The Historical Context of Female Feticide and Infanticide in India

In 1990, Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen drew the world’s attention to a quiet catastrophe unfolding across Asia. He estimated that over 100 million women were simply “missing” – not disappeared, but never given the chance to live. Behind that staggering number lay two deeply rooted practices: female feticide, the selective abortion of female fetuses, and female infanticide, the deliberate killing of newborn girls. In India, these are not recent phenomena. They have centuries of history, shaped by patriarchy, economic pressures, and social stratification. Understanding that history is the first step toward understanding why these practices persist – and what it costs.

Defining the practices 🔗

To be precise about terms: female feticide refers to the abortion of a female fetus following prenatal sex determination, while female infanticide refers to the deliberate killing of a newborn girl after birth. Scholars also recognize a “slow” or passive form of infanticide, where girls are systematically denied food, medical care, and basic nutrition – leading to preventable death through neglect rather than direct violence. Though these practices are distinct, they share the same root cause: a deep cultural preference for male children over female children.

Anthropologist Barbara Miller has noted that infanticide can be “outright,” such as physical violence, or take a “passive” form through neglect and starvation – a distinction that matters because passive infanticide is far harder to detect, prosecute, or even acknowledge.

Deep historical roots: from colonial records to ancient traditions 🔗

The first documented evidence of female infanticide in India dates to the colonial period. British officials first became aware of the practice in 1789 in the Benares State, in what is now Uttar Pradesh. A letter from a colonial magistrate described strongholds of Rajput rulers where, for several hundred years, no daughter had ever been raised. The practice was so normalized in certain elite communities that the colonial administration was initially reluctant to intervene, relying on high-caste communities for tax collection and local governance.

The economic logic behind these early practices was stark. According to historian Bernard Cohn, the East India Company’s dramatically higher tax burden made it financially difficult for wealthy landowning families to afford the dowry system without losing land or property. For Rajput and other warrior-class families, female children represented a financial liability: they required a dowry upon marriage and would eventually leave the family, taking resources with them but contributing nothing to the family’s landholding or lineage. An investigation by the East India Company in 1855-56 directly linked its own taxation policies to the rise in female infanticide.

These practices were not unique to any one religion or region. India has a long history of neglect, discrimination, and violence against women and girl children – manifesting across forms such as Sati, dowry deaths, female infanticide, and foeticide, all understood as extreme expressions of gender-based violence. While colonial-era records focused heavily on North and West India, practices of female infanticide were also documented in Tamil Nadu among the Kallars and Todas, and persisted well into the 20th century.

The cultural architecture of son preference 🔗

Female feticide and infanticide do not exist in isolation – they are the most extreme expression of a broader cultural system that has long devalued daughters. Several interlocking factors sustain this system.

Sons as economic and religious assets 🔗

Across many Indian communities, male children are viewed as economic assets who can earn, support the family, and continue the family line. Daughters, by contrast, are seen as liabilities who will be “married off” to another family – taking whatever resources were invested in them elsewhere. This perception is compounded by the dowry system, which, despite being legally prohibited under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, remains deeply embedded in practice. For poor and middle-class families alike, the prospect of paying a substantial dowry upon a daughter’s marriage has historically made female births a source of financial dread rather than joy.

Religious tradition reinforces this preference. According to Hindu traditions, funeral rites for parents are performed by sons – a belief that frames male offspring as essential not just for worldly support but for the parents’ spiritual salvation after death. The religious significance of sons, combined with their economic utility, has created a powerful dual incentive that cuts across class and caste lines.

Patriarchy and the status of women in ancient texts 🔗

The devaluation of women in Indian society has deep textual and ideological roots. The Manu Smriti, an ancient legal text, prescribed that a woman must be guarded by her father in childhood, her husband in youth, and her sons in old age – denying her any independent agency across the stages of her life. These attitudes did not remain confined to ancient texts. They shaped family structures, inheritance laws, and social norms for centuries, creating a framework in which daughters were structurally dependent and economically subordinate from birth.

