About book Das Verschwinden Der Frauen: Selektive Geburtenkontrolle Und Die Folgen (2013)
Interesting nonfiction book all about the consequences of the practice in certain countries (China, India, and others) of choosing boys over girls by various means (sex-selective abortion, infanticide, etc.). Goes into the demographic consequences in-depth, and there were a lot of considerations I did not think of or expect. For example, back when ultrasound machines were newer and still mainly only available to middle-class and wealthier people, it became the practice in wealthier countries such as China to sex-select for boys. But then, as these machines became cheaper and available to poorer people, people in countries such as Vietnam started sex selecting for girls in order to produce mail-order brides for Chinese men. Mind-blowing how messed up this can get!I found some of the author's writing confusing at times. She'd write a whole paragraph to make a certain point, but then her concluding sentence would not draw the conclusion I was expecting, or would add confusion in some other way. But, maybe that was just me. Overall, I found this book interesting and made lots of points about this topic that never occurred to me before. The middle of this book was fantastic. I was so interested to read more about how, for example, some population control enthusiasts of the Cold War promoted sex selection and technologies to facilitate sex selection-driven abortions, the impact this had in Asia, and so on. That was incredibly well-done and I'm very glad I read it for that reason. More people should be aware of what she describes. The chapter on the impact on marriage was also excellent.The beginning and the tail end of the book left me more ambivalent. Hvistendahl seems needlessly over-adamant in rejecting 'cultural' reasons why sex selection is occurring in the countries she identifies, and this leads her into a real cul-de-sac around what to do about it. One would think a key part of the solution would be changing the attitudes and practices that make having a female child so unattractive. But by focusing on the technology's availability, the availability of abortion for sex selection (i.e. a 'wrong reason') and the role of the west in promoting population control, she ends up in a peculiar place that leads her to advocate proscriptive solutions that run the risk of being controlling and paternalistic. I would have liked her to write more (and maybe think more?) about where to draw the lines of proscription versus education and social changes.
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