Each year we lose 3.2 million girls and women to gendercide.  Roughly half are girls, and half are women.1  

The cumulative loss over time is 143 million demographically “missing” women and girls.2.  143 million is only the part of that loss — the part that demographers can measure.  The actual loss is much greater.

Before birth

During the period 1980 – 2000, sex-selective abortion displaced infanticide as the primary way of eliminating unwanted baby girls.3

Early childhood

After birth, baby girls are more often neglected to death than actively killed, but families still continue to drown, smother, strangle, and abandon baby girls.4

During early childhood, girls remain at risk.5 Due to unequal distribution of food and medical care between boys and girls, 400,000 young girls die unnecessarily each year.6 This is called excess female child mortality, as it vastly exceeds mortality for boys.

Childbearing years

As young women enter their childbearing years, they become vulnerable once again. Resources are not directed to maternal care, with the result that mothers succumb during and after childbirth. Currently, 300,000 women die from childbirth and maternal injury every year,5 leaving their older children motherless. Nearly all these deaths are preventable, as can be seen in the example of Sri Lanka. Though very poor, Sri Lanka offers free maternal care, and its maternal death rates are close to those in western countries.7

Over age 50 

Women in old age suffer from lack of assets. Because wealth is traditionally owned and controlled by the men of the family, older women, particularly widows, are more likely than men to find themselves poor, cast out, and unable to survive.  They are not able to access food, shelter, and medical care as successfully as their male counterparts.8