Neglect also pereferentially kills girls, not just outright infanticide and feticide. This is from the first link I quoted (
Case Study: Female Infanticide) :
Deficits in nutrition and health-care also overwhelmingly target female children. Karlekar cites research
indicat[ing] a definite bias in feeding boys milk and milk products and eggs ... In Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh [states], it is usual for girls and women to eat less than men and boys and to have their meal after the men and boys had finished eating. Greater mobility outside the home provides boys with the opportunity to eat sweets and fruit from saved-up pocket money or from money given to buy articles for food consumption. In case of illness, it is usually boys who have preference in health care. ... More is spent on clothing for boys than for girls[,] which also affects morbidity. (Karlekar, "The girl child in India.")
Sunita Kishor reports "another disturbing finding," namely "that, despite the increased ability to command essential food and medical resources associated with development, female children [in India] do not improve their survival chances relative to male children with gains in development. Relatively high levels of agricultural development decrease the life chances of females while leaving males' life chances unaffected; urbanization increases the life chances of males more than females. ... Clearly, gender-based discrimination in the allocation of resources persists and even increases, even when availability of resources is not a constraint." (Kishor, "'May God Give Sons to All': Gender and Child Mortality in India," American Sociological Review, 58: 2 [April 1993], p. 262.)
This quote doesn't clearly stress that boys are given better health care than girls, although it mentions it in passing. I have read elsewhere that this is a typical pattern in many countries. If health care is costly, then it is often just the boys who are considered worth the expenditure of it. If health care is merely an annoyance, for example so that a parent has to stay home from work one day to bring his or her child to a hospital, then it may still only be the boys who are considered worth the sacrifice.
I recently brought up the Madeline Neumann case. Madeline's parents acted very strangely when they refused to take their daughter to hospital, despite what must have been her steadily worsening condition. They chose to pray for her
instead of taking her to hospital, rather than pray for her
and take her to hospital. I recently suggested that the Neumanns might have opted to take their seriously sick child to hospital if the child had been a boy instead of a girl. Of course I realize that we are talking about an individual case and two parents whose motivations no outsiders can truly know anything about. But let me say that Madeline's case fits a pattern. A child gets sick, the child is a girl, and the parents don't take their daughter to hospital. The girl dies.
Ann
