Australian’s single city women forced to look for love in the country

In the latest example of how difficult it has become for women in their late twenties and early thirties to find an eligible man in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, a dating agency has started sending busloads of single women out to country towns, where the ratio of men to women is far more favourable.

The weekend tours, named Thank Goodness He’s A Country Boy, involve eight hours of intensive speed dating at a country pub, where lonely farmers are introduced to single city girls.

Brie Petersen came up with the idea after visiting friends in the rural town of Mungindi in Queensland. During a night at the pub, the owner told her that he regularly received letters from single women in Brisbane and Sydney asking him to set them up with farmers. Similar pleas were being sent to the post office, he said.

“These women obviously needed help, it was simply a matter of putting the two groups in the same place,” Miss Petersen said.

The first tour, which took 50 Sydney women to the rural town of Tamworth was a success, with an “85 per cent pick up rate”, she said. More trips for the single women of Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth are on the cards.

The tours are the latest symptoms of the chronic gender unbalance in metropolitan and rural areas, which has already spawned a highly popular reality television programme, The Farmer Wants A Wife. The programme matches single women with farmers from far-flung parts of the country and after six series it has generated four marriages and three babies.

Bernard Salt, demographer and author of Man Drought, said the programme and the tours were so successful because over the past four decades young women had fled Australia’s rural towns and communities.

“The farmer does want a wife because there’s no single sheilas in the nearby towns,” he said. While women in the 1960s would marry a local man after finishing school, they now head off to the city in search of work, leaving the men behind, he said.

“As soon as that 18 year old girl leaves she upsets the gender balance in the town, because there are not enough marriageable women, and she also upsets the gender balance in Sydney because there is an oversupply of women in the inner city suburbs.

“The problem is writ large in Australia which is sparsely populated and vast so you get a shift like this and it makes a huge impact.” But for 29-year-old Sydney woman Bianca Wignall, one of Ms Petersen’s clients, it is a matter of quality, as well as quantity.

“Country men are more gentlemanly, they hold the door open for you and if they see you with an empty glass they will be the first to offer to get you a drink, they are more attentive.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8540727/Australians-single-city-women-forced-to-look-for-love-in-the-country.html

USC study finds big drop in number of children living in L.A. County

Los Angeles County is “ground zero” for the state’s diminishing child population, a statistic that could point to serious problems as the region tries to meet future demand for workers, according to a report released Tuesday.

The number of children between the ages of 5 and 9 in the county decreased by 21% from 2000 to 2010, dropping from 802,047 to 633,690. The average decrease for California was 8.1%, according to the report “Aging in California and Los Angeles County” by USC.

“In the long run … this is really a bad problem because these kids are going to grow up and the ones who are missing [from L.A. County] are likely not going to work here,” said Dowell Myers, one of the report’s authors. “That workforce is going to be in very short supply.

Myers said California’s shrinking child population, reflected in new census figures, is on the “extreme end” of an overall aging U.S. population because of the maturing of the baby boomer generation. One result has been declining student enrollment and the closure of schools.

“There’s just fewer potential parents and that’s part of what’s driving it,” Myers said. “The implications are that we really need to think about building a more supportive environment for families and kids. Our children are a precious and diminishing resource, and they deserve more support.”

Researchers attributed much of the disproportionate local loss to difficult living conditions for families facing high housing costs and high unemployment. The report’s authors also noted findings released by the Brookings Institution in April that showed the greater Los Angeles area was bucking a national trend with a declining Latino child population.

Another finding was that more than half of the state’s population is over age 35, about two years older than the median age of 33.3 in 2000. Additionally, researchers said the number of minors in L.A. County dropped 10% from 2000 to 2010, more than any other area in the state.

A second USC report, “The Changing Household and Family,” released Tuesday said new demographic trends are “changing the meaning of what is a conventional household.”

There were 32% more households with unmarried couples throughout the state in 2010 than a decade earlier. There also was a 17% increase in the number of California homes that have children with single fathers, a surprising statistic because it was a larger increase than the number of homes headed by single mothers.

In L.A. County, there also was a 14% decrease in the number of households with married couples and children from 2000 to 2010, the data showed.

“We’re heading into uncharted territory,” Myers said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0525-usc-report-20110525,0,367814.story

Chinese babies reportedly trafficked into adoption

Authorities in China are investigating reports that about 20 babies born in violation of population-control policies were abducted and then trafficked into adoption by officials.

