Gendercide

Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific gender. The term is related to the general concepts of assault and murder against victims due to their gender, with violence against women and men being problems dealt with by human rights efforts.

Gendercide is reported to be a rising problem in several countries. Census statistics report that in countries such as China and India, the male to female ratio is as high as 120 men for every 100 women. Gendercide also takes the forms of infanticide, and lethal violence against a particular gender at any stage of life.

The term gendercide was first coined by American feminist Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. It refers to gender-selective mass killing. Warren drew "an analogy between the concept of genocide" and what she called "gendercide". In her book, Warren wrote:

By analogy, gendercide would be the deliberate extermination of persons of a particular sex (or gender). Other terms, such as "gynocide" and "femicide," have been used to refer to the wrongful killing of girls and women. But "gendercide" is a sex-neutral term, in that the victims may be either male or female. There is a need for such a sex-neutral term, since sexually discriminatory killing is just as wrong when the victims happen to be male. The term also calls attention to the fact that gender roles have often had lethal consequences, and that these are in important respects analogous to the lethal consequences of racial, religious, and class prejudice.

Femicide is defined as the systematic killing of women for various reasons, usually cultural. The word is attested from the 1820s. According to the United Nations, the biologically normal gender ratio at birth ranges from 102 to 106 males per 100 females. However, ratios higher than normal – sometimes as high as 130 – have been observed. This is now causing increasing concern in some South Asian, East Asian, and Central Asian countries. Such disparities almost always reflect a preference for boys as a result of deeply embedded social, cultural, political and economic factors.

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