically without making the daughter deficit worse?  How can you go about accomplishing that task without appearing to threaten long-held customs, especially with regards to family structure?

The article.  I’d definitely recommend reading it because it goes into a lot more detail than I did here.  There’s an especially interesting bit about the eldest daughter and what that dynamic is like.   As with most things human, it’s complicated.