From a cultural standpoint, Indian boys have long been seen as maintaining the family legacy – carrying the family name and performing funeral rites. These perceptions reinforced the idea that parents should value sons more than daughters, a belief that persisted even as India modernized, industrialized, and urbanized.

The role of technology in transforming an old practice 🔗

Female infanticide was the dominant sex-selective practice in the pre-modern era. The arrival of medical technology fundamentally shifted the methods – if not the intent. In the 1970s, ultrasound technology became available in India and, while designed to monitor fetal health, it was quickly adopted as a tool for prenatal sex determination. What followed was an acceleration of sex-selective abortion on a massive scale.

Research based on Union government data indicates that at least 9 million female fetuses were aborted in India between 2000 and 2019 alone. Critically, sex-selective abortion became most prevalent not among the poor but among upper-caste and affluent families – with studies in Haryana showing sex ratios at birth as skewed as 127 males for every 100 females among upper-caste women, compared to 105 among lower-caste women. This upends the assumption that these practices are driven purely by poverty or ignorance; strong son preference operates powerfully across socioeconomic strata.

In response, India enacted the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act in 1994, which banned prenatal sex determination and regulated the use of diagnostic technology. Despite this legislative landmark, enforcement has remained inconsistent, and sex-selective abortions have continued – often through illegal portable ultrasound machines operated at night, in clients’ homes, far from regulatory oversight.

Sex ratios and the scale of the crisis 🔗

The clearest statistical measure of these practices is the child sex ratio – the number of girls per 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group. India’s decennial census shows the sex ratio in this age group rising from 102.4 males per 100 females in 1961, to 107.5 in 2001, to 108.9 in 2011 – each increment representing hundreds of thousands of missing girls. The natural sex ratio at birth is between 103 and 107 males per 100 females. Any number significantly above that range is understood by demographers as indicative of sex-selective intervention.

The regional pattern is equally telling. States like Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan exhibit the most severely skewed sex ratios, driven by strong male-child preference and deeply patriarchal social norms. These are also relatively prosperous states, reinforcing the point that economic development alone does not automatically translate into improved gender outcomes.

The United Nations Population Fund’s 2020 World Population Report found that one in three girls missing globally due to sex selection is from India – a total of approximately 46 million. That figure situates India at the center of one of the most severe gender crises in the world.

Consequences of sex-selective practices 🔗

The effects of female feticide and infanticide extend far beyond the immediate loss of life. They reshape demographics, destabilize communities, and generate cascading social harms that can take generations to resolve.

A public health and demographic emergency 🔗

A severely skewed sex ratio represents a public health crisis by any measure. When millions of girls are missing from the population, the effects ripple outward in every direction. Women who are coerced or pressured into undergoing sex-selective abortions face not only the immediate medical risks of the procedure but also long-term reproductive morbidity – including uterine prolapse, secondary infertility, and, in cases of botched illegal procedures, maternal death. The psychological toll – loss of control over one’s own body and reproductive decisions – is equally significant but far less documented.

India’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) as of 2021-23 stands at approximately 917 females per 1,000 males, according to the Sample Registration System – still significantly below the natural ratio of around 952. Delhi’s SRB actually declined from 933 in 2020 to 920 in 2024, suggesting that despite legal frameworks and public campaigns, the underlying demand for sons has not meaningfully abated in urban centers.

Social instability and the marriage squeeze 🔗

A society with significantly fewer women than men faces what demographers call a marriage squeeze – a shortage of potential brides that distorts the marriage market and generates a range of downstream social problems. India’s Supreme Court itself acknowledged in a 2019 judgment that a skewed sex ratio is likely to increase incidences of violence against women and practices like trafficking and “bride-buying.”

