Female Demographic Disadvantage in India 1981–1991: Sex Selective Abortions and Female Infanticide

Using evidence from a number of sources (including the 1981 and 1991 censuses of India, prior research, and NGO reports), this article examines whether bias against girl children persists during periods of development and fertility decline, whether prenatal sex selection has spread in India as elsewhere in Asia, and whether female vs. male child mortality risks have changed. The authors present estimated period sex ratios at birth (SRBs) calculated by reverse survival methods along with reported sex ratios among infants aged 0 and 1, as well as sex ratios of child mortality probabilities (q5), from the two censuses. The findings show an increase in ‘masculine’ SRBs and persistent (or even worsening) female mortality disadvantage, despite overall mortality decline, due to selective neglect and the spread of female infanticide practices in some areas. Research and reports indicate the increasing use of prenatal sex selection in some regions. In India, preference for sons appears to be undiminished by socio-economic development, which interacts with cultural sources of male bias. The increased masculinity of period SRBs in some areas, together with persistent excess female child mortality and female infanticide, creates a ‘double jeopardy’ for girl children. Legislation curbing prenatal sex determination and policy measures addressing societal female devaluation have had little impact, suggesting that female demographic disadvantage is unlikely to improve in the near future.     

FORCED LABOUR AND RISING FERTILITY IN COLONIAL INDONESIA

This paper presents empirical evidence to support the labour demand theory of rising reproductive fertility in colonial Indonesia. According to this theory, birth rates in nineteenth-century Java rose as a direct result of the labour burden imposed upon women and their children by the Cultivation System of compulsory labour services. The theory was conceived in the 1970s as a reaction against the assumption that rapid population growth in colonial Indonesia must have reflected improvements in economic and health conditions under Dutch rule. The difficulty of testing the labour demand theory empirically, together with its counterintuitive quality and its ideological origins, led it to be sceptically received. However, newly-assembled statistical data from Minahasa—one of the few areas outside Java where compulsory cultivation services were introduced in the nineteenth century—suggest that the theory is in fact correct. The existence of a positive link between labour demand and fertility helps explain not only the paradox of population growth without rapid economic growth or public health improvements in nineteenth-century Java, but also the ‘involutionary’ cycle of agricultural intensification, population growth and impoverishment which seems to be a recurrent feature of Southeast Asian history.     

Intergenerational transmission of reproductive behavior during the demographic transition

New evidence from the Utah Population Database (UPDP) reveals that at the onset of the fertility transition, reproductive behavior was transmitted across generations - between women and their mothers, as well as between women and their husbands' family of origin. Age at marriage, age at last birth, and the number of children ever born are positively correlated in the data, most strongly among first-born daughters and among cohorts born later in the fertility transition. Intergenerational ties, including the presence of mothers and mothers-in-law, influenced the hazard of progressing to a next birth. The findings suggest that the practice of parity-dependent marital fertility control and inter-birth spacing behavior derived, in part, from the previous generation and that the potential for mothers and mothers-in-law to help in the rearing of children encouraged higher marital fertility.     

From Fertility Intention to Fertility Behaviour

Using longitudinal data from Jiangsu Fertility Intention and Behaviour Study (JFIBS) from year 2007 and 2010, this study analyses the fertility intention and behaviour of women who are qualified to have two children from a psychosocial point of view. Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the theoretical framework from fertility intention to fertility behaviour is reconstructed. By observing the phenomenon from the micro-level, the gap between female fertility intention and behaviour and its associated factors are studied. The result shows that, given the situation of being qualified to have two children according to the government's birth control policy, when faced with the choice of whether to have a second child or not, people tend to make their decisions rationally. Attitudes towards fertility, subjective norms, and perceived behaviour control all contribute significantly to the discrepancy between fertility intention and behaviour. In addition, the formation of a concrete birth plan is a major driving force for translating fertility intention into action.     

‘Ultramodern Contraception’ Re-Examined

The family planning literature considers behavioural family planning methods ‘ineffective’ because their users are not motivated to control their fertility. While this is true for the initial stages of fertility transition, studies report that urban, educated, and affluent women—propelled by a reaction against the medicalisation of the female body by Western technology—mainly use behavioural family planning methods. This elite group has the skill and knowledge to use such methods effectively. The term ‘ultramodern contraception’ has been coined to describe this phenomenon. This paper critically re-examines the ‘ultramodern contraception’ theory, and argues that it has certain limitations. Analysing three rounds of National Family Health Survey data for India, we argue that reliance on such methods may be a transient phase in the reproductive cycle of women, specifically before the desired gender parity of children is attained. Moreover, it may also be a manifestation of son preference.     

