The numbers tell a disturbing story. According to economist Amartya Sen, more than 100 million women across the developing world are simply not there-lost to discrimination, neglect, and violence before they could live full lives. This figure, much of it concentrated in India and China, points to a deeper crisis. From the moment of conception to adulthood, women face a series of threats that shape their survival and well-being. These threats are sometimes called gender adversaries: the social, economic, and cultural forces that work against women’s rights and lives. Understanding them is the first step toward dismantling them.
Table of Contents
The missing women phenomenon
The phrase “missing women” was coined by economist Amartya Sen in 1990 to describe a striking observation. In most of Europe and North America, women slightly outnumber men because they tend to live longer and survive better at all ages, including before birth. Yet in large parts of Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, the ratio is reversed, with far fewer women than men.
Sen calculated how many additional women would be alive today if these regions had the same survival patterns as developed countries. His methodology suggested that more than 100 million women were “demographically” missing across the developing world, with about 80% of them from India and China. These were not women who had been kidnapped or killed in a single event. They were girls who were never born, or who died early because they received less care than boys.
The sex ratio-the number of females per 1,000 males-is the key measure here. A normal sex ratio at birth falls between 103 and 105 boys for every 100 girls. Anything substantially higher signals that something unnatural is at work. The 2011 Census recorded a national sex ratio of 939 women per 1,000 men, and the child sex ratio (ages 0-6) had fallen to 918, one of the worst on record.
Why do women go missing?
Several overlapping factors drive this crisis. The most direct is sex-selective abortion. When ultrasound technology became widely available in the 1980s and 1990s, families gained the ability to learn the sex of a foetus early in pregnancy. Combined with a strong preference for sons, this led to the abortion of female foetuses on a large scale. A Lancet study estimated that between 1980 and 2010, somewhere between 4 and 12 million girls were aborted in India because of their sex.
A second factor is the neglect of girls after birth. Research by economists Anderson and Ray showed that excess female mortality is not limited to infancy but holds across age groups, reflecting unequal access to food, healthcare, and attention throughout life. A girl who falls ill may be taken to a doctor later, or not at all, compared to a brother in the same household.
Underlying both is the question of economic value within a patriarchal system. In many families, a daughter is seen as paraya dhan-wealth that ultimately belongs to another household after marriage. She is expected to leave home, often requiring a dowry payment, while a son stays, earns, and supports parents in old age. This perception turns a daughter into a financial burden rather than an asset, an idea reinforced by patriarchal customs around inheritance, marriage, and family lineage.
Interestingly, the practice of sex selection is more prevalent among affluent and educated families in northern and western states than among poorer households in the south. This challenges the assumption that poverty alone explains the problem. Poverty intensifies the pressure-a poor family may feel it cannot afford a daughter’s dowry-but cultural attitudes and access to technology play an equally powerful role.
Forms of violence against women
For women who survive into adulthood, a different set of adversaries waits. Violence against women in India takes many forms, and the official data captures only a fraction of the reality because so many cases go unreported. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) recorded more than 365,000 acts of violence against women in 2022, and even this large number is widely understood to be an undercount.
Domestic abuse
The home, ideally a place of safety, is often the most dangerous place for a woman. Of all crimes against women reported in 2022, around 38% were cruelty by a husband or his relatives. Including dowry-related deaths, domestic violence accounts for at least 40% of all reported crimes against women. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 defined domestic violence broadly for the first time in Indian law, covering not just physical harm but emotional, verbal, sexual, and economic abuse as well.
The scale is alarming. A study published in BMC Women’s Health found that the rate of reported cruelty by a husband or relatives rose by 53% between 2001 and 2018. Yet only 6.8% of these cases completed trial in 2018, and offenders were convicted in just 15.5% of them. The justice system, in other words, fails most women who do come forward.
Dowry-related violence
Although dowry payments have been illegal in India since the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, the practice remains widespread across caste, class, and education levels. When a husband’s family is dissatisfied with the dowry brought by a bride, the result can be harassment, abuse, or murder-often disguised as a kitchen accident or suicide. NCRB data shows that 7,115 dowry deaths were reported in 2019 alone, and historically the figure has stayed between 6,500 and 8,000 cases every year. These deaths are concentrated in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal.
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment follows women into public spaces and workplaces. To address harassment at work, India passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, commonly known as the POSH Act. The law requires every employer with ten or more workers to set up an Internal Complaints Committee to receive and investigate complaints. Employers who fail to comply can face a monetary penalty. Despite this framework, fear of retaliation, social stigma, and ignorance of the law keep many women silent.