The investigation comes after Caixin magazine reported this week that family planning officials in central China’s Hunan province had abducted children and sold them internationally – some to people in the United States and the Netherlands.

Chinese officials do not always enforce the “one child” policy with much vigour and the worst that violators normally expect is a fine.

The case, which is not the first to accuse Chinese family planning officials of abusing population control policies for profit, sheds further light on the uneven implementation of child-population-control policy.

One family claimed they had not broken the law as the child was their first, but family planning “enforcers” nonetheless took the baby away.

“They mistook my daughter for being illegal when my wife and I were working in Shenzhen,” migrant worker Yang Libing told the magazine.

Mr Yang said he had tracked down his daughter, now seven years old and living in the United States.

Family planning officials in Longhui county allegedly received $142 for each child handed over to welfare agencies, which in turn received up to $2,760 for each child put up for adoption overseas, it said.

The abductions peaked in the middle of the last decade but had been occurring for 10 years, the magazine said.

Trafficking of women and children remains a serious problem in China, with many sociologists blaming the one child policy for fuelling the crime.

Under the policy, aimed at controlling China’s world-leading population of more than 1.3 billion, people who live in urban areas are generally allowed one child, while rural families can have two if the first is a girl.

This has put a premium on baby boys, while baby girls are often sold off, abandoned or put up for adoption.

Official penalties for violating the policy vary based on location, but usually include a fine. Rights groups however allege that much more draconian measures are often taken.

In a report released in December, the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) cited widespread abuse including forced abortions, sterilisations, insertions of intrauterine devices and coerced testing for pregnancy.

Both men and women found to have violated the policy have been beaten, detained, or fined. Others have lost their jobs, or been denied household registration permits for their children, CHRD alleged.

China is battling a severe gender imbalance. A census recently completed in the country found 118.06 males were born in China to every 100 baby girls over the past 10 years.

Up to 80,000 Chinese children have reportedly been adopted by overseas families in recent decades, with most finding homes in the United States.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/11/3213686.htm

Census shows China population growth slowing

China’s population has increased to 1.34 billion but more people are ageing, a development experts say will likely spur calls for the “one-child” policy to be relaxed.

Census data gathered in 2010 and released on Thursday showed the population in the world’s second biggest economy grew by 5.84 percent from the 1.27 billion in the last census in 2000.

This level was smaller than the 1.4 billion some demographers had projected.

As China is fast urbanising and becoming older, these trends augur big changes in the labour market in coming years, the results showed.

The number of potential workers, especially from the countryside, is shrinking and the elderly dependent population is increasing.

By 2010, half of China’s population, 49.7 per cent, lived in urban areas. In 2000, 36.1 per cent lived in cities and towns, although that census used a different counting method.

By 2010, 261.4 million Chinese were counted as “migrants”, meaning they were residing outside of their home villages, towns or cities. Most of them are farmers from the poor inland who have moved to cities and coastal industrial zones to find work.

‘Historial landmark’

“What’s significant is that China is for the first time crossing a historical landmark from a country that’s dominated by people engaging in agriculture, living in the countryside, to an urbanised society,” said Wang Feng, a demographer who is director of the Brookings Institute Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing.

“Such low fertility and population growth means that China will face a future smaller cohort of young labour for labour supply, and also a much more serious ageing process than people anticipated even 10 years ago or two decades ago.”

Those rapid changes have not always been smooth, Ma Jiantang, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, told a news conference.

“The data from this census show that our country faces some tensions and challenges regarding population, the economy and social development. First, the ageing trend is accelerating, and second the size of the mobile population is constantly expanding.”

The results could encourage the government to relax family planning restrictions that limit nearly all urban couples to one child, while rural families are usually allowed two, said Du Peng, a professor at the Population and Development Studies Center at Renmin University in Beijing.

“The total population shows the general trend towards slowed population growth and as well an older population, and in the next five years or longer that will be an important basis for population policy,” said Du.

“The ageing of the population appears faster than was expected.”

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, told a meeting of top Communist Party leaders convened to discuss population issues that China will maintain its strict family planning policy.

Demographers advocating changes to the one-child policy took a counterintuitive look at Hu’s speech, suggesting his decision to publicly address family planning now meant there was fresh debate among the leadership about how best to manage it.

The proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.60 per cent, down by 6.29 percentage points from the number in the 2000 census. The number aged 60 or older grew to 13.26 per cent, up 2.93 percentage points.

Slower growth

The figures also showed that China’s population is growing more slowly than in the past. Between 1990 and 2000, the total population increased by 11.7 per cent.

China’s chief statistician, Ma, acclaimed the numbers as a vindication of the government’s firm, sometimes harsh, family planning policies.

“These figures have shown the trend of excessively rapid growth of China’s population has been under effective control,” Ma said.

But one economist said China’s slowed rate of population growth and shrinking pool of migrant labour from the countryside could add to long-term pressures driving up wages and prices.

“What really matters is the one-child policy that has created a cliff-fall (in the population) in the last three decades,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

“That is starting to show in rural labour markets and the entire economy feels the pain as this becomes a major source of inflation,” he said in a telephone interview.

The shift of the population to urban areas has put great pressure on cities like Beijing and Chongqing and will likely to spur continued high levels of infrastructure spending in coming years.

The Chinese government’s strict controls on family size have brought down annual population growth to below 1 percent and the rate is projected to start falling in coming decades.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/04/201142852019929352.html

Women demonstrate over falling sex ratio in Raj

Jaipur, Apr 27 (PTI) Women activists today took to the streets of Jaipur to highlight concerns over a falling child sex ratio in Rajasthan and demand for a concrete policy to check the alarming situation.

The figures from the 2011 Census have thrown up rattling statistics of child sex ratio in Rajasthan, with 883 girls born per 1000 boys as against 909 in 2001, indicating sex selection was on the rise.

Scores of women activists from different cities of the state and from different organisations held a joint rally here today, and presented a memorandum to the Chief Minister raising certain key issues.

The activists have demanded the drafting of a state policy 2021 to lay out a plan to check the worrying trend with participation from all sections of the administration — from the Chief Minister to district and panchayat level officials.

They also demanded that officials be given the responsibility to check pre natal sex detection and properly implement the PNDT Act.

The activists highlighted that the child sex ratio in the state had fallen by a worrying 71 points over the last 30 years, and the situation was particularly bad in certain districts like Jhunjhunu where it stood at 831 and in Sikar where it was 841.

They also suggested that the Chief Minister call a meeting of all district collectors to discuss the implementation of the PCPNDT Act, and complaints against doctors found guilty of violation be registered at the Rajasthan Medical Council and be sorted out in given time frame.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/women-activists-demonstrate-over-falling-sex-ratio-raj-141900363.html

Half of Beijing women eligible for 2nd child give up – survey

More than 50 per cent of the childbearing-age women in Beijing who are eligible for a second child under China’s family planning policy do not want to produce, said the “2010-2011 Beijing Social Development Blue Book” recently released by the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

The “Comparative Study on the Childbearing Will of Urban and Rural Only Child in Beijing” section of the blue book is a survey conducted by the Beijing Population Research Institute in 2006 and 2008 regarding the childbearing will of more than 2,000 only children in Dongcheng District, Haidian District and Changping District of Beijing.

The report pointed out that the childbearing will of females in Beijing is currently going towards the trend of having fewer children, later childbirth, and no clear gender preference. In addition, the only-children themselves dominate the reproductive behaviors, and the impact of policies on childbearing will gradually become minimal.

In addition, the blue book said that the per capita annual income of ordinary working families in Beijing stood at 22,000 yuan, amounting to the per capita monthly income of 1,833 yuan. The annual wage income of nearly 70 percent of ordinary workers is less than 30,000 yuan and the annual wage income of nearly 3 percent of workers is less than 12,000 yuan. Furthermore, only more than 14 percent of workers’ annual wage income exceeds 40,000 yuan.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/98649/7361977.html

Bangladesh to introduce family planning policy

Bangladesh is going to introduce “one couple, one child” population planning policy soon without making it mandatory in a bid to contain the growing population of the country.

The Director General of the Directorate of Family Planning Mohammad Abdul Qayyum told Xinhua in an interview Wednesday “The Chinese policy influenced us in framing our policy though we are not making it mandatory,” He said they will create awareness among people about “one couple, one child” policy.

The directorate drafted the policy to popularize the slogan “Nomore than two children, one is best,” the official said.