Women’s gender role attitudes and fertility intentions of having a second child: survey findings from Shaanxi Province of China

China is a country with a unique history of gender traditions and birth-control regulations. Traditional gender role attitudes, closely related to son preference, exert entrenched influence on the fertility intentions and behaviours of women in China. In recent years, despite the fact that employment characteristics and educational attainment of women have caught up with men, China has witnessed a resurgence of patriarchal Confucian tradition. Gender relations in the private sphere are increasingly regulated by traditional gender norms. Considering the declining fertility in China and recent fertility policy adjustments, this paper analyses the varying effects of gender role attitudes on fertility intentions of women under different birth control policies, utilising data from 1,422 questionnaires conducted in 2015 in the Shaanxi Province in northwestern China and using the Multinomial Logistic Model. Our findings imply that the relationship between women’s gender role attitudes and fertility intention differs between women affected by different birth control policies. We find that among married women with one child who are restricted to one child, the more egalitarian the gender role attitude, the more likely they intend to have a second child. Among married women who have had one child and are allowed to have two children, the more egalitarian the gender role attitude, the less likely they intend to have a second child. The results also indicate that traditional gender role attitudes and norms still play an important role in Chinese women’s fertility intentions.     

Fertility Decline and Increasing Gender Imbalance in India,Including a Possible South Indian Turnaround

Birth rates in India have been in a definite decline since about 1985. However, contrary to our assumption that fertility declines in this region hinge on improvements in the status of women, declining fertility seems to be going hand in hand with worsening population sex ratios. This article examines the evidence for a causal connection between fertility decline and increasing gender imbalance by looking at differences in fertility and in gender inequalities between North and South India in the past, and their increasing convergence in gender inequalities in recent years. It pays special attention to the southern state of Tamil Nadu which has been in the forefront of the country's fertility decline but is nevertheless moving towards a North Indian pattern in many aspects of women's status. The Tamil Nadu example is a particularly striking way of studying the country-wide trend because it represents a break from the past, in contrast to North India, where increasing gender differentials may be seen more as an accentuation of long-existing trends. The main problem seems to be that pressures to lower fertility are occurring independently of a change in underlying son preferences and falls in fertility are being aided by technologies which allow one to manipulate not just the sex composition of living children, but also that of children as yet unborn. Some policy implications of this last situation are discussed.     

Agricultural variation and human fertility in antebellum Pennsylvania

Focus in this discussion is on research designed to examine human fertility variation in 59 Pennsylvania counties in 1850 and 1860. The research goes beyond previous historical studies in examining the relationship between land quality and fertility and in separating the possible impacts of settlement from the availability of land for agricultural purposes. The measure of human fertility used in the analysis was the child-woman ratio, defined as the number of children aged 0-4/1000 white women aged 15-49. In 1850 the child-woman ratio ranged from 488-889. The child-woman ratio fell slightly between 1850 and 1860, and county level variation was reduced. Yet, Pennsylvania counties varied substantially in fertility levels during this period. The range between the highest and lowest fertility countries was over 400 children in 1850 and almost 350 in 1860. The set of agricultural variables displayed expected differences at the 2 time periods. The excess demand for farmsites increased between 1850 and 1860, while the variation in demand decreased by over one-half, reflecting additional settlement within all acres of the state. The settlement ratio increased over the decade; the sex ratio declined, most likely in response to outmigration westward. The agricultural variables were all negatively related to the child-woman ratio and were statistically significant, except for the labor/acre variable. The strongest correlation in 1850 was between the excess demand for farmsites and fertility. This coefficient indicated that the greater the excess demand for farmsites, the lower the child-woman ratio. This relationship was attentuated somewhat for 1860, yet it continued to be negative and statistically significant. The socioeconomic and demographic variables were all related to fertility in the expected direction, but only 5 of the 7 correlations were statistically significant in 1850 and 6 in 1860. The settlement ratio, sex ratio, percent urban, distance to urban place, and the measure of female age composition were all significantly related to fertility in 1850 and 1860. The study results support the growing body of research which has identified agricultural opportunity as a significant factor in fertility in rural areas of 19th century America. The findings also suggest that the importance of agricultural opportunity extended beyond the frontier period.     

