The ‘Missing Women’ in India

Twenty-five years ago Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen used the concept of ‘missing women’ to highlight the gender bias in mortality that results in a huge deficit of women in substantial parts of Asia and Africa. It was an innovative and novel way to use the sex ratios to assess the cumulative effect of gender bias in mortality by estimating the additional number of females of all ages who would be alive if there had been equal treatment of the sexes. Sen classified those additional numbers of women as ‘missing’ because they had died as a result of discrimination in the allocation of survival-related goods. The concept of ‘missing women’ has helped to generate public debate, concern and policy discussions that it deserves. This paper is a contribution to this debate. It explores the phenomenon of ‘missing women’ in India by focusing specifically on the trends in sex ratios in India over the past thirty years. The paper is based on data from the most recent censuses, analysis of demographic trends and recent research on the differential child mortality rates in India.