Trafficking
Human trafficking is perhaps the most hidden of these adversaries. Women and girls are trafficked for forced labour, commercial sexual exploitation, and other forms of servitude. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 is the main law targeting trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. The Constitution itself, through Article 23, prohibits trafficking in human beings and forced labour. Yet poverty, lack of education, and the demand for cheap labour continue to feed networks that move vulnerable women across state and national borders.
The toll on health and well-being
The cumulative impact of this violence on women’s health is severe and lasting. Physical injuries are only the visible part. Survivors face chronic pain, reproductive health problems, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. Economic abuse traps women in dependence, removing their ability to leave dangerous situations. When violence becomes normalised within a household, it also shapes the next generation, teaching children that such treatment is acceptable. The damage radiates outward from the individual woman to her family and community.
Strategies for prevention
Confronting gender adversaries requires action on several fronts at once. No single law or campaign can undo centuries of discrimination, but a combination of legal, social, and institutional measures has begun to shift the picture.
Legal reforms
India has built a substantial legal framework over the decades. The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 banned prenatal sex determination in an effort to stop female foeticide and arrest the declining sex ratio. Alongside it sit the Dowry Prohibition Act, the Domestic Violence Act, the POSH Act, and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
The challenge lies less in the laws themselves than in their enforcement. Conviction rates under the PCPNDT Act remain low, and many illegal ultrasound centres continue to operate, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas where oversight is weak. The Supreme Court has had to step in repeatedly-through cases like CEHAT v. Union of India-to direct governments to appoint required authorities and monitor implementation more seriously. Strong laws on paper mean little without the political will and administrative capacity to apply them.
Awareness campaigns
Because the root of the problem is a mindset, changing that mindset is essential. The government’s flagship effort here is the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) scheme, launched in January 2015 from Panipat, Haryana. It is a tri-ministerial effort combining enforcement of the PCPNDT Act with nationwide awareness campaigns and community mobilisation in districts with low child sex ratios.
The approach focuses on shifting how parents value daughters, using street plays, signature campaigns, and school outreach to challenge the idea of a daughter as a burden. The results have been encouraging in some areas. Official data shows the national sex ratio at birth improved from 918 in 2014-15 to 934 in 2019-20. Haryana, once notorious for its skewed ratios, saw districts like Mahendergarh rise from 791 to 919 over the same period. These gains show that determined, sustained campaigning can move deeply rooted attitudes.
International support and frameworks
India’s efforts also connect to global commitments. The country has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which obliges signatories to take concrete steps toward gender equality. Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals aims to end all discrimination and violence against women and girls, including trafficking and exploitation, by setting measurable targets that hold governments accountable.
International support brings funding, expertise, and shared best practices, but it also brings scrutiny. Reports like the Global Gender Gap Index measure progress and expose stagnation, creating pressure for reform. The combination of domestic law and international commitment offers the strongest foundation for change-provided the gap between policy and practice can be closed.
Beyond laws and schemes
Lasting prevention also depends on factors that no single scheme can deliver. Amartya Sen himself argued that the most effective long-term solutions are women’s education, economic independence, and political voice. When women earn, own property, and participate in decision-making, their value within the family and society rises, and the logic that treats daughters as burdens begins to dissolve. Equal inheritance rights, granted through the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act of 2005, and equal pay protections under the Equal Remuneration Act are part of this larger project of treating women as full and equal citizens.
What do you think? If sex-selective abortion is more common among educated and wealthier families, what does that tell us about the limits of education and economic growth alone in solving gender discrimination? And which do you believe creates more lasting change-stricter enforcement of existing laws, or slower campaigns that aim to transform how society values women?
References
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/indias-missing-women-2/
- https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/10/where-are-all-the-women/
- https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/184037/ISAS_Working_Paper_No__195_-_The_'Missing_Women'_in_India_19092014174104.pdf
- https://www.statista.com/chart/35517/statistics-about-domestic-violence-against-women-in-india/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Women_from_Domestic_Violence_Act,_2005
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12905-022-01703-3
- https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2509695.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Harassment_of_Women_at_Workplace_(Prevention,_Prohibition_and_Redressal)_Act,_2013
- https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/pre-conception-and-pre-natal-diagnostic-techniques-pcpndt-act-1994
- https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/government_tr_rec/beti-bachao-beti-padhao-caring-for-the-girl-child/
- https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/beti-bachao-beti-padhao-scheme-2
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10691520/
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