Is gender inequality a barrier to realizing fertility intentions? Fertility aspirations and realizations in South Korea

Research highlights the emergence of national low fertility regimes and the importance of understanding how institutional gender inequity supports low fertility. In South Korea, where gender inequality is high and a national low fertility regime exists, many women express a desire for two children but bear one child. Does gender equity, particularly within the household, influence the realization of fertility desires within the context of institutional inequality? Using the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women &; Families, in this paper, I test the effect of gender equity within the family on second births. Evaluating a subsample of married women with one child who desire a second child, I find that women’s gender role attitudes, husbands’ housework and women’s responsibility for children’s education influence the likelihood of realizing a second birth. Results highlight the importance of men’s household contributions and women’s educational responsibilities on the realization of fertility intentions within low fertility regimes.     

Gender preference for children and its consequences for migration in China

Much research on the relationship between migration and fertility has centred on the impacts of migration on child-bearing behaviour. This paper reverses this traditional orientation by examining one way in which fertility behaviour, embedded within a patrilineal society, may influence the migration opportunities of married women. The paper begins by discussing issues relating to gender and migration before outlining previously defined models of the migration fertility relationship. One of these models, selection, is used as the basis for further discussion. The context of migration, fertility and selection in terms of gender issues and sex preference patterns in China is presented. Using fertility and migration histories from a survey of a migration population in Beijing, China, to examine women's mobility patterns this paper suggests that the sex of a child can act as a selection factor in the migration of married women. Sex preferences exhibited by the survey respondents are outlined. The implications for migration and household studies are discussed.     

Cogs in the Machine: The Experiences of Female Munitions Workers and Members of the Australian Women’s Land Army in South Australia, 1940–45

Mobilisation on the Australian ‘home front’ during the Second World War enabled some women to move temporarily into employment usually reserved for men, and to earn significantly higher wages than they were accustomed to, but the benefits of this have been often overstated. Focusing on South Australian women in the city and rural areas who took up the new working opportunities — in munitions factories and the Australian Women’s Land Army in particular — this article demonstrates that relatively few women were entitled to higher wages, such wages were lower and paid later in South Australia than in other states, and that working conditions were unattractive and often dangerous. At the war’s end, the social imperative to marry and raise children, coupled with demands that they give up their place for male workers, then saw many women return to domesticity or less-rewarded and lower status ‘female occupations’.     

Immigration and Refugee Crises in Fourth-Century Greece: An Athenian Perspective

Abstract

The fourth-century B.C. was a period during which a large number of Greek cities were affected by civil wars, military conquests, and destruction, with the displacement of large numbers of men, women and children as a result. This has implications for the modern debate on Athenian attitudes to immigration, which normally focuses on just two groups of free non-citizens: adult, able-bodied men who moved to Athens voluntarily to take advantage of the city’s economic opportunities and (more recently) on the free non-citizen population who had come to Athens as slaves and who stayed on after their manumission. This article argues that refugees were likely to have constituted a considerable component of the migration to Athens during certain troubled periods in the course of the fourth century. This means that the size of Athens’s immigrant population was likely to have fluctuated considerably, that many of the refugees would have been destitute, that women and children (sometimes unaccompanied by adult male relatives) may have made up an even greater proportion of the non-citizen population than normally assumed, and, thus, that a considerable number of these immigrants would not have been able to contribute substantially to Athens’s grain trade or military. The implications of this for our assessment of the Athenian motives for admitting groups of refugees are discussed, and it is argued that the requirement that all male and all unaccompanied female immigrants had to find an Athenian sponsor and pay a special metic tax may have constituted a certain level of control over immigrant numbers.     

Releasing mother's burdens: child abandonment and retrieval in Madrid, 1890-1935

In nineteenth-century Europe, the foundling hospital grew beyond its traditional purpose of mitigating the shame of unwed mothers by also permitting widows, widowers, and poor married couples to abandon their children there temporarily. In the Foundling Hospital of Madrid (FHM), this new short-term abandonment could be completely anonymous due to the implementation of a wheel—a device on the outside wall of the institution that could be turned to place a child inside—which remained open until 1929. The use of survival-analysis techniques to disentangle the determinants of retrieval in a discrete framework reveals important differences in the situations of the women who abandoned their children at the FHM, partly depending on whether they accessed it through the Maternity Hospital after giving birth or they accessed it directly. The evidence suggests that those who abandoned their children through the Maternity Hospital retrieved them only when they had attained a certain degree of economic stability, whereas those who abandoned otherwise did so just as soon as the immediate condition prompting the abandonment had improved.     

