Armenia

Crosscutting Gender Issuesand constituted by married sons.” 226 Respondents to a quantitative survey of reasonsfor sex-selective abortions confirmed a strongly held belief that sons carry on the familytraditions. The most common answers to the question why families give preference tosons over daughters were, “sons continue the family lineage” (39.2%), “sons are inheritorsof property” (30.9%), followed by “sons are guarantors of material well-being,” “sons aredefenders of the homeland,” and “sons can provide financial support.” 227 Less commonanswers focused on perceived limitations that daughters face, such as “after she getsmarried, a girl is no longer yours,” “girls have fewer opportunities,” and a daughter cannotprovide financial support for parents in old age. 228 Although United Nations PopulationFund-supported focus group discussions with women revealed an awareness of the factthat women have an equal right to inherit property, women are the de facto breadwinnersin a large number of families, and women have opportunities to enter nontraditional fields,notions about sons’ greater social mobility and societal value remain deeply entrenched.157. The public dialogue about sex-selective abortion has increased, especially amongwomen’s NGOs and international organizations, yet interviewees observed that hard dataare still lacking and that there is still considerable reluctance to discuss this issue, especiallyat the policy level. Further, there is resistance to examining the deeper implicationsof skewed sex-at-birth ratios. Most participants, in group discussions, agreed that thephenomenon of a deficit of female births is not natural. 229 Yet people also tended to focuson the demographic consequences of sex-selective abortion, for example, citing suchfuture problems as the difficulty men will face in finding wives and the possibility of moreaggression and violence in society. Respondents did not appear to conceptualize sexselectiveabortion as a form of gender discrimination or link it to other manifestations ofinequality that girls and women face later in life.226 Sex Imbalances at Birth in Armenia: Demographic Evidence and Analysis, p. 29.227 Prevalence of and Reasons for Sex-Selective Abortions in Armenia, p. 33.228 Ibid.229 Interestingly, during a focus group discussion in Berd, the point was made that after a period of violent conflict, more boys are born—acommon, but incorrect, assumption that after war, there is a spontaneous increase in the number of male births. See Sex Imbalances atBirth in Armenia: Demographic Evidence and Analysis, p. 29.47