India’s male-heavy demographic is producing a saturated marriage market – one where a shortage of women has given rise to trafficking for forced marriage and sexual exploitation. Women and girls, particularly from lower castes and marginalized communities, become targets in this market. The commodification does not stop at marriage; families have in some cases played active roles in trafficking women for these purposes. These consequences are not hypothetical future risks – they are already documented realities in states with the most severe sex ratio imbalances.

Violence against women and the cycle of devaluation 🔗

There is a direct and documented relationship between son preference and violence against women. Gender bias begins before birth and extends through discrimination, neglect, and violence across a woman’s entire life cycle. The same cultural logic that motivates sex-selective abortion – that women are less valuable, more burdensome, less worthy of resources – also shapes how women are treated throughout their lives. High rates of female feticide correlate with regions that also report higher rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and dowry-related deaths.

A poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked India as the most unsafe country for women, with the culture of female inferiority contributing to a cycle where sex-selective practices and violence against women reinforce each other. Female feticide is not an isolated act – it is the most visible tip of a much larger structure of gender-based discrimination.

Political under-representation 🔗

The consequences of missing women extend even into democratic governance. Research from the Brookings Institution estimates that approximately 65 million women are missing from India’s electorate – roughly 20% of eligible female voters. This means that policies shaped by election outcomes may not adequately reflect the needs and preferences of women, creating a feedback loop in which political systems remain structurally unresponsive to the very population most harmed by gender-based discrimination.

Why laws alone are not enough 🔗

India has not been passive in response to these crises. Beyond the PCPNDT Act, the government launched the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) campaign in 2015, targeting the most severely imbalanced districts. Cash transfer programs for girl children and legal penalties for sex determination have been tools of state intervention for decades.

Yet the data tells a sobering story. Roughly 5% of girls are still “missing” at birth each year in India, translating to over 800,000 female fetuses annually. The PCPNDT Act has been criticized by courts and civil society alike for inadequate enforcement – with many cases resulting in nominal fines rather than meaningful penalties, and illegal portable ultrasound operators continuing to work under the radar.

The persistence of the problem points to a fundamental truth: addressing female feticide and infanticide requires not only legal enforcement but a fundamental change in the sociocultural norms that favor sons over daughters. Cash transfers and awareness campaigns address symptoms. The root cause – the patriarchal belief system that assigns lesser value to female life from the moment of conception – requires a deeper, generational shift in how families, communities, and institutions understand the worth of women and girls.

The historical context of female feticide and infanticide in India is not simply a record of past wrongs. It is an active inheritance – one that continues to shape sex ratios, social stability, and the life chances of millions of girls born in India today. Understanding where these practices come from is inseparable from understanding why they remain so difficult to end.

What do you think? Given that sex-selective practices are more prevalent among educated and affluent families in India, what does that tell us about the relationship between economic development and gender equality? And if legal frameworks like the PCPNDT Act have been in place for over three decades without fully solving the problem, where should the focus of intervention shift next?

References

1. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/12/20/more-than-100-million-women-are-missing/
2. https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Vol.30-Issue5/Ser-4/F3005044043.pdf
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_India
4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40847-025-00426-z
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_foeticide_in_India
6. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/pre-conception-and-pre-natal-diagnostic-techniques-pcpndt-act-1994
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5747635/
8. https://pha.studentorg.berkeley.edu/2021/04/10/un-natural-selection-female-feticide-in-india/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Conception_and_Pre-Natal_Diagnostic_Techniques_Act,_1994
10. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7813894/
11. https://www.insightsonindia.com/2025/10/23/son-meta-preference-sex-determination-rackets/
12. https://cjp.org.in/sc-upholds-constitutionality-of-section-23-of-pcpndt-act/
13. https://igg-geo.org/en/2021/05/26/to-be-born-a-woman-in-india-foeticide-and-infanticide-origins-consequences-and-solutions/
14. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-indias-65-million-missing-women-mean-for-the-state-of-its-democracy/