Cash for Girls

---

Part Three of The Current

Cash for Girls - Shailaja Chandra

Imagine that for every 100 Canadian boys entering kindergarten this year, more than eight may never have a choice of finding a wife. It would be a personal challenge to be sure; its impact on Canada impossible to calculate.

And that's what India faces. A new study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet estimates there may have been as many as 12 million selective abortions of female fetuses in the past 30 years. That's about the population of Ontario -- women just missing from Indian society.

As part of our project Shift on demographic change, we're looking at efforts to close that growing gap between the births of girls and boys in India. Shailaja Chandra is the former Executive Director of National Population Stabilization Fund and has written and researched women's health issues. She was also the head of the Civil Service in Delhi and that's where we reached her.

Cash for Girls - Prabhat Jha

More now on that study in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet published in May. It shows just how quickly the gap between the number of Indian girls and boys is growing.

Professor Prabhat Jha is the lead author of the study. He's the Director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Global Health Research. He was in Toronto.

Cash for Girls - Mara Hvistendahl

Of course, India isn't the only country where baby girls go "missing." Journalist Mara Hvistendahl has examined sex selection in India - and a number of other countries. Her findings are contained in her first book: Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. Mara Hvistendahl joined us from Washington, DC.

Related Links:

• India tries cash incentives to save its girls By Ben Arnoldy - Christian Science Monitor
• As Wealth and Literacy Rise in India, Report Says, So Do Sex-Selective Abortions By Jim Yardley - New York Times
• Up to 12 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India during the last 30 years - Pioneer News Service New Delhi
• How sex selection of babies has led to a huge surplus of men and why that's bad for all of us - Mara Hvistendahl in conversation with Brian Bethune - Maclean's Magazine
• 'Sex selection' is creating a new endangered species: women. A journalist investigates the countries with too many men By J. Gabriel Boylan - Boston Globe

Other segments from today's show:

• Syrian Refugees
• Cyber War