WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

Foreword
The rampant demographic masculinization taking place today in
several Asian countries, from the Caucasus to East Asia, has been a
relatively neglected field in demographic studies, in spite of the centrality
of the “number question” in the understanding of the changing sex
discriminatory practices in this part of the world. As we were familiar
with two distinct cultural areas in Asia, we had long thought of joining
forces to provide the missing comparative perspective called for by the
increase in child sex ratios observed across the region. A first trial was
the initial meeting organized in India in November 2003 by CEPED
(Centre Population et Développement) and INED (Institut national
d'études démographiques) and hosted by the French Institute of
Pondicherry. The success of this pioneer workshop bringing together
demographers working on several Asian countries, and of the subsequently
published collection of papers, encouraged us to embark two
years later on a larger project aimed at covering more systematically all
affected regions and aspects of the growing sex imbalance in Asia.
This book originates in the international conference “Female deficit
in Asia” held in Singapore on 5-7 December 2005 during which 29
papers were presented. The event was jointly sponsored by CEPED,
CICRED and INED and was organized locally by the Asian MetaCentre
for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis. We thank all
the involved institutions for their commitment to the project. We also
acknowledge further support received from the UNFPA India office
and from the Asian MetaCentre, which sponsored several participants.
The editors are particularly grateful to Brenda Yeoh (Asia MetaCentre),
Annabel Desgrées du Loû, André Quesnel and William Molmy (CE-
PED), P.N. Mari Bhat (IIPS), Li Shuzhuo (Xi'an University), François
Héran and Jacques Véron (INED) and Gavin Jones (CICRED and
Asia Research Institute, Singapore) for their enthusiastic support and
help to prepare the conference. We also want to thank Hartati Ayral
(CICRED) and Verene Koh Hwee Kiang (Asian MetaCentre) for their
accomplished organization of this event in Singapore, which attracted
more than forty participants from sixteen different countries.
With one exception, the essays in this volume were presented as
papers during the conference. We thank the participants of the conference
and the discussants for their helpful editorial suggestions. We are
also grateful to the authors for bearing with our often baffling combination
of recurrent editorial deadlines and delays. Due to space limitations,
several papers on various Asian countries had to be omitted.