WUNRN
In Albania, boys outnumber girls by 112 to 100 - cultural preference for males.
ALBANIA - SEX-SELECTIVE ABORTION TREND - PREFERENCE FOR MALES
By Besar Likmeta - WeNews Correspondent – January 29, 2013
A young
girl walks in Tirana during celebrations for
TIRANA,
Albania (WOMENSENEWS)-- A declining fertility rate, a gender gap
favoring male babies and the introduction in 1995 of prenatal screening
technology provide the demographic backdrop to a recent report of widespread,
illegal sex-selective abortion in Albania.
What makes
the story of female feticide so believable, and difficult to fix, one
researcher says, is the culture's strong preference for male heirs.
"Boys
are expected to support the parents financially, provide for their security and
protect their honor, while girls are expected to provide emotional support and
care for ailing parents," said Kristina Voko, a professor
of psychology at the
Voko coauthored
research for a December 2012 report by the U.N. Population Fund and World Vision, "Sex Imbalances at Birth in
The study
finds that as many as 15,000 female fetuses may have been aborted between 2000
and 2010, which corresponds to 7 percent of female births over the same period.
Voko noted
that girls in
An estimated 500,000 female
fetuses are aborted each year in India,
according to a May 2011 study in the medical journal The Lancet.
Although
the release of the study has focused some public debate on the issue in
"We have no indications that sex-selective abortions are carried out
either in public hospitals or private clinics," Pullumb
Pipero, general director of policies and planning
at the Ministry of Health, said in an
email interview. "Because the sex ratio at birth is a bit above the normal
trend, this brought forth the hypothesis that such abortion are carried
out."
Task Force Assembled
Nonetheless,
Pipero said that due to the sensitivity of the issue the Minister
of Health, Vangjel Tavo, has
ordered a task force to review the enforcement of the abortion law.
"We are looking at the possibility of issuing new legal directives that
strengthen the application of the law," he said.
Under
Voko said
she would welcome measures to strengthen the enforcement of the law but added
that authorities' denials of the study's findings won't help the country change
attitudes that make sex-selective abortion socially acceptable.
Although a
better monitoring of health services might curb sex-selective abortions, Voko
said the government must also target the ingrained preference for male heirs.
"There is a need to have a public debate on gender roles that in
Sex-selective
abortions face few social or administrative barriers in
Interviews
with doctors and women indicated that sex-selective abortions are commonplace
in Albanian hospitals and private clinics, Voko said.
Voko added
that in most cases, especially outside the capital Tirana, sex-selective
abortions are carried out in public hospitals and they are cheap enough that
any Albanian family can afford them. And few efforts are made to prevent them.
During interviews with members of the general population and also medical
professionals, most expressed views indicating they were against sex-selective
abortions, yet only in few cases did they report legal or administrative
barriers, Voko said.
Gender Gap
Boys here
outnumber girls by 112 to 100.
That's a
gap that Arjan
Gjonca, a co-author of the report, ties to the rise of sex-selective abortions after the 1995
introduction of prenatal sex-screening technology.
"Sex-selection is incredibly widespread in the whole
country and also in the neighboring Albanian populations as well as
Although
prenatal sex screening became widespread only two decades ago, popular beliefs
on ways to predict the sex of the unborn child have been around for much longer
and show how the culture favors a male.
If a woman
showed marks on her face and put weight on her thighs, the unborn child was
believed to be a girl. But if her skin remained flawless and her body slim, a
male heir was on the way.
The rise
in proportion of young boys, the authors note, will translate in a few years to
similar imbalances among the adult population, with young men outnumbering
young women by 10 percent.
"In the future it will create a surplus of men in the marriage market, triggering migration among single men and further discrimination of women by lowering the age of marriage and re-introducing arranged marriages," Gjonca predicted.
In Between
"My
understanding is that the overall birth sex ratio in Albania is 111 boy babies
born for every 100 girl babies, and that the birth sex ratio in Tirana is 119
boy babies for every 100 girl babies--which puts Tirana on a par with
China," said Valerie Hudson, a professor
at Texas A&M University and a founder of the WomanStats Project, in an email interview. Tirana is the
largest city in Albania.
The
In 1960 an
Albanian woman had on average seven children, in 1990 three children and by
2010 the average had fallen to just 1.6 children.