It is necessary to distinguish that girls are children and women are adults — society at large often seems to conveniently forget this fact. “Young women” are women in their twenties, not teenagers or children.
China’s one-child policy has been controversial since its inception in 1979 as a compulsory method of family planning. In order to enforce compliance with this law, families were often subjected to huge fines, or forced abortions and sterilisations. Not only is this a major breach of human rights, but it also resulted in baby girls being disproportionately affected by the policy.
Male children are favoured in Chinese culture due to the idea that they alone carry their family’s lineage. Women are considered to become part of their husband’s family once they marry into it and as a consequence of this belief, an overwhelming preference for baby boys began to emerge after the one-child policy came into force.
This combination of factors caused dire circumstances to arise for girls, the most obvious of which is China’s skewed gender ratio — as of 2016, there were 34 million more men than women in the country. China has also experienced a surge in the amount of baby girls in its orphanages, along with increased rates of female infanticide, abortions after the gender of the baby has been determined, and baby girls being sold, trafficked, or abandoned in public places. Sex selection practices of this kind have given rise to the term, “missing women”, of which China is estimated to have 50 million.
The lasting side effects of China’s one-child policy have not yet been discovered and will undoubtedly emerge in the years to come, however, this should not negate the harmful, gender-specific consequences that the policy has already had upon an entire generation of girls who will grow up in the shadow of their missing sisters.
Written by Alex Mulhare
Artwork by Zara Masood
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