Five Ways Society Disadvantages Female Infants
1. Female fetuses are more likely to be aborted than male fetuses. For every 100 girls born in the respective country, there are:
115.9 boys born in China.
115.6 boys born in Azerbaijan.
114.0 boys born in Armenia.
112.2 boys born in Vietnam.
110.0 boys born in India.
Source: Guilmoto, C. Z. (2015). The masculinization of births: overview and current knowledge. Population, 70(2), 185-243.
2. Female infants are more likely to be killed or abandoned by their parents. For instance, in Pakistan, nine out of ten infants found in dumpsters are female.
3. Sick baby boys are more likely to be taken for treatment than sick baby girls. A study done in Nepal concluded that “Ill boys were consistently more often taken for care than girls, despite comparable referral…. Addressing gender bias in care-seeking, explicitly and within interventions, is essential to reducing neonatal mortality differentials between boys and girls.”
An older study in Pakistan showed that ill male children were twice more likely to be treated at a hospital than ill female children.
Still, due to biological factors, baby boys are more susceptible to infections and conditions, and the global male infant mortality rate is higher than the female infant mortality rate. The male infant mortality rate has significantly declined in comparison to the female infant mortality rate, and of course, any decline in infant mortality is a good thing. However, male infant mortality is largely due to biological factors (like weaker immune systems) whereas female infant mortality can be more attributed to social factors (like a societal preference for boys).
Source: Drevenstedt GL (2008). "The rise and fall of excess male infant mortality". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105 (13): 5016–21.
4. Male infants are more likely to be nourished by their mothers than female infants. About 45% of all infant death are linked to malnutrition.
5. The cries of baby girls are more likely to be discounted than the cries of baby boys, specifically by adult men. Caretakers are also more likely to associate louder and higher-pitched cries will female infants, even though there are not sex differences between infants’ cries.
All of these are caused by a societal preference for boys over girls. As children grow older and begin to form distinct personalities and gain understandings of the world, they will be socialized to behave certain ways even more. But as infants, baby boys and girls are still treated differently and girls are more likely to die from infanticide or absence of healthcare for treatable medical conditions.
Before they can speak or express any sort of identity, and sometimes before they are even born, female infants are at a social disadvantage and in many cases, it is deadly. UNFPA estimates 117 million “missing” girls globally due to female infanticide.
Soon I hope to elaborate on disadvantages in different stages of life and on how the societal preference for boys can also materialize in domestic violence against women. (For example, in some countries like my own, Iraq, many people mistakenly believe women can choose the sex of their baby and react with violence when she gives birth to a female child instead of a male. I will discuss this more in the future.)
We can protect all infants by providing better access to maternal and infant healthcare, vaccines, baby formula, and sanitary supplies. We can specifically protect baby girls by radically changing society to abolish the construct of gender that attaches different rules and expectations for babies based on their biological sex and creates circumstances in which one sex becomes favorable to the other.
