I was looking through a chart of gender ratios. Worldwide, there are about 102 men for every 100 women, but in the Gulf States, that ratio is much higher. Bahrain – 135; Qatar – 307 ; United Arab Emirates – 205 ; Saudi Arabia – 121 ; Oman – 129; Kuwait – 147. Even China with its notorious one child family that leads to the killings of baby girls has only 108 men for every 100 women.
I have to believe that the ratios from the Gulf States are not due to natural variances. It’s funny that for all the talk about women’s rights in the Gulf, it’s usually about being restricted from going out alone or not being allowed to drive. No one protests that large numbers of (baby) girls in these countries are being deprived of their right to life.
I bring this up because Phyllis Chesler has written about a recent study in the (once respected) medical journal, Lancet. (via memeorandum)
Their study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”– and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.
The gender ratios in Syria, Egypt, “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and even Iran are all reasonable.
I guess when you don’t have a real grievance it’s always easier to make one up and blame the Jews.
UPDATE: As commenter Eric J observed and as Elder of Ziyon pointed out in an e-mail, male guest workers probably account for the excessive number of men found in the oil rich Gulf States.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Cowards the lot of them.
Not to defend the Gulf Arabs, but ratios like that can’t be coming from infanticide. Those numbers must include non-citzen “guest workers” the majority of whom are male. (Saudi Arabia is more reasonable, because lots of their guest workers are cleaning women and other domestics.)
I agree with Eric. The countries with the largest ratios are smaller countries with significant oil fields where I imagine it is easy for guest workers to overwhelm the local population.
“Saudi Arabia is more reasonable …”
Now you didn’t really mean that, did you?
Violence against women is not suppossed to happen especially in the bonds of marriage but it seems that marriage has become a license for Palestinian men to become violent to Palestinian women. This is a very sad situation for women who have sacrificed their own happiness to take care of their husband and children. We should understand this because we all have mothers.
Those numbers are large, but one wonders if guest workers can really account entirely for the difference though. While today, China overall may well have 108 male adults per 100 female adults, that figure is set to change with a rising number of surplus males. In 2004 Mainland China’s sex ratio at birth was 120.5 boy births per 100 girl births, while the province Jiangxi is 137.1 (Guilmoto, 2009). While sex ratio at birth is a bit different to counting the number of adult males and females, it shows that sex-selective abortions still are being practiced. Figures from India are pretty much the same. This means that China and India have rising numbers of surplus men, and since China and India’s populations are so big that the demographics from these two countries has the ability to influence the world-wide population demographics, the figure of 102 men for every 100 women worldwide is set to change. Since sex selected abortions are carried out across a range of Asian countries, I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss the idea that it occurs in the Middle East.
Ref: Guilmoto, C. Z., 2009, ‘The Sex Ratio Transition in Asia’, Population and Development Review, 35 (3).