While gender reveals in the United States may take place in a burst of pink and blue latex balloons, surrounded by the buzzing enthusiasm of friends, loved ones, and parents-to-be, the same cannot be said in India. Instead, such gender reveals are illegal, carried out in rural areas by fraudulent doctors who hope not to celebrate the gender of a new baby, but to control it.
In India, approximately 4.2 to 12.1 million selective female abortions took place between 1980 and 2010. These numbers of female feticide throughout the country have resulted in a skewed sex ratio of 110 boys for every 100 girls nationwide. These 40.3 million “missing women”—women who would have been born in a world absent of gender discrimination between 1970 and 2020— reflect an inherent cultural prejudice against women with dangerous consequences. The country’s preference for sons stems from their higher status in Indian society, marked by the honor of performing funeral rites, the expectation of caring for their parents in old age, and obligation to provide financial support for their relatives. Additionally, having a daughter can prove to be a financial burden, as a typical dowry—a gift given from the bride to the groom’s family—can cost three to eight times an Indian man’s income. Although this practice was outlawed in 1961, its continued prevalence results from the vast majority of Indian marriages being arranged and treated as de facto business agreements. In order for brides to wed more well off, high-status grooms, their families must be willing to pay a dowry, while grooms have an incentive to accept this payment as their family may have female children of their own for whom they must pay a dowry. This serves as an additional contributing factor to India’s preference for sons, further exacerbating the country’s skewed sex ratio.
As a result of the increasing gender disparity, the Indian parliament passed the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act in 1994, which aimed to ban the determination of sex before birth. It was later updated to be the Pre-conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PC-PNDT) to ban the use of sex selection technologies and the marketing of prenatal sex determination techniques. The PC-PNDT requires that any facility using machines that can be used to determine a baby’s sex be registered as a genetic clinic and keep records of every diagnostic procedure with specific justifications for each test. Doctors must declare on every report they have not disclosed a baby’s sex. Additionally, the act dictates that scanning machines such as electrocardiograms (ECGs) cannot be taken away from official diagnostic centers, but this policy doesn’t prevent many doctors from illegally transporting them to rural areas for sex-determination purposes anyway.
Although rates of sex-selective abortion have decreased in recent years, these practices live on as gender discrimination persists in Indian society. Given that India is both the world’s most populous country and largely rural, the PC-PNDT is difficult to enforce, and its conviction rate reflects that. Only 206 doctors were convicted of illegally transporting scanning machinery from 2003 to 2014. Preventing the transport of ultrasound and ECG machines further poses an issue as many patients who need these devices are not ambulant, meaning failing to bring them machines in critical situations could result in a delay or reduction in quality care. While the PC-PNDT is technically a solution to India’s skewed gender ratio, it is an inefficient one whose enactment creates additional problems for those with health conditions requiring scanning equipment. In India, a mere 5 percent of ultrasounds are carried out on pregnant women, while the remaining 95 percent are ordered for conditions unrelated to pregnancy. The PC-PNDT is almost unenforceable in rural areas, as evidenced by courts treating the improper maintenance of medical records—a key part of the PC-PNDT—quite leniently. This encourages further indiscretions and does not address the underlying mindset that perpetuates this discriminatory behavior. The act merely puts a flimsy cover on the issue of female feticide, entirely ignoring the root of the problem: deeply ingrained societal views that devalue women. The PC-PNDT should be the beginning of the solution to India’s missing women, not the end.
Further, when the PC-PNDT applies to the entirety of India, why is the gender balance so much more skewed in the North? The answer lies in that the issue of sex-selective abortion and female feticide remains about societal attitudes more than anyone cares to admit or address. Rather than restrictions on medical equipment, the solution to this issue lies elsewhere. Educational efforts throughout the country emphasizing gender equality and the societal value of both men and women would make more significant strides in changing the mindsets of those who carry out these abortions. For example, training teachers on the importance of letting go of gender-biased expectations would set the foundation to present men and women as equal in schools. The value of this solution makes sense when considering North India—with a significantly worse gender balance—also nurses a lower literacy rate, worse higher education institutions, and lower Gross Enrollment Ratios than the South. The weaker northern economy also makes it more rural than its southern counterpart, decreasing overall investment in education, hence lending itself to a stronger societal bias against women—who are often excluded from the learning opportunities offered to men. If India wants justice for their missing women, it cannot rely only on the PC-PNDT. Education is one of the only efficient and long term solutions.