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The Badger Herald

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The Badger Herald

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Lecturer draws attention to sex selection trend in Asia

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Mara Hvistendahl, a freelance journalist who worked in China, said her time in Asia raised her awareness of sex selection in some[/media-credit]

A freelance journalist spoke to a diverse audience about sex selection in specific Asian countries and how this policy is practiced as part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Distinguished Lecture Series on Wednesday.

Mara Hvistendahl said she became interested in the study of sex selection after spending time in China working as a freelance journalist.

While there, she noticed that the numbers on each Chinese census could not be adequately explained. This phenomena, Hvistendahl said, made her want to “put the pieces together” and figure out why so many couples are utilizing sex selective abortion.

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“I think choosing girls over boys is wrong, and choosing boys over girls is wrong. There is no reason for this. These are essentially consumer choices that are coming into an area that doesn’t need consumer choices,” said Hvistendahl.

Although not every country in Asia has been impacted by the use of sex-selective abortion, Hvistendahl said countries that have implemented this are already beginning to suffer the consequences.

Sex selection began happening in the 1980s but really took off in the 1990s, according to Hvistendahl, who said 15 percent of the men in China and India would lack a female counterpart by the 2020s.

This shortage of women is still affecting the country in the present, she said. 

Many people in China are involved in assisting men in finding partners, and men in Taiwan and South Korea pay around $10,000 to purchase a wife from countries in eastern Asia, she said.

“In the end, there are not enough women to go around,” Hvistendahl said.

Some other issues relating to the scarcity of women include trafficking and polyandry, when a woman is shared among multiple men.

Hvistendahl explained a lot of people, especially in America, have not heard about this issue because it involves the highly contentious subject of abortion.

“We need to study the problem more,” Hvistendahl said. “It is hard to know how to act on this issue when there isn’t much attention on it.”

She suggested providing some sophisticated incentives toward a solution could be successful, such as affirmative action.

Two UW graduate students, Norma-Jean Simon and Dan Molzahn, attended Hvistendahl’s lecture and said the issue should receive more wide attention on the world stage.

“I work with students who are from India and China, and I have talked with them about arranged marriages and other issues and how these things directly impact their lives. So I thought it was interesting to hear more about this issue from a professional standpoint,” Molzahn said.

Hvistendahl is the author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, as well as a correspondent with Science magazine.

When asked to provide a take away message for students on the UW campus regarding this issue, Hvistendahl said, “Sex-selection is a major global issue that deserves more attention than it gets. I hope that students can act on this issue and help in the future.”

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