This week I will be blogging Mara Hvistendahl's Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.
The shortage of women in many Asian and Eastern European countries does have some silver linings.
In India, the need for brides is leading to some cross-caste marriages that would have been unthinkable a generation or so ago.
In East Asia, "foreign brides" make up so large a percentage of new marriages that old national prejudices are being modified or even given up.
The poor women who marry out of poor countries, such as Vietnam, into developing countries can make a better life for their children than they could have at home.
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Did you know that the Chinese concider postmodern art and philosophy to be 'homo'?
The same issues listed as the silver lining to selective abortion are considered huge issues by women's rights organizations in those countries. In South Korea it is a combination not just of gender ratios but of the women's rights movement itself that is contributing to the huge increase in foreign bride marriages. With access to education and job opportunities Korean women don't want to marry into a life of farm work so it is mostly poorer rural men who participate in buying their brides from Vietnam and Mongolia mostly. These women sometimes have very little to no choice in who they marry. They do not speak the language and they enter a country that is still holds value in their "pure race." These women and their "mixed" children face a lot of racism and their is only one organization I know of that tries to support them by offering language courses, education and shelter if they flea their marriage because of abuse. That organization is in the capitol and very far from the majority of these women living in rural areas.
I am not even going to get started on marriages in India.
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