A Man and a Perpetuum Mobile? Assigned Hermaphrodite Andreas Bruce's Memoirs

This article presents the memoirs of Andreas Bruce, a Swedish man that was assigned female sex at birth and later re-assigned sex as a male hermaphrodite. His memoirs, written by the end of the nineteenth century, are unique. They exhibit a rare example of what life could be like for gender transgressors during the nineteenth century. According to the memoirs, Bruce's transition and legal gender recognition was the source of some attention, but once he had gained a certificate of hermaphroditism and a male first name, his masculinity seldom seems to have been contested. Bruce navigates between describing himself as an ordinary man and describing his life story as unique.     

Bad blood: poverty, psychopathy and the politics of transgression in Kenya Colony, 1939-59

This article examines the inter-relationship between psychiatry and sex, both fertile fields within the recent historiography of colonialism and empire. Using a series of case files pertaining to European patients admitted to the Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi during the 1940s and 1950s, this article shows how sexual transgression among colonial Europeans precipitated, and was combined with, mental distress. Considering psychiatric treatment as a form of social control, the article investigates a number of cases in which a European patient had been perceived to have transgressed the normative sexual behaviour codes of settler society in Kenya. What these files suggest is that transgressive sexuality in Kenya was itself framed by indices, as insistent as they were uncertain, of gender, race and class. While psychiatry as social control has some degree of purchase here, more valuable is an attempt to discern the particular ways in which certain forms of sexual behaviour were understood in diagnostic terms. Men who had sex with Africans, we see, tended to be diagnosed as 'depressed' on arrival at the hospital but were judged to be mentally normal consequently. Women, by contrast, were liable to be diagnosed as psychopathic, a diagnosis, I argue, that helped to explain the uniquely transgressive status of impoverished European women living alone in the margins of white society. Unlike white men, moreover, women did not have to have sex with non-Europeans to transgress sexual codes: this is because female poverty was a sexual problem in a way that male poverty decidedly was not. Poor white women were marked by uncertainty over their sexual behaviour—and dubious racial identity in its turn—and the problem of social contamination was described by reference both to the polluted racial ancestry of an individual and to the prospective contamination of healthy racial stocks. This article aims to address current historical debates around sex and empire, 'white subalternity' and the social history of psychiatry and mental health. All names have been changed to protect patient anonymity.     

Population studies

A number of studies have been published about the population change in New Zealand between 1936 and 1986. During this time an intellectual and demographic revolution also took place simultaneously. From 1961 and 1986 the population increased from 2.4 million to 3.3 million mainly because of Polynesian immigration, and the elderly and females also increased. The Maoris became urban. Mortality stayed stable, but fertility declined to below replacement level in the 1980's. Murray Wilson (1988) analyzed the relationship of fertility and mortality in terms of a post-transitional (developed) society like Australia or the European norm of a 2-children family. In his view the youth culture, television, and female aspirations greatly influenced childrearing. Daniel Noin (1988) examined the current state of geographical research on mortality from a methodological point of view finding wide differences in mortality in Quebec, Brussels, Paris, and London attributable to culture. Mosley and Chen (1984) argued that social, cultural, and economic factors to mortality are mediated by individual, household, and community variables. Jones and Moon (1987) dealt with medical geography in the context of the consumption of health care and disease ecology. Momsen and Townsend (1987) addressed the role of women in developing countries stating that gender is socially created and it examined the worldwide subordination of women. In the 1980's a host of other authors have also touched on the subject of the demography of gender analyzing discrimination against female children, unmarried American women, and single parent families. Yet Fahey (1988) stated that gender was only regarded relevant by Australian geographers as a demographic variable.     

‘I Do Not Work: I Do Commercial Sex Work’. Ambiguities in the Discourse and Practice of Selling Sex in Mombasa,Kenya

Building on the narratives of women selling sex in Mombasa, this article shows how the livelihoods and strategies of women who self‐identify as sex workers are influenced by the discourses and activities of the NGO sector, the sex workers’ movement, and international tourism on the one hand, and by their struggle for survival and personal advancement on the other hand. More specifically, while the term ‘sex industries’ or ‘sex workers’ — as used by a number of local and international actors — is partly internalized by women selling sex, these terms obscure the more complicated realities of women who seek to secure income for their households.     

