Isidingo - The Need

The latest reports that there are 30 million more men in China (at marriageable age) than women is stark evidence of the sexual inequality that is rampant across the Asian continent. When China, in an effort to rein in its population growth, brought in the infamous one child policy it might have foreseen the dire consequences. While the communists can preach about equality, the truth is, traditionally, boys are more wanted than girls. And so, if a couple was limited to only having one child, they would choose that child to be a boy.
Let's not couch this in euphemisms. That means that some 30 million baby girls have been murdered, either aborted if the technology is available to determine sex before birth, or drowned by the midwife before they take their first breath of air.
In other parts of Asia infant girls have sand or salt poured into their mouths, are buried alive or tossed into latrines.
Now it's payback, with the shortage of wives in Pakistan, India and China reaching crises levels.
One would think that this would bode well for women. Those people eager to push market driven politics would tell you that a rarer commodity is more precious.
Sadly that is not the case.
The lack of wives sees men turn to abduction or human trafficking. Worse still are the horror stories coming out of the Indian subcontinent where women, marrying one man, are forced to sexually service all the males in the family.
You would have a difficult time finding this sort of thing in Beijing, New Delhi or Islamabad. But in rural areas, where women are ranked below water buffalo, the real misery lies.
It will take years to correct this imbalance that has thwarted efforts to bring human rights to women in these places. And it needs to be actively corrected.
To this end authorities are banning the use of pregnancy scans to determine the sex of the fetus. But that is a baby step. While wanting to stop spiraling population growth governments find themselves dealing with old belief systems, and traditions such as that in India where a woman must pay her husband a dowry for the pleasure of marrying him.
Interestingly enough, the children of the One Child Policy in China, known as "Little Emperors" because of the attention lavished on them, are finding it difficult to find employment.
More and more companies are refusing to employ the Little Emperors because they believe they are weak, unable to cope with day to day decision making, lack the competitive edge that children who come from larger families have.
This social upheavel could prove disastrous for these countries that spawn entire generations of people who have grown up being the centre of attention and lacking the knocks and bumps that come from siblings.
Not only that but they treat the other third of their population as goods to be traded.
Perhaps these men will be prevented from finding a mate. And nature, in due course, will be able to set this disaster right.