A Google search of "how to conceive a girl" offers 25.2 million results, while the same question for "boy" gives just 19 million. You'd think that would give us a lot more girls. But not everywhere, and possibly not in Australia.
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The "missing girls" phenomenon, noted on a grand scale in China and India and in some south-east Asian nations, may be being replicated in families of migrants to Australia from these nations.
Research reported by Fairfax Media last week and today reveals that mothers from some key migrant communities are recording sons at rates of 122 and 125 for every 100 daughters in later pregnancies. The skew towards boys became more noticeable after a girl, or girls, had been born.
Researcher Kristina Edvardsson from La Trobe University believes some women from Chinese, Indian and south-east Asian families are terminating pregnancies after discovering they are expecting a girl.
While Australia bans people from selecting the sex of their child, except for medical reasons, Dr Edvardsson says women are also travelling overseas to access non-medical sex selection services through assisted reproduction.
The practice would occur here but for the law and the ethics of medical professionals. As Aisha Dow reports today, one sonographer was told: "We need to know the sex, because if it's a girl we are going to terminate it." The National Health and Medical Research Council has left the door open for future changes to the law, suggesting sex selection may be ethical.
In Anglo-Australian homes, the anecdotal evidence points to girls being preferred, if only by a small margin. Previous research has found half of Sydney women either expecting a baby or having fertility treatment believe they should be allowed to choose the sex of their unborn child.
The practices followed by parents of Indian and Chinese background (and from some south-east Asian countries) reflect long-standing cultural mores. A wife was a gain to the husband's family. The loss ledger was on the side of the bride's family. These mores are slow to die out: the Indian government estimates that even now the nation "loses" 2 million girls a year.
What is the solution? It ill-behoves our nation to adopt a superior attitude to any non-Anglo-Saxon culture, especially considering the immense contributions these Asian cultures have made to humanity.
Australia, while quick by world standards to grant women the vote, has held women back in other areas such as home-loan finance, equal pay and workplace protection for pregnant women. Domestic violence is also an enduring problem, with a woman being murdered by her male partner every week.
As the host country of choice for so many people from around the world, it is up to Australia to show that girls have better opportunities in life than in the past, by narrowing the gender pay gap, and acting on domestic violence. Education is key, but so too is practising what we preach.
Equal treatment of women in every facet of life, from schooling to work to parenthood to retirement, in the arts and on the sporting field, will be as good an advertisement as any for parents deciding "who" will become part of their family.
It might be that attitudes against families of girls will take more than one generation to mend. The effort is worthwhile. Eliminating sexism must begin with the starting point of life.
