Gender-equitable education systems can contribute to reductions in school-related gender-based violence and harmful practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation. Gender-equitable education systems help keep both girls and boys in school, building prosperity for entire countries. An education free of negative gender norms has direct benefits for boys, too. In many countries, norms around masculinity can fuel disengagement from school, child labour, gang violence and recruitment into armed groups.
The need or desire to earn an income also causes boys to drop out of secondary school, as many of them believe the curriculum is not relevant to work opportunities. This will only be achieved when the most disadvantaged girls are supported to enter and complete pre-primary and primary education.
Our work:. We must commit to addressing the digital divide — where gender gaps in connectivity, skills, jobs and online safety persist. As schools reopen, education systems in many countries may once again have to ask the question. This resource presents an empirical overview of what works to support learning outcomes for girls in emergencies.
This course aims to strengthen the capacity of UNICEF's education staff globally in gender equality applied to education programming. The first theory is an evolutionary one which says that in order to have an equal number of males and female in adulthood, there have to be slightly more males born. That is because being a male is a dangerous thing.
Males are more likely than females to die in childhood and at all stages of life - from accidents, taking risks, suicide and from health problems. So more males than females at the start of life should mean equal numbers of men and women in adulthood, so the theory goes. In fact, adult women always end up slightly outnumbering adult men in the UK, according to Office for National Statistics figures - and living longer.
There are lots of different factors that could determine whether a male sperm carrying a Y chromosome or a female sperm carrying an X chromosome is first in the race to fertilise the woman's egg. These include the ages of the parents, the woman's ovulation cycle, levels of stress, diet and sexual position.
One popular theory is that the odds of having a girl increase by having sex several days before ovulation and then abstaining so that the female sperm, which live longer, but swim more slowly than male sperm, outlast their counterparts. Conversely, if sex happens closer to ovulation or after it, the best swimmers get to the egg first and boys are produced.
Parents may swear by these techniques, but scientists say there is little evidence they make any difference. There is also some research which suggests parental stress could lead to the birth of more girls, while living through wars and conflicts may give rise to more male conceptions.
In some cases, though, wartime is associated with a higher share of girl babies. This may relate to the fact that heightened maternal stress , such as would occur during wartime, can lead to an increased likelihood of a miscarriage which is more likely to occur among male fetuses. Further evidence of this association between maternal stress and the increased share of girl babies emerges from an analysis of births in the vicinity of the Kobe earthquake in Japan, which showed that the share of females born nine months after that event was significantly higher than would have been expected under normal circumstances.
Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work.
President Michael Dimock explains why. For example, research results suggest that higher education of the parents means a lower preference for a son. Education therefore has two counteracting effects on the sex ratio: education decreases the willingness for gender preference, but increases the readiness for influencing sex preferences within the family. Development also affects condition 2 : the ability to act upon gender preference.
It is often the case that richer, urban families have greater access to technologies which would allow for sex identification during pregnancy, and also a safer abortion. Poorer families in rural areas may not have this opportunity, despite having strong son preference. As they get richer, these opportunities may become available to them. Kashyap and Villavicencio tried to model how the changes in willingness , ability , and readiness all affect the change in sex ratio in specific countries.
This means that in contexts where economic development is fast — meaning fertility rates fall quickly and prenatal screening technologies become widely accessible — even very small levels of son preference across a population can have a significant impact on the overall sex ratio. One of the three conditions for sex-selection is the ability to act upon gender practices through access to technology.
Prenatal sex selection PSS relies on two technologies: prenatal sex determination the ability to determine the sex of a foetus during pregnancy and selective abortion. This raises the question of whether policies that aim to regulate prenatal sex determination and abortion have an impact on the prevalence of sex selection.
Several governments limited prenatal sex selection through regulation when it became clear that sex selection was common and increasing.
South Korea, China and India all implemented sex-selective abortion bans. Were they successful? Much of the literature on the topic suggests the bans alone were not effective enough to address the problem. Looking at how the sex ratio at birth changed pre- and post-ban in each country also does not suggest that they were very effective.
At this point the sex ratio at birth was around male per female births — as we see in the chart here. Following the introduction of the ban, the sex ratio continued to increase — reaching over males per female births in and maintaining a high ratio through the early s. For China the evidence is similar.
As we see in this chart, the sex ratio at birth continued to increase after the introduction of the ban. In the ratio was male per female births; by the early s this had increased to In the decade which followed the introduction of the act, the sex ratio at birth did not improve. At first glance, this would suggest that the banning of sex-selection practices was unsuccessful. The sex ratio continued to increase after their implementation.
These policies may have had some impact on reducing the increase, but they clearly did not come close to ending the practice. This means that in all countries, births are male-biased. The expected sex ratio is approximately boys born per girls. There can be some variability in this expected ratio, ranging from around to boys per girls. This requires the use of prenatal screening practices which can determine the sex of the fetus — this is often referred to as prenatal detection PD.
