Woman’s History Month was brought to an end last Thursday, March 31, and it was closed out with a lecture by history professor Margaret Gonzales-Perez. Gonzales-Perez spoke on the absence of women in other countries including India, China and Afghanistan. She addressed such terms as gendercide, femicide, missing women, son preference and sex selection.

Gendercide is a term that was coined by philosophy professor and writer Mary Anne Warren in 1985. In her book “Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection,” According to the book, by analogy, gendercide would be the deliberate extermination of persons of a particular sex or gender. Terms, such as ‘gynocide’ and ‘femicide,’ have been used to refer to the wrongful killing of girls and women. But ‘gendercide’ is a sex-neutral term, in that the victims may be either male or female. In her lecture, Gonzales-Perez focused on femicide and the imbalance of the male to female ratio in some countries.

According to Gonzales-Perez’s research, there are a greater number of males per females in certain countries. This imbalance is consequence of over-population, high rates of infant and child mortality, the lack of social welfare systems and limited education and employment opportunities for women. In some countries, female children are considered a burden. There aren’t nearly as many opportunities and jobs available for females as there are for males. Because of this, male offspring are more desirable, especially to poor families. It can become financially inefficient to raise a female child. This leads many parents to commit acts of gendercide.

Because of the drawbacks of having a female child, gendercide isn’t looked down upon and there are many ways of killing an infant that aren’t considered illegal. Smothering and strangling are some of the most popular methods of gendercide, but other methods can include drowning, neglect, live burial and abandonment. Because so many female children are abandoned, orphanages are overflowing and have “dying rooms,” where the infants that can’t be cared for are left in cribs until they die.

This is no new occurrence. According to Gonzales-Perez’s research, in 19th century England, finding a dead child in the street was “no less common than a dead cat or dog.” Further research showed that in 19th century China, due to gendercide, there was a ratio of 400 males per 100 females. There was even a 1999 study that showed of 8,000 abortions in India that year, 7,999 were female.

“It’s ridiculous that something like this is still going on in our society today,” said junior history major Bryan Perissutti. “Those are outrageous numbers, and it makes you think: if they’re killing off all of their female offspring, how do they plan to reproduce?”