According to a
United Nations Statistics Division report, there are 57 million more men than
women in the world today. And most of that ratio imbalance is in the under-50
age groups. Women, now, still outnumber men in the over-70 age group, although
less than they used to.
I could just imagine all
those “extra” young men pairing with the “extra” older women. In a spunky mood,
I saw the statistics as amusing.
But wait a minute.
Nature doesn’t work that way. How could...
there be such a gross imbalance? I decided to find out. And in doing so, all my ideas for a humorous topic wound up, as they say, on the cutting-room floor.
Much of the
imbalance can be attributed to three main factors: China’s state-mandated
one-child policy that began in the late 1970s, a preference for sons in India
and sub-Saharan Africa, and a resurgence in femicide.
The majority of Chinese children given over to foreign adoptions in the 1980s were girls. The majority of elective abortions in China are of females.
In many developing
countries, sons are given preference when family resources are scarce. This
casual neglect leads to poor health for daughters and early death. In some
cases, girls are even sold in order to better support the boys.
But why? Because
there are still nations in which only males can inherit and own property, where
they automatically earn higher wages, and where the families of girls must pay
handsome dowries when their daughters marry.
And finally, there’s
the tragedy of femicide, which is the killing of women simply because they are
women. This abhorrent practice is growing in Mexico and Latin America (some of the highest numbers of femicide are coming from Guatamala).
How can there be so much inhumanity in our humanity? How can we not be
outraged?
It would appear
that we have turned the circle of life into an inverted pyramid. We’re
investing billions of dollars in medical research that allows the old to get
even older, while the young are having fewer babies.
Some would argue
that these trends represent nature’s desperate attempt at population control. They
point out the possibility that we humans have taken so much from our living
planet that the Earth is reining us in, weeding us out — diminishing us as a
species. Others attribute such atrocities and oppression on omnipotence rather
than to humanity for allowing them to continue. I find it impossible to see how
the mistreatment of women could ever be part of God’s will.
But setting aside
the problems of developing nations far from our country’s borders, what about
us? How are our demographics skewing? We are definitely top-heavy with aging
baby boomers. And we have fewer young people to support and take care of them
and to pay into our safety-net systems (Social Security, health care, economic
growth and so on). I dug a little deeper into the world population data. It seems that the rest of the world is in the same boat. The
whole of our living human population today is far older than it is young.
Who is going to care
for all these old people? Or to put a finer point on it, who is going to want
to? The exhausted young women or all those “extra” favored young men?
Now, I’m no math
whiz, but it’s not all that difficult to see where this trend is heading. And
it isn’t a pretty picture. We (and by “we,” I mean all sensible humans with the
capacity for rational thought) appear to be way overdue for some serious
attitude and cultural adjustments when it comes to how we regard our daughters —
all of our daughters.
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in The Daily Sentinel as published in the Sunday, April 1, 2012 edition.
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