WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

Is Son Preference Emerging among the Nayars
of Kerala in South India?
S. SUDHA, S. KHANNA, S. Irudaya RAJAN, Roma SRIVASTAVA 1
1. Introduction
Son preference, parents’ systematic preference for male children,
has attracted substantial research and policy attention from
demographers, social scientists, activists, and policy groups in diverse
nations where this phenomenon has persisted. Societies in East and
South Asia, such as India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea,
with differing levels of development and philosophies, all exhibit son
preference, visible through their masculine population sex ratios and
child survival ratios, or very masculine sex ratios at birth. By contrast,
in societies without such marked son preference, population sex ratios
are female dominant, child survival sex ratios reflect female mortality
advantage, and sex ratios at birth reflect a small male preponderance
(approximately 104 to 106 males per 100 females).
Research concludes that son preference often leads parents to
deter the birth and survival of unwanted daughters. While the
underlying reasons for preferring sons persist, new socioeconomic
developments provide additional methods for eliminating daughters,
supplementing the age-old post-natal methods (neglect, infanticide, or
abandonment) with new reproductive technologies (NRTs, e.g.
contraception or prenatal tests followed by sex-selective abortion)
enabling the removal of girls prior to birth. Regions of India show a
preference for either the older or newer methods, or sometimes both
posing a ‘double jeopardy’ for girls (Das Gupta and Bhat, 1997; Sudha
and Rajan, 1999). Son preference has thus been linked to millions of
‘missing women’ (Sen, 1990), and the 2001 Indian census showed that
1 We thank the Wenner-Gren Anthropological Research Foundation for research
support, and the research participants among the Nayar community who generously
shared their experiences with us.