Postnatal sex selection : postnatal sex selection is the discrimination based on gender after the child has been born. Postnatal sex selection can occur either directly through selective infanticide, or indirectly from the premature death of girls due to maltreatment, neglect or unequal treatment. Infanticide : infanticide or infant homicide is the intentional killing of infants. Summary The sex ratio at birth is not equal: in every country births are male-biased.
There are biological reasons why there are slightly more boys born every year than girls. In some countries, the sex ratio at birth is much more skewed than would occur naturally. Today and in the recent past this is particularly common across Asia and North Africa. Here there is clear evidence of gender selection through prenatal sex determination and selective abortion. In countries where there is a clear son preference, the sex ratio at birth becomes increasingly skewed with birth order the third or fourth born children are more likely to be boys than the first or second child.
In nearly every country, boys are more likely to die in childhood than girls. There are biological reasons for this: boys are more susceptible to birth complications and infectious diseases. In countries where there is strong son preference, mortality rates for girls are higher than would be expected: this can occur either through direct infanticide, but also through neglect and unequal treatment.
The sex ratio tends to decrease over the life course from becoming male-biased to female-biased. This is because women tend to live longer than men. The banning of sex determination scanning and gender-selective abortion may have limited the increase in sex ratio at birth in some countries, but did not fully address the problem. Development can have opposing impacts on sex ratio: there is evidence that the son preference declines with education, but this often goes hand-in-hand with declining fertility rates and increased access to selective technologies which can increase the sex ratio.
All our charts on Gender Ratio Annual number of missing female births and excess mortality Child mortality rate in boys and girls per 1, live births Global number of missing women projected to Life expectancy of women vs life expectancy of men Number of 'Missing Women' in the world Sex ratio at birth Sex ratio at birth Chao et al.
Gender Ratio across the world. There are three reasons why the sex ratio of populations varies and is rarely equal: differences in mortality rates and life expectancy for women and men. Women, on average, live longer than men. This means that all else being equal, we would expect females to account for slightly more than half of the total population. In all countries, there are more male than female births the extent of which varies by country as we will see below. This means that all else being equal, we would expect males to account for slightly more than half of the total population.
If in some countries there is a significant amount of imported male-dominant labour, all else being equal, we would expect males to account for more than half of the total population.
The magnitude and balance of these factors determines the sex ratio of the total population. There are however a few notable outliers: across several countries in South and East Asia — most notably India and China — there are significantly fewer females than males. These are countries where there are large differences in sex ratio at birth. If we look at how this has changed over time click on the country to see this , we see the share of the population that is female has declined from a ratio close to parity decades ago.
The primary reason for this is a large male migrant stock: in , 45 percent of the Oman and 88 percent of the UAE population were from immigration. Populations in Eastern Europe have some of the largest gaps in life expectancy between men and women: in Russia, for example, the average life expectancy at birth was only 65 years compared to 76 years for women.
Click to open interactive version. Gender Ratio at birth and through the life course. Why are births naturally expected to be male-biased? The study found that although the probability of miscarriage varies between genders across the course of a pregnancy, female mortality is slightly higher than male mortality over the full period: there is a higher probability that an embryo with chromosomal abnormalities 4 is male — in the first week of pregnancy, excess male mortality therefore means pregnancy is female-biased; in the next weeks of pregnancy female mortality is higher, which increases the ratio in favor of males; male and female mortality is approximately equal around week 20; between weeks of pregnancy, there is higher male mortality.
Overall, a male-biased sex ratio at birth is the result. In some countries the sex ratio is skewed beyond the expected sex ratio. It presents this data in two cases: when the child is not the last child born i. Sex selection practices also became more prominent for later births.
Child and infant mortality is higher for boys in nearly all countries. What do infants die from? Boys are at higher risk of birth complications. Boys are at higher risk of infectious diseases. How does the sex ratio change throughout adulthood? Missing girls and women. Infanticide has a long history. Historical evidence and estimates of infanticide. Infanticide reported as: Youth sex ratio males per females Adult sex ratio males per females Number of hunter-gathering bands Common 71 Occasional 80 6 Not common 85 3 Not practised 94 83 6.
Both sexes are victims of infanticide. Studies have shown in some countries: poorer nutrition for girls and unequal food distribution; 66 less breastfeeding from mothers for daughters than for sons; 67 lower healthcare utilization for girls; 68 69 during pregnancy there is evidence of preferential treatment for boys with more antenatal visits and increased tetanus vaccinations.
How many girls and women are missing every year? Why is there a preference for a son in some places? This can produce economic and social benefits to having a son rather than a daughter, including: Family name : the lineage within a family stays within the male line. Having a son therefore continues the family name.
Old age support : sons within a family are often responsible for supporting parents in illness and old age. This provides a strong economic incentive for a son for old age support. Studies in India have suggested that a dowry is the most common reason for not wanting a girl. Labor force opportunities : males can bring better economic opportunities for a family.
This can be the result of real sex differences in economic opportunities, but also results from undervaluing the work of women. In many countries, unpaid or informal work accounts for a majority share of female employment.
What are the consequences of a skewed sex ratio?
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