{"title":"Women--an endangered species.","authors":"","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Throughout India and China, South Korea and Taiwan, Pakistan and Malaysia, the same sentiment recurs: \"The birth of girl is an occasion for gloom, not cheer, for bitterness, not pleasure.\" In all these countries \"patriarchal traditions and social stigmas\" make females the unwanted sex, reports Asiaweek. The tragic result: prenatal gender tests are flourishing. And for many women, if the test indicates a female, they abort. In India, sex tests and abortions are legal, cheap and readily available. Some 1500 sex-tested girls are aborted annually in Bombay alone. In China, abortions are legal, but gender tests strictly forbidden. Says one official: We cannot afford to let people know what sex the fetus is because all the girls would be aborted.\" Yet the numbers of baby girls in China have been reduced--and illicit gender tests and female infanticide are considered partly to blame. In South Korea, gender tests have been banned and most abortions are illegal, but \"clandestine tests\" are available, and according to the government some 30,000 pregnancies are terminated annually. The number of aborted females is not known, but birth ratios have shown \"an alarming swing towards males\" in recent years. Can laws and education change the social attitudes against girls in these Asian countries? Indian activist Vibhuti Patel, a lobbyist for stronger controls over sex-testing, hopes so. She urges a \"continuous campaign\" to fight the \"centuries-old values\" that encourages gender tests. Says Patel: Nothing less than the very survival of women is at stake.\"</p>","PeriodicalId":85882,"journal":{"name":"World development forum","volume":"5 21","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1987-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22007157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accidents and the Third World.","authors":"","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The World Health Organization (WHO) calls attention to a growing hazard of life in the big cities of developing countries: accidents. In Venezuela, 45% of deaths among 10 to 24 year olds are due to accidents, for lack of proper care. Someone involved in an accident in Kenya is 9 times as likely to die as in the US, and an accident victim in India is up to 15 times as likely to die as one in the United Kingdom. \"With fast growing cities and land increasingly crisscrossed with pavements,\" reports WHO, \"accidents are beginning to rival infections and parasitic diseases in the toll they take of young lives.\"</p>","PeriodicalId":85882,"journal":{"name":"World development forum","volume":"3 11","pages":"2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1985-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22026122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}