Effects of chinas one child policy on women

Effects of chinas one baby bird insurance on womenAs the most populous country in the world, the Peoples Republic of chinaw be has been adopting the One-Child polity since 1979 in social club to break the difficulty of overpopulation which is seen as an obstacle of the increment and development of the country. While the Chinese disposal emphasizes its achievements of population control in mainland chinaw be, the controversial policy has been widely criticized for its ostracise influences. This writing presents the One-Child constitutions effects on the position of women. Womens position in this paper is basically outlined by womens decentlys, freedom, respectability and social status .I volition showtime briefly introduce the policy, then analyze both the irrefutable and negative impacts with relevant data and statistics, and lastly come to a conclusion.The Policy and community GrowthIntroduced in 1978 and mechanismed since 1979, the One-Child Policy is a family t hink policy adopted by the Chinese Government in order to improve Chinas over-rapid population as to prevent its unfavourable effects on economic and social development of the country.(Information portion of the State Council Of the Peoples Republic of China 1995) The policy restricts married urban Chinese couples from having to a greater extent than one infant by imposing monetary penalties on families with extra children stock-still exemptions are allowed for couples who belong to ethnic minorities, live in rural area or do not confirm every siblings.(BBC News 2000) The One-Child Policy is considered palmy in terms of its control on Chinas population growth as the wear rate in the county has been greatly decreasing since the introduction of the policy. (see portend 1) Compared with 1970, in 1994 the birth rate dropped from 33.43 per thousand to 17.7 per thousand the natural growth rate, from 25.83 per thousand to 11.21 per thousand and the total profuseness rate of women, from 5.81 to around 2According to statistics supplied by the United Nations, Chinas population growth rate has already been markedly lower than the average level of another(prenominal) developing countries. (Information Office of the State Council Of the Peoples Republic of China 1995) witness 1. Changes in the total fertility rate in Chinaextraction National Population and Family grooming relegation of China (2006)Violation of Womens Reproductive RightsDespite its success in population control, the One-Child Policy gives rise to criticisms among which one lies in its violation of womens productive rights. Reproductive rights are a subset of hu serviceman rights first recognized at the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights in capital of Iran on 13th May 1986. According to the 16th article of the announcement of Teheran, Parents induct a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the morsel and the spacing of their children. Dixon-Mueller (1993 12) suggests that reproductive rights can be defined as trey types 1. the freedom to decide how many children to have and when (or whether) to have them 2. the right to have the information and means to regulate ones fertility 3. the right to control ones own body. Reproductive freedom is the core of individual self-determination.The One-Child Policy does not tho violate womens rights by limiting the number of their children plainly also leads to forced stillbirths in the country. Under the enforced policy, every 2.4 seconds in that location is a woman undergoing a forced abortion in China and this makes a total of about 35,000 abortions per day. (Phillips 2010 1) Abortion is legal in China and as reported in China Daily in 2009, 13 millions of abortions are performed in China every year, which largely exceeds those performed in other countries such(prenominal)(prenominal) as the United States and Canada. (see Figure 2). There is a take aim relationship between the One-Child Poli cy and Chines abortion rate. PostenYaukey (1992 290) point out that the abortion rate in China increased by nearly 50% between 1978 and 1979 when the policy started being implemented. It is widely known that abortions can stimulate women health problems, not to mention its negative impacts on emotional and noetic health. Ms. Reggie Littlejohn, president of Womens Rights Without Frontiers, criticized that The one child policy causes more than violence toward women and girls than any other policy on the face of the earth. (Jiang 2009)Figure2. Abortion statistics in China, U.S.A., U.K., Canada and Australia microbe Jiang (2009)Unwanted Daughters and Sex-Selective AbortionsA reciteing among peasants in China goes like thisThe birth of a boy is welcomed with shouts of joy and firecrackers, but when a girl is born, the neighbours say nothing(WestleyChoe 2007 2) In spite of Chinas modernization over the past decades, it is still habitual for Chinese parents to prefer give-and-takes t o daughters. (Wang 1999 197) Such a preference indirectly leads to sex-selective abortions as female fetuses are usually considered less precious than male ones, in particular if the couples are allowed to have only one child. With fetal screening technologies such as ultrasound, amniocentesis and chorionic villi sampling, the sex of unborn fetuses can be recognized before their birth. Such technologies and available abortions result in the porta that couples selectively abort female fetuses in the hope of having a son instead.