This past weekend millions upon millions of people marched and protested around the world with a lot on their minds. Some of their concerns I get; others I don't. And that's okay.
Not a few of the women marching wore shirts with the words, Fem the Future, Female Future or The Future is Female. The messages called to my mind a book that was published in 2011 and which I'd recommend to anyone/everyone: Unnatural Selection ~ Choosing Boys Over Girls, And the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl.
Here is a book review written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University:
"Unnatural Selection is an important book and a fascinating read. Mara Hvistendahl is a delightful writer: witty, engaging, and acute. But the tale she tells is deeply disturbing. Asia alone is missing 160 million women and girls, a number equal to the entire female population of the United States. According to Hvistendahl, the culprit is less deeply rooted cultural gender bias than rising wealth, elite attitudes, and Western influence and technology. Development, at least for the coming decades, will produce not only fewer children overall, but also many fewer girls. The result is a future for many parts of the world, from India to China, Azerbaijan to Albania, where brides are much more likely to be bought, women are much more likely to be trafficked, and men are much more likely to be frustrated. For the present, we must confront the stark reality that the availability of ultrasound and ready abortion are sharply reducing the number of women in the world."
I'm pleased to see a book like this written without religious input; many more people will pay attention. Ms. Slaughter doesn't refer to this final bit: we need only look to the American wild west, shoot-em-up world of gold rush days to see what happens to a world without females. There, the only women to be found were prostitutes, barmaids and maybe a schoolteacher. A world absent of women is all bullets, fistfights, brawls, drunkenness and personal degradation. Bombs, if they were to be had.
An easy enough read, the book can be gotten for pennies online.
