Gendercide

Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific sex.^[1] The term is related to the general concepts of assault and murder against victims due to their gender, with violence against women and men being problems dealt with by human rights efforts.

Gendercide is reported to be a rising problem in several countries. Census statistics report that in countries such as China and India, the male to female ratio is as high as 120 men for every 100 women.^[2] Gendercide also takes the forms of infanticide, and lethal violence against a particular gender at any stage of life.

Origin of the term

The term gendercide was first coined by American feminist Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. It refers to gender-selective mass killing. Warren drew "an analogy between the concept of genocide" and what she called "gendercide". In her book, Warren wrote:

By analogy, gendercide would be the deliberate extermination of persons of a particular sex (or gender). Other terms, such as "gynocide" and "femicide," have been used to refer to the wrongful killing of girls and women. But "gendercide" is a sex-neutral term, in that the victims may be either male or female. There is a need for such a sex-neutral term, since sexually discriminatory killing is just as wrong when the victims happen to be male. The term also calls attention to the fact that gender roles have often had lethal consequences, and that these are in important respects analogous to the lethal consequences of racial, religious, and class prejudice.^[3]

Femicide

Femicide is defined as the systematic killing of women for various reasons, usually cultural. The word is attested from the 1820s.^[4] According to the United Nations, the biologically normal gender ratio at birth ranges from 102 to 106 males per 100 females. However, ratios higher than normal – sometimes as high as 130 – have been observed. This is now causing increasing concern in some South Asian, East Asian, and Central Asian countries.^[5] Such disparities almost always reflect a preference for boys as a result of deeply embedded social, cultural, political and economic factors.

The most widespread form of femicide is in the form of gender-selective infanticide in cultures with strong preferences for male offspring such as China and India. According to the United Nations, male-to-female ratios, which range from 102-106 boys for every 100 girls in normal circumstances, have experienced radical changes.^[6]

Sex ratios at birth over time in China:^[7]

• 106:100 in 1979 (106 boys for every 100 girls)
• 111:100 in 1988
• 117:100 in 2001
• 120:100 in 2005

In India, male children are preferred because the parents are looking for heirs who will take care of them in their old age. Additionally, the cost of a dowry, the price the family has to pay for their daughter to be married off, is very high in India; while a male heir would bring a dowry to the family by way of marriage. According to the British publication, The Independent, the 2011 census revealed 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged under the age of seven, up from 6 million in 2001 and from 4.2 million in 1991. The sex ratio in the age group is now 915 girls to 1,000 boys, the lowest since records began in 1961.^[8]

The honor killing and self-immolation condoned or tolerated by the Kurdish administration in Iraqi Kurdistan has been labeled as "gendercide" by Mojab (2003).^[9] There have been reports of femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.^[10]

Androcide

Androcide is the systematic killing of men or boys for various reasons, usually cultural. Androcide may happen during war to reduce an enemy's potential pool of soldiers.

Examples include the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurdish males that were considered “battle-aged” (or approximately ages 15–50)^[11][12] in Iraqi Kurdistan. While many of these deaths took place after the Kurdish men were captured and processed at concentration camp, the worst instances of the gendercide happened at the end of the campaign (August 25-September 6, 1988).

Another incident of androcide was the Srebrenica massacre of approximately 8,000 Bosniak men and boys on July 12, 1995, ruled as an act of genocide by the International Court of Justice.^[13][14] From the morning of 12 July, Serb forces began gathering men and boys from the refugee population in Potočari and holding them in separate locations, and as the refugees began boarding the buses headed north towards Bosniak-held territory, Serb soldiers separated out men of military age who were trying to clamber aboard. Occasionally, younger and older men were stopped as well (some as young as 14 or 15).^[15][16][17]

Gendercide situations in fiction

The 2003 film Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women, an Indian movie directed by Manish Jha, features a dystopian situation resulting in 2050 from accumulated violence against women over many years. A wealthy man in one village discovers the existence of a young woman not too far from his home, and he buys the woman as a sex slave to be used by him and his sons. In this wretched town in which only men exist aside from the women, the wealthy man's family is torn apart while the victim finds herself mercilessly dominated by more men. The film received critical acclaim, with the frank nature of the brutality and despair portrayed being cited by many reviewers, and it sparked increased debate over the contemporary problem of rape in India and other human rights issues in the nation.^[18]

The 1985 book The Handmaid's Tale depicts a story of a fascist military dictatorship controlled by a clique of theocratic ideologues. With the population of both men and women having been vastly cut down, fertile women are relatively scarce and mass numbers of non-fertile women are forced into becoming unpersons. Fertile women are regarded as property with few rights, being unable to read and do other basic activities. Canadian author Margaret Atwood created the work as a warning about totalitarianism and oppression of women in the modern age; in particular, she had experienced a fellowship in the then divided Berlin in the early 1980s, visiting the Soviet-dominated areas and witnessing a general despair, which helped inspire the book's beginnings.^[19][20][21]

See also

• Female foeticide in India
• Female infanticide in China
• Genocide
• Honor killing
• Missing women of Asia
• Witch-hunt

References

Further reading

• A comprehensive analysis of gendercide in China was delivered by author Talia Carner at the 2007 U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
• Warren, Mary Anne (1985). Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Rowman & Allanheld. ISBN 0-8476-7330-8. 
• Russell, Diana E.H., ed.; Roberta A. Harmes (2001). Femicide in Global Perspective. Teachers College Press. ISBN 0-8077-4047-0. 
• Sanford, Victoria (2008). Guatemala : Del Genocidio Al Feminicidio/From Genocide to Femicide. F&G Editores. ISBN 99922-61-88-9. 
• Shahrzad Mojab. (2003). Kurdish Women in the Zone of Genocide and Gendercide. Al-Raida 21(103): 20–25.

External links

• Femicide in Guatemala--Guernica Magazine (guernicamag.com)
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Situation of the Rights of Women in Ciudad Juárez (2002) — Report by OAS human rights agency.
• The Economist - No place for your daughters (November 24, 2005)