The 2011 census in India has brought attention to the continual gender gap in the country. The percentage of girls has rapidly dropped in the past two decades causing a social catastrophe throughout the region. Every since the arrival of ultrasounds, two decades ago in India, there has been more the 20 million female fetuses aborted to secure a male heir. India’s law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of the baby has had no effect on the decline of girls born there. Doctors facing this crime “in theory” will face having their medical license suspended. With this distorted gender ratio it will become more difficult for men to find wives. As the price of medical equipment becomes cheaper, more and more families are aborting their girls. In 1999, the ratio was 945 women for every 1,000 men, but since the last census in 2011 the ratio has dropped to 914 women for every 1,000 men. Researchers found that in India it is socially acceptable to have a girl if you already have a boy, but if there is already a daughter in the family welcoming another girl is often discarded. They also found that lack of education had no effect on this practice and wealthier families often found ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection. Well educated families face the same if not more harsh urgency to have a boy than poor families because in a family expecting five or six children the birth of a girl is disappointing but to one expecting only two or three kids it’s a calamity. The women who have only daughters are desperate for a son and will continue to have kids until they get a son and Midwives are even paid less for delivering girls. In most of the developing countries, just being women is a frightening thing.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/indias-girl-gap/?scp=1&sq=india%20gender%20gap&st=cse