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‘Missing girls’
increasing in East Asia: UNDP |
The problem of “missing girls’’ – a scenario where more boys
are born than girls, as girl foetuses are presumably
aborted, and women die from health and nutrition neglect –
is growing in the Asia Pacific. Birth gender disparity is
greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born for every 100
girls.
China and India together account for more than 85 million of
the nearly 100 million “missing’’ women estimated to have
died from discriminatory treatment in health care, nutrition
access or pure neglect – or because they were never born in
the first place, “Power, Voice and Rights – A Turning Point
for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific,’’ a report
brought out by the United Nations Development Programme here
to mark the International Women’s Day said.
One-tenth of women in the region report being assaulted by
their partners, and a majority of women who do work – up to
85 per cent of South Asia’s working women – are engaged in
unstable low-end work in the informal economy. Few women
hold property. Although women predominate in agriculture,
they head only 7 per cent of farms, compared to 20 per cent
in most other regions of the world.
The region is far behind where it could be on basic issues,
such as protecting women from violence, upholding
entitlements to property – even allowing people to divorce
in an informed and reasonable way.
Few countries have adopted or implemented laws prohibiting
violence against women, despite widespread evidence of
discrimination and assault. Nearly half of the countries in
South Asia, and more than 60 per cent of those in the
Pacific, have no laws against domestic violence. Nor are
there many provisions against sexual harassment in
workplaces, though 30 to 40 per cent of working women report
experiencing verbal, physical or sexual abuse, the report
said.
Too often, customs or religious beliefs have become a
rationale for laws and legal systems to ignore or soft
peddle or even justify issues such as discriminatory
inheritance practices and the multiple forms of violence
that specifically target women, the report said. Aarti Dhar |
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