I’m teaching Amartya Sen’s “More Than 100 Million Women are Missing” tomorrow, mostly to bring out issues about choice, which we, as Western feminists, tend to think is almost always a good thing, supporting body autonomy.
But in patriarchy, if girls are so devalued, and a woman chooses to abort a female fetus, is that feminist, or not?
I love questions that have no easy answers.
There is a 2011 follow-up to Sen’s article called “160 Million and Counting” that we’ll be reading as well. The UN estimates are as high as 200 million.
This is the kind of tension in feminism that makes it impossible to express a glib, bumper sticker opinion, one in which an individual woman’s choice is an expression of a deeply misogynistic culture. Trust Women? Maybe not.
So what do we do? Keep women from choosing which fetuses to keep? Because – well, you see the problem there.
It’s one of the cases where the individualized ideas of “freedom” fly in the face of feminism. No one can support gendercide, and yet the women making these decisions are making a sound, pragmatic decision for the welfare of their own families.