But it's hard to make the case that the one-child policy advanced Chinese women's rights when, balanced against urban women's advancements, one considers the huge numbers of females killed at birth or abandoned, as well as aborted female foetuses. Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen estimates that infanticide and gendercide have contributed to a missing 100 million women in Asia. Roughly half of those would have been Chinese. With the current gender imbalance, women are certainly more valuable, but not necessarily more valued. In addition to a rising anti-feminist backlash, the female shortage has resulted in increasing commodification of women. Prostitution and sex trafficking in China have been on the rise for the past decade, though nobody has precise figures, for enforcement is lax and transparency low. In 2007, the US State Department estimated that a minimum of ten to twenty thousand victims are trafficked domestically within China yearly, earning traffickers more than $7 billion annually, more than selling drugs or weapons.
( Mei Fong )
[ One Child: The Story of ]
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