Not So Funny

Here's a word the Language Monitor could consider adding in its search for the one-millionth word in English: Gendercide.

China grapples with legacy of its ‘missing girls’
Disturbing demographic imbalance spurs drive to change age-old practices

By Eric Baculinao
Producer
NBC News
Sept 14, 2004

BEIJING - China is asking where all the girls have gone.

And the sobering answer is that this vast nation, now the world's fastest-growing economy, is confronting a self-perpetuated demographic disaster that some experts describe as "gendercide" -- the phenomenom caused by millions of families resorting to abortion and infanticide to make sure their one child was a boy.

The age-old bias for boys, combined with China's draconian one-child policy imposed since 1980, has produced what Gu Baochang, a leading Chinese expert on family planning, described as "the largest, the highest, and the longest" gender imbalance in the world.

...‘Missing girls’
From a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early 80s, the male surplus progressively rose to 111 in 1990, 116 in 2000, and is now is close to 120 boys for each 100 girls at the present time, according to a Chinese think-tank report.

The bias for boys is hardly new; from a Chinese book written somewhere between 1000 and 700 B.C.E. :

"When a son is born,
Let him sleep on the bed,
Clothe him with fine clothes,
And give him jade to play...
When a daughter is born,
Let her sleep on the ground,
Wrap her in common wrappings,
And give broken tiles to play..."

As someone who has benefited personally from China's decision to relinquish so many of its lovely little girls, I find myself both happy with its result and greatly disturbed by what it means for that country. While traveling China in 1996 to adopt, several of us asked our guide who the Chinese boys were expected to marry, given the departure of so many girls to countries around the world. The answer was that they were expected to leave the country, get educated and return home to marry the boys. Fat chance, we all thought, hugging our little girls ever so much closer.
The word "gendercide" seems exactly right to describe the impact on Chinese society.