Boys outnumber girls at a primary school in
“We are startled by the sex ratios at birth in some communes
in the Red River Delta, which were up to 150 boys per 100 girls, during a
recent visit,” Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Viet Tien said at a press
briefing in
The country’s ratio fell lower --
113.8 boys per 100 girls than last year. Still, the figure represents a sharp
increase from 106.2 boys per 100 girls in 2000 and enough to cause
policymakers headaches.
According to an official projection,
between 2.3 and 4.3 million men won't be able to find wives by 2050.
Worse still, a scarcity of women
would increase pressure for them to marry at a younger age and perhaps drop
out of school to do so, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said in a
statement released on Tuesday.
In addition, there may be a rising
demand for sex work; and trafficking networks may also expand in response to
the imbalance, UNFPA warned.
Nguyen Van Tan, director of the
General Office for Population and Family Planning, said that one of the
contributing factors to the rising gender imbalance in
“We need more efforts to strengthen
comprehensive communication activities on the important roles of women and
girls in the society," Tan said at the press briefing.
Arthur Erken, UNFPA Representative
in
"The heart of the gender imbalance
issue is not sex selection, but the inequality and values,” Erken said.
“Gender-biased sex selection is
exacerbated by patriarchal family values, amplified in particular by
male-oriented kinship systems, as well as a lack of social and economic
autonomy among women,” he said.
To resolve the situation, Erken
suggested addressing “the broader context of socio-economic development and
the promotion and protection of human rights to dismantle gender inequality.”
“When women and girls have equal
access to health care, education, and job opportunities as men and boys do,
then they can do what men and boys are expected to do,” said Erken.
He also said that women alone cannot
address the issue and thus, young men and boys must be encouraged to step
forward as agents of necessary social and cultural change.
‘Political will’
Besides the cultural factors, a lack
of political will is at the heart of the gender imbalance problem, said Dr.
Tine Gammeltoft, who authored several studies on the problem in
“In principle, health care providers
are not allowed to inform prospective parents of the sex of the fetus, but
they do. In principle, health care providers are not allowed to perform
sex-selective abortions, but they do,” said Gammeltoft of Department of
Anthropology at the
She said those who have the power to
stop those practices don't want to.
“Probably because policy-makers and
health care providers themselves share the son preference that motivates
prospective parents to sex select,” Gammeltoft told Thanh Nien News in
an e-mail exchange.
She said that immediate measures
could be taken to prevent health care providers from informing pregnant women
of the sex of the fetus.
“For instance, the ‘mystery client’
technique could be used (pregnant women cooperating with police to detect
health care providers who give direct or indirect information about fetal
sex). In combination with large fines and public exposure of the clinics, this
for sure would have immediate effect,” she said.
“But the political will to enforce
existing legislation is not there, unfortunately,” said Gammeltoft.
“As regards gender inequality, a lot
could be done too – but again, the political will is not there. For instance,
it is a huge problem that only sons inherit their parents' property and
daughters get very little – if this was changed, the gender landscape in
Vietnam would change dramatically,” she said.
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Thứ Ba, 23 tháng 9, 2014
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