The war on baby girls

关于女婴的战争

Gendercide

性别谋杀

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising

被杀，坠胎或忽视，至少100万女孩已经消失了-而这个数据还在继续上升

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still needed for the family to make its living. Perhaps only sons may inherit land. Perhaps a daughter is deemed to join another family on marriage and you want someone to care for you when you are old. Perhaps she needs a dowry.

设想一下你是身处快速发展的贫困国家并期待着{dy}个孩子的年轻夫妇中的一员。你是新生的中等阶层的一分子，你的收入在增长，你想要一个小型家庭。但是，习俗左右着你，更重要的是对儿子而不是女儿的偏爱。或许对一个家庭来说，重体力劳力仍然是谋生所必需的。或许只有儿子才能继承土地。或许女儿被认为婚后加入了另一个家庭，而你希望在你年老的时候有人能照顾你，又或许是女儿需要陪嫁。

Now imagine that you have had an ultrasound scan; it costs $12, but you can afford that. The scan says the unborn child is a girl. You yourself would prefer a boy; the rest of your family clamours for one. You would never dream of killing a baby daughter, as they do out in the villages. But an abortion seems different. What do you do?

再想象你已经做过超声波检查；其费用为12美元，但你xx芝付得起。检查结果是，未出生的婴儿是个女孩。你自己情愿这是个男孩。你的家人热切地盼望着他。或许你从未梦见过杀死女婴，就象他们在村里做的那样。但是流产似乎是不同的。你将如何去做？

For millions of couples, the answer is: abort the daughter, try for a son. In China and northern India more than 120 boys are being born for every 100 girls. Nature dictates that slightly more males are born than females to offset boys’ greater susceptibility to infant disease. But nothing on this scale.

对数百万的夫妇来说，答案是：为了（获得）儿子，把女儿流产。在中国以及印度每出生100个女婴，对应的男童数目超过120。自然显示，比女婴稍多一些的男婴出生可以弥补男婴对婴儿期疾病的敏感性。但是差距不应该大到这个程度。

For those who oppose abortion, this is mass murder. For those such as this newspaper, who think abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” (to use Bill Clinton’s phrase), a lot depends on the circumstances, but the cumulative consequence for societies of such individual actions is catastrophic. China alone stands to have as many unmarried young men—“bare branches”, as they are known—as the entire population of young men in America. In any country rootless young males spell trouble; in Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognised routes into society, single men are almost like outlaws. Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity

对反对xx的人来说，这简直是大屠杀。对那些人，比如这家报纸认为xx应该是“安全的，合法的，罕见的”（借用比尔 克林顿的口气），并在很大程度上依赖于环境，但是这样的个人行为对社会产生的累积效应是灾难性的。中国在独自承受如此多的未婚男青年-“裸枝”如他们所知，其数量相当于全美国的年轻人。在任何国家，无根基的年轻男人意味着麻烦。在亚洲社会，婚姻是和儿童是年轻人融入社会的被认可的途径。单身男人几乎和无法无天类同。犯罪率，买卖新娘，性暴力，甚至女性的xx率，所有这些（数据）都在上升，当性别失衡的新一代走向性成熟十，这些（数据）将升的更高。

It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now. The crumb of comfort is that countries can mitigate the hurt, and that one, South Korea, has shown the worst can be avoided. Others need to learn from it if they are to stop the carnage.

称之为性别谋杀丝毫没有夸大之嫌。数百万女性因流产，被杀，忽略而导致死亡。1990年，一个印度的经济学家Amartya Sen估计的数量为100万。这个数据现在比以往更高。可以略微感到慰籍的是国家可以减缓这种痛楚。比如，韩国已经显示出，最坏的结果是可以避免的。其他的国家如果希望制止这种屠杀的话，他们需要从中学习。

The dearth and death of little sisters

小妹妹的饥饿和死亡

Most people know China and northern India have unnaturally large numbers of boys. But few appreciate how bad the problem is, or that it is rising. In China the imbalance between the sexes was 108 boys to 100 girls for the generation born in the late 1980s; for the generation of the early 2000s, it was 124 to 100. In some Chinese provinces the ratio is an unprecedented 130 to 100. The destruction is worst in China but has spread far beyond. Other East Asian countries, including Taiwan and Singapore, former communist states in the western Balkans and the Caucasus, and even sections of America’s population (Chinese- and Japanese-Americans, for example): all these have distorted sex ratios. Gendercide exists on almost every continent. It affects rich and poor; educated and illiterate; Hindu, Muslim, Confucian and Christian alike.

大多数人知道，中国和北印度的男孩子的数目不合乎自然规律。但是，很少人领会到问题究竟有多严重，以及还在继续恶化的这个问题。在中国，上个世纪80年代晚期失衡的男女性别比例的为108：100，对2000年后的这一代人来说，比例为124：100。在中国的部分省份，这个比例达到空前的130：100。在中国，后果是非常糟糕的，但影响并不局限于此。其他的东亚国家，包括台湾地区，新加坡，西巴尔干半岛以及高加索地区的前共产党国家，甚至美洲地区的部分人口中（例如，中美后裔，日美后裔）：所有这些人口中，都有着畸形的性别比例。几乎所有大洲都存在性别谋杀。影响范围包括贫穷的以及富裕的人群，受过教育的以及文盲，印度教徒，穆斯林，受儒家思想影响的人和基督徒也同样如此。

Wealth does not stop it. Taiwan and Singapore have open, rich economies. Within China and India the areas with the worst sex ratios are the richest, best-educated ones. And China’s one-child policy can only be part of the problem, given that so many other countries are affected.

