Author: gtate

By G. Tate

In America, there is the stereotype that China favors male children over female children. This sexism is apparent in the amount of abandoned baby girls. In between 1999 and 2013, 88.9% of the 71,632 Chinese orphans adopted and brought into the United States were female.¹ This statistic would imply that females outnumber males in the Chinese orphanages. The One-Child Policy plays into this sexism, although Chinese officials claim the “policy promote[s] gender equality.”²

“According to a February 2005 report in the Weekend Standard, a Chinese business newspaper, demographers in China found a ratio of 117 boys per 100 girls under the age of 5 in the 2000 census. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, put into effect in 1979 in order to curb population growth, and a strong cultural preference for male children, this gender gap could result in as many as 60 million ‘missing’ girls from the population by the end of the decade.”3(Russell 2007)

 

“There are about 7 million abortions in China per year, 70 percent of which are estimated to be of females.”⁴ (Russell 2007)

The statistics listed above contribute to the idea of sexism and the idolization of male children. In Pink Pagoda: One Man’s Quest to End Gendercide in China, James Garrow describes his personal experiences of saving “more than forty thousand… babies whose lives [he was] instrumental in saving over… twelve years.”⁵ One of the first babies he saves was a baby girl “because of China’s ‘one child policy,’ [the father] wanted to ‘put the baby aside.'”⁶

It is very obvious that male children are given a priority in Chinese civilization due to the one child policy in such a way that they are either aborted, murdered, or abandoned.

 

More Information at One Child Policy and Personal Adoption Stories

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¹“Intercountry Adoption – Statistics,” US Department of State (blog), http://adoption.state.gov/about_us/statistics.php.
²Chow, Esther Ngan-ling, and Catherine White Berheide. Women, The Family, and Policy: a Global Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 1994, page 71.
³Russell, Beth Nonte. “The Mystery of the Chinese Baby Shortage.” The New York Times, January 23, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/opinion/23russell.html?pagewanted=all (accessed April 3, 2014).
⁴Russell.
⁵Garrow, James. The Pink Pagoda: One Man’s Quest to End Gendercide in China. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2012. http://furman.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=875581 (accessed March 05, 2014).
⁶Garrow.
Both pictures are by real00 on Flickr.