Gender, Population and Development

Book excerpt: One million women are "missing" from India's population due to female neglect of various sorts--and possibly one million more due to acts of direct elimination before birth. Within that context, this collection employs several field surveys to explore the connections between population, gender, and development by way of two distinct sets of conditions. The first set involves individual endowments--the resources that a household will allocate to its women. The second set concerns the ways in which the productive and reproductive roles of men and women are structured in societies. With the help of theoretical reviews and empirical studies, this book illustrates the powerful, intermediary effects of gender relations in modifying or reinforcing gender biases.