(WestleyChoe 2007 3)Beside sex-selective abortions, Chinas infant death rate rate is another thing to look into. broadly the mortality of male infants is expected to be greater than that of female ones as male infants are biologically weaker than female infants.(Li, 2007 2) This assumption is also be by the worlds infant mortality rate by sex.(See Table 1) However, as shown in Table 2, China goes in the reverse direction. It is believed that this unusual endeavor is caused by female infanticides and daughter abandonments resulting from the son preference.Table 1. Worlds infant mortality rate by sex 1980-2010 character United Nations Population portion (2010)Table 2. Chinas infant mortality rate by sex 1980-2010Source United Nations Population Division (2010)Gender Imbalance Blessing or Curse?Together with the increasing female infant mortality, there is a rising trend of the sex ratio in China since the implement of the One-Child Policy.(See Figure 3) It is estimated by the State Population and Family Planning Commission that there will be 30 million more Chinese man than Chinese women in 2020. (BBC News 2007)Because of the supply-and- deal law that supply decreases t and demand remains unchanged then the value of supply increase, roughly quite a little assume that if there are less women in China their value and social status should naturally rise. However, this law would make sense only if the demand of women was high. Poon( 2008) points out that when women become the minority in a male-preponderant confederation like China, China may face a period of unparalleled male aggression, which would likely render women as victims and womens status even more precarious and vulnerable to subjugation.Figure 3. Rising sex ratio and overabundance female infant mortality in ChinaSource sunshine (2005)Womens Empowerment The Mistaken FocusIt is always emphasized by the Chinese Government that the One-Child Policy helps promoting womens empowerment and improving womens position as they are freed from heavy burdens brought about by having many children(National Population and Family Planning Commission of China 2006). This claim contains two causal relations1) Because of the One-Child Policy women have fewer children.2) Women have fewer children so they can spend more time on their career.Both of them make sense in a large extent, but is the One-Child Policy a must to control the number of womens children? Probably no.Despite that Hong Kong is a special administrative share of the PRC, the One-Child Policy is never implemented in the city, where the social position of women is comparatively high. As shown in Figure 4, the fertility rate of Hong Kong kept drop even and was even lower than that of China. Of course one can advocate that there are various ciphers contributing to Hong Kongs low fertility rate, yet one can also question whether the One-Child Policy is the only factor causing the decline in fertility rate and the rise of womens position.Figure 4. Fertility rates from 1960-2005 in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and East Asia PacificSource The United Families International (2010)The Single Child GenerationThe One-Child Policy does not only aim to decrease the birthrate but also to improve the quality of the new generation, the future pillars of China. It is commonly believed that having single daughters will tin the position of women as their parents provide th em with offend and more concentrated resources such as education and materials. It may be true in some ways, but Greenhalgh(2007.) points out that the One-Child Policy has produced the most materially and educationally permit generation of young people in Chinese history who are spoiled and egocentric. Having been the focus of attention from the family throughout their growing-up years, these children are more parasitic on others and easily hurt psychologically.(China Daily 2005) The new single-child generation in China has already concerning Chinese from the older generation. Do better resources unavoidably create a better generation? If it does not, how can we expect a decline in qualities of children (both male and female) will result in better positions of women?ConclusionThe One-Child Policy was claimed to be a short-term measure when it was first introduced in China.(Hesketh, Li Zhu 2005) Now that the policy has already been implemented for three decades, its negative cons equences eventually appear and have aroused worries from the society. The policy negatively affects womens position as it violate womens rights and enhances the existing favoritism towards male children and it is not coming to an end yet. According to Zhao Baige, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, although it is said that the policy has been slowly being relaxed ,Chinas family-planning policy will remain unchanged until at least 2015. (Kumar 2010)(1631 words)