When Technology and Tradition Collide: from Gender Bias to Sex Selection

This brief focuses on the motivations and mechanisms behind the increase of prenatal sex selection; outlines regions and countries that have skewed sex ratios at birth; and explores the negative social, economic, and development effects on individuals, communities, societies, and countries. While prenatal sex selection was once thought to be unique to India and China, it actually threatens all regions where these three phenomena are converging. The practice now exists in other countries in South and East Asia as well as in eastern Europe, and could emerge in Africa in the not-too-distant future.2 Policymakers need to be aware of the practice’s potential growth, and how it threatens gender equality and progress in their own countries. With increasingly accessible technologies paving the way for further expansion, now is the time to learn from interventions that have shown promise in exposing or stopping the practice of sex selection.