The couples having one child would be given preferences in different state facilities like financial grants and other areas.

“We are eager to develop relationship with Chinese population planning authorities for training our men, using modern contraceptive and other related matters,” Qayyum said.

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world with more than 1,000 people living in one square kilometer area, and the population growth rate is now at 1.39 percent, the director general said, adding that according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimate, Bangladesh’s population is now at 162.2 million though the Bangladeshi government counts it to be 140 million.

Qayyum said, “The population situation of the country will be grave after 50 years if the current growth rate is not halted.”

He said they want to contain the population growth, otherwise, it would create pressure on basic rights of people like education, health, housing and food.

Qayyum said the government has reduced child mortality rate to 65 now from 150 per thousand live birth.

The director general said the country at present has nearly 25 million fertile couple and 56 percent of whom are adopting various methods of population planning.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6850595.html

Survey: Shanghai couples unwilling to have 2nd child

While China’s family planning policy restricts most people from having a second child, more than half of those eligible to have another child don’t want one. And the reason, according to a recent survey, is purely financial.

“It’s not the family planning policy that makes me hesitate because my wife and I are both eligible (to have a second child). But what we are facing now is huge economic pressure,” 32-year-old Shanghai IT engineer George Zhang, whose wife is expecting their first baby, was quoted by Wednesday’s China Daily as saying.

“My entire income will go toward paying off our housing loan and the child’s food and clothing,” he said. “I can’t afford a second baby, though I envy those families who have twins.”

The survey was conducted by the Shanghai-based Dongfang Daily, following a reminder from the city government last month telling couples that if both spouses are sole children, they are eligible to have a second child.

Among the 829 surveyed, 23 percent were eligible to have another child. Of those, 59 percent said they don’t want a second baby, 18.5 percent said they wanted one and 22 percent expressed hesitation.

Among those disqualified from having a second child, 51 percent said they wouldn’t have another baby even if the policy allowed them to. When asked about the reason, 86 percent said the primary concern was money.

More than 3 million people, or about 22 percent of Shanghai’s population, are aged 60 or above.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6719139.html

Gender-selection abortions spreading in India

Published On Fri Apr 22 2011

Muskan Goel, a 5-year-old girl in Jhajjar, India, a district where there are only 774 young girls for every 1,000 boys, the worst ratio in the country. Local business leaders, politicians and police officials say Jhajjar is a hotbed for female feticide.

Rick Westhead/TORONTO STAR

By Rick Westhead South Asia Bureau

JHAJJAR, INDIA—Muskan Goel is a beautiful 5-year-old girl with an expressive face and saucer eyes who would stand out in any crowd.

But in the north Indian farming service centre Jhajjar, Muskan commands attention simply because she’s a young girl.

She’s one of 16 girls who’ve been admitted to the school over the past year, compared to 43 boys, a symptom of this nation’s failing struggle against gender-selection.

India is a fast-changing country where luxury companies, car makers and cell-phone manufacturers all covet a piece of the growing market. But it’s also a nation with deep-rooted, centuries-old cultural traditions.

Families here have typically pined for a son, to carry on a father’s lineage, contribute to his household’s income and care for his parents as they age. Parents also want a boy because someone with their own last name is required to light their funeral pyre when they are cremated.

For the past four decades, since ultrasound machines were introduced in India, parents desperate for a son to carry on their lineage have had technology on their side, turning a cultural preference into a ruthlessly efficient girl-killing system. If their fetus is female, some mothers opt for an abortion rather than carry to full term.

That’s because even though it’s been illegal for 50 years, many families still pay costly dowries to have their daughters marry. When they do get married, those women leave their home to join their new husband and contribute to his family.

There are estimates that over the past decade alone, more than 10 million unborn females have been aborted across India.

The results of India’s latest once-a-decade census suggest that the gender-selection abortions are spreading beyond the traditional areas of devout Hindus in northern India. It shows there are 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under age 6, a steady decline from 927 girls in 2001 and 962 girls in 1981.

(Boys outnumber girls by a ratio of about 106 to 100 at birth in Canada, according to Statistics Canada).

Nowhere is the disparity greater than in Jhajjar, a district of wheat, mustard and grape seed fields in India’s Haryana state where there are only 774 girls for every 1,000 boys. The district is a centre of female feticide, local business leaders, politicians and police officials say.