财富并不能阻止性别谋杀。台湾地区和新加坡有着开放的，富裕的经济体。在中国和印度，性别比例{zg}的地区是最富有的和受教育程度{zg}的地区。考虑到受影响的国家或地区是如此至多，因而中国的独生子女政策仅仅是问题的一部分。

In fact the destruction of baby girls is a product of three forces: the ancient preference for sons; a modern desire for smaller families; and ultrasound scanning and other technologies that identify the sex of a fetus. In societies where four or six children were common, a boy would almost certainly come along eventually; son preference did not need to exist at the expense of daughters. But now couples want two children—or, as in China, are allowed only one—they will sacrifice unborn daughters to their pursuit of a son. That is why sex ratios are most distorted in the modern, open parts of China and India. It is also why ratios are more skewed after the first child: parents may accept a daughter first time round but will do anything to ensure their next—and probably last—child is a boy. The boy-girl ratio is above 200 for a third child in some places.

事实上，摧毁女婴是以下三种力量作用的结果：古老的对男孩的偏爱；现代的对小型家庭的渴望；超声波扫描或其他能鉴别xxxx的技术。在一个拥有四个或六个小孩的家庭常见的社会中，最终也能拥有男孩几乎是确定无疑的。偏爱男孩的心理存在并不需要以失去女儿为代价。但是现在的夫妇们只想要两个小孩-或，在中国，只允许有一个小孩-为了获得一个儿子的追求，他们宁愿牺牲未出生的女儿。这是为什么在中国和印度现代的，开放的地区里，性别比例如此失衡的原因。这也是为什么在{dy}胎之后的婴儿性别比例更为扭曲的原因：家长们或许可以接受{dy}个孩子是女儿，但是他们将愿意做任何事以确保他们的第二个孩子-或许是{zh1}一个孩子-是个男孩。在部分地区，第三个孩子们的男女性别比例超过200。

How to stop half the sky crashing down

如何阻止半边天的塌陷

Baby girls are thus victims of a malign combination of ancient prejudice and modern preferences for small families. Only one country has managed to change this pattern. In the 1990s South Korea had a sex ratio almost as skewed as China’s. Now, it is heading towards normality. It has achieved this not deliberately, but because the culture changed. Female education, anti-discrimination suits and equal-rights rulings made son preference seem old-fashioned and unnecessary. The forces of modernity first exacerbated prejudice—then overwhelmed it.

女婴是古老的偏见和现代的对小型家庭的选择这两者组成的有害组合的牺牲品。只有一个国家设法改变了这个格局。在上个世纪90年代，韩国的男女性别比例和中国一样扭曲。而现在，这个比例已经趋向正常。这个成功不是无意间达成的，而是源于文化的改变。女性教育，反歧视诉讼以及平等权利法案使得对儿子的偏爱变得不合时宜和非必须的。现代性首先加剧了偏见-然后克服了偏见。

But this happened when South Korea was rich. If China or India—with incomes one-quarter and one-tenth Korea’s levels—wait until they are as wealthy, many generations will pass. To speed up change, they need to take actions that are in their own interests anyway. Most obviously China should scrap the one-child policy. The country’s leaders will resist this because they fear population growth; they also dismiss Western concerns about human rights. But the one-child limit is no longer needed to reduce fertility (if it ever was: other East Asian countries reduced the pressure on the population as much as China). And it massively distorts the country’s sex ratio, with devastating results. President Hu Jintao says that creating “a harmonious society” is his guiding principle; it cannot be achieved while a policy so profoundly perverts family life.

但是这发生在韩国（人）富裕之后。如果中国（人）或印度（人）-收入水平和韩国（人）相比，前者相当于韩国（人）的四分之一，而后者相当于韩国（人）的十分之一-等到这三者同样富裕之时，很多世代已经过去了。为加速改变，无论如何，他们必须为他们自己的利益采取行动。很明显的是中国应该废弃独生子女政策。中国领导人反对这么做的理由是他们担心人口的增长；他们也不在意西方人对人权的关注。但是对减少生育来说，一个小孩的限制已经不再是必须的（前提）（如果以前曾经是这样：其他东亚国家和中国一样同样有着减少人口的压力）。这个（政策）严重地扭曲了这个国家的性别比例，并将带来灾难性的后果。Hu Jintao 主席说，建立一个和谐的社会是他的指导原则；但是当一个政策使家庭生活如此深刻地反常的话，这个目标是不可能实现的。

And all countries need to raise the value of girls. They should encourage female education; abolish laws and customs that prevent daughters inheriting property; make examples of hospitals and clinics with impossible sex ratios; get women engaged in public life—using everything from television newsreaders to women traffic police. Mao Zedong said “women hold up half the sky.” The world needs to do more to prevent a gendercide that will have the sky crashing down.

同样，所有国家都需要提升女孩们的价值。他们应该激励女性接受教育，抛弃那些阻止女儿继承遗产的法律和习俗；惩罚那些使性别比例失衡的医院和诊所；激励女性参与公众生活-使用任何方法从电视新闻播报到女xx通xx。Mao Zedong说过，“妇女能顶半边天”。这个世界需要做更多的事情来阻止将使半边天塌下来的性别谋杀。