Although the proportion of women globally, and in Asia, has decreased over time, it is important to note that the trend is not irreversible.
In the last decade, the research community has provided substantial evidence of a link between gender inequality and various forms of politically motivated violence. On a global level, these results show that countries with relatively high gender inequality are more often involved in disputes with other states, [1] more often experience civil wars, [2] and are more repressive towards its own citizens [3] compared to countries with more equal equations between men and women. Moreover, for countries that have experienced internal conflict in the past, peace is more fragile and increasingly likely to break down in countries with higher inequality. [4] These results are overwhelmingly strong and hold through many alternative specifications and controlling for numerous alternative explanations. [5] While there exists several explanations for why gender inequality would be linked to the use of violence, there is indeed more agreement on there being a causal connection between gender inequality and conflict than there is on what gender inequality actually means and how it should be best captured. Studying the link between gender and conflict is additionally complicated by the fact that different geographical areas struggle with diverse forms of challenges as regards to gender inequality. For example, in one area, economic indicators of gender equality, such as women’s participation in the labour force, can be quite high while political indicators remain poor. In another area, the situation can be quite the reverse.
Drawing on previous research, this essay will discuss one aspect of gender inequality — son preference, resulting in highly distorted sex ratios — which has been brought up as particularly important in the Asian context. The prevalent and strong son preference, resulting in highly distorted sex ratios, is a dimension of gender inequality where some Asian countries divert the most from the global average. [6] From a security perspective, this is important, as we will outline below, for a number of reasons. For example, research argues that skewed sex ratios can be seen as a manifestation of a broader societal norm where different groups in society are valued differently; groups that are valued lower are excluded and discriminated. Such a norm is further linked to norms that legitimise the use of violence, hence making violence more expected. In addition, an excess male population may provide resources in terms of individual men who are more easily targeted in mobilising for violence, as well as in gangs and for crime, because they have little to lose from engaging in violence. Moreover, these individuals are likely more susceptible to the hyper-masculine language that further facilitate the mobilisation process. The combined effect increases the risk of existing conflicts becoming violent.
The article proceeds as follows. The first section provides a brief overview of the meaning of gender inequality in this line of research and the different explanations for why gender inequality increases the risk of violence. The second section focuses on using distorted sex ratios as an indicator of gender inequality. The third section discusses some of the potential security implications of skewed sex ratios, i.e., why and in what forms it may explain the use of political violence. The final section draws conclusions and broader implications.
Gender inequality and conflict — an overview
Gender inequality is used in the research field of armed conflict to capture norms assigning negative values and stereotypical roles to men and women, which result in an unfair distribution of power and other material resources to men’s advantage. As this is a rather wide definition, different studies have focused on different components of gender inequality and often discussed it in different dimensions. A political dimension is used to capture women’s (and men’s) access to power as “a divisible, infinite resource and/or as the ability to reach goals.” [7] An economic dimension centres on access to material resources, which can be used by individuals to affect their own lives. A social dimension is discussed both in terms of the value given to individuals depending on their sex and the value attached to perceptions of femininity and masculinity in a society. Some studies have also focused on the physical (in)security of women as an important dimension of gender (in)equality. This essay looks closer at the social dimension relating to sex ratios in the population.
There exist several quite diverse explanations for why gender inequality should increase the likelihood of violent conflict. Two clusters speak to the social dimension. The first cluster of explanations focuses on norms that may enhance violence, in particular given a hyper-masculinised political culture that lowers the threshold for violence. One rationale behind this is that an unequal distribution of resources between men and women is assumed to follow from a norm that assigns lesser value to women compared to men. Such a norm can be said to be indicative of a normative intolerance more broadly, which in turn tends to view violence as a legitimate tool. A second cluster focuses instead on capacity, suggesting that gender-unequal societies have less capacity in various forms, because a large part of the adult population is restricted from fully participating in society. Such societies are therefore less capable of resisting violent conflict. An alternative way to conceive of capacity is more negative, and concerns the direct provision of capacity to mobilise for conflict, in particular recruitment of young men. According to this explanation, societies with large male surpluses will more often see political violence, as there are more individuals available to mobilise. As is suggested below, a male surplus may be linked to both the normative explanation and to the explanation focusing on resources for mobilisation.
Distorted sex ratios as an indicator of gender inequality
According to Fisher’s Principle, absent human manipulation the population on earth would naturally converge to have about the equal number of women and men. [8] While more boys than girls are born (biologically we expect 103-106 boys born per 100 girls), boys have higher childhood mortality and women generally live longer than men. In most countries, the latter effects outperform the first, resulting in a female surplus. However, based on only a few (mainly Asian) countries having large numbers of missing women, the world population at present has significantly more men than women. UN data reveals a disturbing trend over time, moving towards a smaller and smaller female world proportion. This is due mainly to the two most populous countries also being among the most imbalanced in terms of sex ratios — China and India — who jointly account for about 75% of the male surplus worldwide. Table 1 provides World Bank estimates of the female proportion across Asian countries in 2015. As can be seen, there are a few other Asian countries with sex ratios as low as, or lower than, India and China; however, due to the large population sizes of China and India, these two countries also significantly skew the world average and will be the main focus of this analysis.
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