But in Jhajjar township, a community of 50,000 that shares the same name as its larger district, opinion remains sharply divided over whether the trend is a cause for concern.

While some local leaders say more education and better policing is needed to stop the practice, others contend there’s nothing to worry about. Abortions, they say, help limit the size of families, which is a positive step towards improving maternal health, while women from other parts of India offset the shortage of marriage-eligible women.

On a recent weekday, Usha Gehlot ushered several visitors through Kidz Shaishav, a school she founded four years ago in Jhajjar for children aged two to seven.

Gehlot said she sees firsthand the effect of selective abortions in her classes. Of the 59 students she has admitted since January 2010, 43, or 75 per cent, are boys. While some families may simply choose not to send their daughters to school, Gehlot suspects something more sinister is responsible for the skewed figure — female feticide.

“It is a big problem,” Gehlot said. “When you have so many more boys, they get more aggressive, and we see that in our class. I think you’ll see more problems in the future with violence and rapes because of frustrated men.”

In Haryana and other states, educators have struggled for years to coax women to stop going to “kudi-maar,” or “daughter-killers.” Some officials have pushed state governments to pay families a bonus for having a daughter, while others pressed for changes to Indian law.

In 1994, India’s parliament passed a law calling for a prison term of up to three years and a fine of $320 for anyone who administers or takes a prenatal sex-determination test.

Not everyone in Jhajjar is worried about the widening gender ratio.

Sitting in a crowded chai shop, amid a row of two-storey grey concrete buildings, city councillor Kishor Saini gestured to a nearby open sewer.

“That is our biggest problem,” he said. “Sewers and drinking water. Many parts of our city don’t have water supplies and the government pipes are leaking.”

Saini says he doesn’t consider feticide a crime, or even a pressing social problem.

“The first thing that comes into peoples’ mind is to have a boy,” he shrugged. “It used to be that parents had three or four or five kids and they didn’t give a damn if they had a girl. But now they want smaller families and they do care.”

While several bachelors complain that already there aren’t enough eligible brides in Jhajjar, Saini says that’s not a worry. Haryana is a wealthy state that attracts migrant workers, and their daughters, from poor states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

“There are women to be married,” Saini said.

After spending less than an hour in town, several visitors this week were told about two health clinics in Jhajjar that purportedly provide ultrasounds and abortions.

A female journalist working with the Star entered the first clinic on Wednesday afternoon and told a doctor in charge that she was pregnant and wanted to find out if she was carrying a girl. The doctor nodded and provided the name and address of Hemlata, a doctor at another clinic.

A few minutes later, the reporter introduced herself to Hemlata. Operating out of an office barely bigger than an office cubicle, Hemlata spent 15 minutes grilling the journalist, at one point demanding her cell phone to see if their conversation was being recorded.

“This is so dangerous,” Hemlata said. “Can I trust you?”

Ultimately, Hemlata said she wouldn’t help and ended their conversation.

Later, Hemlata said in an interview that she doesn’t offer the illegal ultrasounds or abortions to anyone.

“I don’t allow anyone an ultrasound before they are six months pregnant unless they are bleeding,” she said, sitting next to her examination room, which consisted of little more than a bench, a flashlight and a box of disposable plastic gloves.

Hemlata was asked how the gender ratio has become so lopsided in Jhajjar if no one is performing illegal ultrasounds and abortions.

“Maybe it’s because of miscarriages and bad pregnancies,” she said.

Police inspector Ajmer Singh says that while he considers the illegal abortions tantamount to murder, he’s helpless without a complainant.

“Who’s going to complain?” asked Puchalapalli Sandhya, a social activist in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who has worked on women’s rights issues for decades.

“The mother of the unborn won’t, and neither will the ultrasound operator.”

Sandhya said the only solution to India’s female feticide debacle is improved education, which will give a woman the chance to generate a monthly income when she gets married, a development that should bolster her leverage in family decisions.

“We have to keep pushing to ensure that young girls become better educated,” Sandhya said.

“Right now, too many women just feel guilty for being women,” she said. “Having a girl baby is a burden. It’s in the blood here and it’s something that has to change.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/979111–gender-selection-abortions-spreading-in-india

Family policy relaxed in Beijing for more couples

Beijing (China Daily/ANN) – Fewer couples in China’s capital city, who violate the country’s family planning policy by having a second child, will be subject to the fines, according to the municipal commission of population and family planning.

