Female infanticide is as old as many cultures and has likely accounted for millions of gender-selective deaths throughout history. It remains a critical concern in a number of countries today, notably the two most populous countries, China and India. Female infanticide reflects the low status accorded to women in many parts of the world and is arguably the most brutal and destructive manifestation of existing anti-female bias. It is closely linked to the phenomena of sex-selective abortion, which targets female foetuses almost exclusively, and neglect of girl children. While men tend to be the main victims of war and political-military genocide, the example of female infanticide reminds us that there are institutionalised forms of discrimination and violence that are at least as destructive as the more "traditional" forms of mass killing.

Female infanticide can be defined as "the intentional killing of baby girls due to the preference for male babies and the low value associated with the birth of females." Gendercide Watch, a Web-based educational initiative, founded in February 2000 to confront gender-selective atrocities against both women and men, considers female infanticide to be one of the major forms of "gendercide" – gender-selective large-scale killing. Some would dispute the equation of infanticide with genocide, because it is not the result of central State planning and because killings occur singly rather than en masse. Nonetheless, as human rights discourse in recent years has grown increasingly concerned with acts of omission as well as direct commission, governments and other actors can be just as guilty of mass killing through neglect or silent encouragement, as by direct murder. They can be held accountable for failing to confront culturally ingrained practices like female infanticide.

The Indian case

In rural India, the centuries-old practice of female infanticide is still highly prevalent. According to census statistics, the gender imbalance has tilted from 972 females per 1000 males in 1901, to 929 per 1000 today. A study in Tamil Nadu state found that female infanticide is rampant, mostly among Hindu families. Of the 1250 families studied, 740 had only one girl child and 249 admitted directly that they had done away with an unwanted girl child. More than 213 of the families had more than one male child, whereas half the respondents had only one daughter. As recently as 1993, 196 girls died under suspicious circumstances in a poor area of Tamil Nadu: some were fed dry, unhulled rice that punctured their gullets, or were made to swallow poisonous powdered fertiliser. Others were smothered with a wet towel, strangled or allowed to starve to death.

The bias against females in India is related to the fact that sons are called upon to provide the income, doing most of the work in the fields. Thus, sons are looked to as a type of insurance and the high value given to males decreases the value given to females. The problem is also intimately tied to the institution of dowry, in which the family of a prospective bride must pay enormous sums of money to the family in which the woman will live after marriage. Though formally outlawed, dowry is still pervasive.

India is also the heartland of sex-selective abortion (female feticide). Amniocentesis was introduced in 1974 to ascertain birth defects in a sample population, but was quickly appropriated by medical entrepreneurs for prenatal sex determination. A spate of sex-selective abortions followed. A UNICEF report in 1984 on abortions after prenatal sex determination in Bombay stated that 7999 out of 8000 aborted foetuses were females. Deficits in nutrition and health care also overwhelmingly target female children. Indian state governments have sometimes launched initiatives to reduce female infanticide and feticide, but such programmes have barely begun to address the scale of the catastrophe.

The Chinese case

In China, a tradition of infanticide and abandonment, especially of females, existed before the foundation of the People's Republic in 1949. After the communists took power, a decline of excess female mortality has been reported, due to the action of a strong government that tried to modify this and other harmful customs. However, the government's "one-child policy" – introduced in 1979 to control spiralling population growth – led to a sharp increase in the 1980s of the number of "missing" women. Couples are penalised by wage cuts and reduced access to social services when children are born "outside the plan".

The government appeared to recognise this linkage by allowing families in rural areas (where anti-female bias is stronger) to have a second child without penalty if the first was a girl. Nonetheless, in September 1997, WHO's Regional Committee for the Western Pacific issued a report claiming that "more than 50 million women were estimated to be ‘missing' in China because of the institutionalised killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing's population control programme that limits parents to one child. This is sometimes referred to as "the biggest single holocaust in human history."

However, on balance, the phenomenon does not appear as widespread or destructive as in India. The Chinese government has taken some energetic steps to combat the practice of female infanticide and sex-selective abortion of female foetuses, e.g., by the Marriage Law and Women's Protection Law (WPL) which both prohibit female infanticide. The WPL also prohibits discrimination against "women who give birth to female babies" and the Maternal Health Care Law of 1994 strictly prohibits prenatal sex determination for non-medical purposes.

Strategies to fight female infanticide

A number of strategies has proven effective to confront female infanticide and related phenomena like sex-selective abortion and abandonment or neglect of girl children. The following guidelines for Chinese policy-makers can easily be generalised to other countries where these practices are rife:

• The principle of equality between men and women should be more widely promoted through the news media to change the preference for sons and improve the general public's awareness; gender equality should also be reflected in specific social and economic policies to protect the basic rights of women and children, especially girls.
• Government regulations prohibiting the use of prenatal sex identification techniques for non-medical purposes should be strictly enforced, and violators should be punished accordingly.
• Legislation against infanticide, abandonment and neglect of female children, as well as laws and regulations to protect women and children should be strictly enforced.
• Campaigns to protect women and children from being kidnapped or sold into servitude should be effectively strengthened.
• Family planning programmes should focus on effective public education, good counselling and service delivery, and voluntary community participation to increase contraceptive prevalence, reduce unplanned pregnancies, and minimise the need for an induced abortion.