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater: Estimating fertility from subadult skeletons

Recent research interest has focused on the bioarchaeology of children. Although paleodemography is essential for accurate reconstructions of lifestyle and health in past populations, currently there is no published technique for estimating fertility and life expectancy at birth for skeletal populations in which adults are under‐enumerated. This paper provides a formula to predict Gross Reproductive Rate (GRR) from the proportion of young infants to subadults in a skeletal population. The formula was developed from 98 of Coale and Demeny's Female Model West Life Tables, which represented diverse fertility and mortality rates. The formula's accuracy was examined using independent samples from historical and archaeological cemeteries. Estimates of GRR from the subadult fertility formula were compared with estimates from Bocquet‐Appel and Masset's juvenile:adult ratio. Results indicate that the subadult fertility formula predicts GRR with consistent accuracy (R² = 0.98) and precision (± 1 offspring) in the model life tables, across diverse subadult age structures and demographic characteristics. The formula is useful for subadult populations with a proportion of perinates:subadults between 0.12 and 0.45. The adult component of the sample is not included in the analysis and thus the formula is similarly useful in cases where adults are under‐enumerated, or not. When applied to historical and archaeological populations, estimates for GRR are similar to previous estimates from the juvenile:adult ratio. Because crude birth rate and life expectancy at birth can be calculated from GRR using established fertility centred approaches to demography, the subadult fertility formula allows skeletal populations of diverse composition to be included in demographic research, essential for understanding of how mortality and fertility are affecting the morbidity profiles of subadult samples and for comparative bioarchaeological analyses. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Canary islands aborigin sex determination based on mandible parameters contrasted by amelogenin analysis

Sex determination using mandible parameters is population dependent. In order to assess which measurements better characterize sex in prehispanic individuals from the Canary Islands, we blindly contrasted the results obtained by visual inspection and osteometric measurements with those obtained by molecular sexing using amelogenin ancient DNA analysis on teeth from the same material. Unambiguous sex classification was achieved by amplification of sex specific amelogenin alleles in 56 out of 76 mandibles (73.78% of the cases). Visual inspection led to a correct diagnosis in 66.04% of cases, with a greater proportion of errors for female (54.17%) than male (17.24%) mandibles. Osteometric measurements were able to assign sex correctly in 72.2% in the best of cases (mandibular height), a proportion similar to that obtained using a discriminant function (71.2%). By logistic regression analysis, ramus breadth, index ramus breadth/ramus height and mandibular length were the parameters independently related with a mistaken diagnosis of female sex, whereas bigonial width, ramus height and mandibular length were the parameters more closely and independently related to a mistaken diagnosis of male sex. In conclusion, diagnosis based on visual examination of the mandible or on its metric measurement only serves to roughly estimate sex with an accuracy of around 70% or less, at least among the prehispanic population from Gran Canaria. Amplification of amelogenin alleles leads to unambiguous identification of male and female alleles in 73.68% of cases, at least among the prehispanic population from Gran Canaria.     

Competition,cooperation and resistance: women in the political field in Iraq

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003 many women supported the process of transition and became active in political parties and coalitions. A wide range of groups were also formed which pursued women's rights agendas and, in many cases, included a call for peace and reconciliation and charity activities for women and children. However, female political action and the field of women's rights remain divided by the same multiple boundaries of belonging which affect Iraqi society itself; women operate in specific ethnic and denominational, local and regional settings, and they support nationalist, secularist, left‐wing or Islamist agendas. Women's rights—whatever the direction—can be of major or minor concern. This article outlines female political action and draws attention to the key issues which are discussed, in particular, by secular feminists in Iraq. In so doing, the article highlights how women in Iraq have not only lost, as a wide range of observers argue, but have also benefited from the restructure of the political landscape. Female political activists are still faced with old and new social, cultural, legal and political obstacles. The article argues that when women support narratives that leave men's superiority untouched, they are not simply victims of men or ‘false consciousness'; women either compete and cooperate, or they reject ideological narratives and power relations, while pursuing agendas of individual interest. Yet, despite competition among women and women's groups, and women's loyalty to agendas controlled by men, radical overtones that resist male domination can be heard— and should be supported.