From too few girls to too many men

A FEW years ago it looked like the curse that would never lift. In China, north India and other parts of Asia, ever more girls were being destroyed by their parents. Many were detected by ultrasound scans and aborted; others died young as a result of neglect; some were murdered. In 2010 this newspaper put a pair of empty pink shoes on the cover and called it gendercide. In retrospect, we were too pessimistic. Today more girls are quietly being allowed to survive.Gendercide happens where families are small and the desire for sons is overwhelming. In places where women are expected to move out of their parents’ homes upon marriage and into their husbands’ households, raising a girl can seem like an act of pure charity. So many parents have avoided it that, by one careful estimate, at least 130m girls and women are missing worldwide. It is as if the entire female population of Britain, France, Germany and Spain had been wiped out.