Gender Justice

The latest issue of The Economist is leading on a topic related to the last posting, what they term "gendercide", meaning by this the problem of abortion of female fetuses in many countries of the world and especially in China and India. This general phenomena is based, as the leader article correctly argues, on a confluence between tradition and modernity since the traditional preference for boys is reinforced by the rise of technologies that enable the status of the fetus to be understood well before birth. The result: skewed sex ratios that are producing increasing numbers of males and decreasing numbers of females, something that is not only in itself problematic but has many troubling consequences. The key point made in the leader article is: "all countries need to raise the value of girls". As is stated in its argument one central way this can be accomplished is by means of encouragement of female education so that the economic thinking behind the attack on females can be combatted. Certainly the placing of value on girls in a world-wide way is one of the central questions of current global justice.