Under the new guidelines, Beijing couples composed of two only children and who give birth to a second child will be fined only if both the mother is younger than 28 and the second child is born within four years of the birth of the first child.

In the past, such couples had to pay a fifth of their annual income if they had a second child either when the mother was younger than 28 or did not wait at least four years after the birth of the first child.

Not all couples, though, will be exempted from the policy. Those in which one partner has a sibling – or both partners do – will still be discouraged from having a second child.

The change comes amid wide speculation that China is planning to relax its family planning policy. But some believe it will fail to satisfy the public’s hopes.

Mu Guangzong, a professor of population research at Peking University, said the relaxed rules in Beijing are an improvement over the previous policy, but are not enough to help right China’s population imbalances and raise fertility rates.

Mu called for a relaxation of the family planning policy throughout China and for every couple to be allowed to have two children. The family planning policy has been credited in the past 30 years with easing short-term population pressures, but has placed greater stresses on pension systems, led to there being fewer women than men in China and depleted the pool of able-bodied laborers.

The current average fertility rate in China is between 1.4 and 1.8, but should be maintained at 2.1 to ensure the replacement of the population over time, Mu said.

Yang Zhizhu, a former law professor in Beijing who sued local family planning authorities in January 2011 for having a second child and refusing to pay a fine of 240,642 yuan ($36,962), saw little reason to praise the relaxation of the rules in Beijing.

Fines on couples who have a second child, even if they are paid by fewer people, remain legally unjust, Yang told China Daily on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the call for relaxing the one-child restriction is gaining momentum in other Chinese cities. Citing Zhang Feng, director of the provincial family planning commission, Guangzhou Daily reported earlier this month that Guangdong province would seek the central government’s approval to try out allowing all couples to have a second child.

Wang Yuqing, deputy director of the Committee for Population, Resources and Environment under the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said China may adjust its family planning policy during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015).

Wang said birth rates in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai have been on the decline for years, and the size of the working-age population began to decrease since 2009.

A gradual relaxation of the policy, allowing couples to have a second child, will not lead to a sudden population increase, Wang said.

http://my.news.yahoo.com/family-policy-relaxed-beijing-more-couples-20110331-033003-768.html

Uterus of 226 women removed in Rajasthan, probe ordered

Jaipur, Apr 16 (PTI) An RTI report has revealed that the uterus of 226 women were removed in three hospitals of Rajasthan, after which the administration has temporarily suspended their recognition and ordered a three-member inquiry committee to probe the incident.

The probe team to be led by Dausa Chief Medical and Health Officer O.P. Meena said, “We have seized the records of five hospitals and process to record statements of women and doctors is going on.”

The NGO which filed the RTI application alleges that the operations were ”unnecessary and designed for monetary benefits”.

They say that the hospitals located in Bandikui town in Dausa earned about Rs 14,000 for every case and removed the uterus of 226 out of 385 women patients who had visited the hospitals from March to September last year.

Durga Prasad, General secretary of the NGO Akhil Bhartiya Grahak Panchayat, claimed that the doctors did the surgery even when it was not necessary.

One of the women who underwent the surgery but did not wish to be identified said, “I had a constant stomach ache and they removed by uterus, but the pain did not go. Then I went to Jaipur for treatment and it was found that I was wrongly operated upon”.

Meanwhile doctors and the management of the hospitals have rejected the charges.

“We are being accused of surgically removing uterus in 90-95 per cent cases (of total operations of female patients) but the fact is that the percentage of uterus removal (hystrectomy) is about 20-25 per cent only,” Dr. Rajesh Dhakad, owner of Madhur hospital, told PTI.

He further said, “The NGO is misrepresenting the figures and creating confusion.”

Dr. Sunil Katta, owner of Katta hospital said that that uterus were removed only in the cases where it was necessary.

Another surgeon and owner of Balaji hospital Dr. Santosh Dube said that the hospitals charged Rs. 7000-8000 in all (in each case) for the operation of uterus removal and the figure of 14,000 was also not true.

The incident comes close on the heels of the death of 17 pregnant women in Jodhpur district after being given contaminated glucose.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/uterus-226-women-removed-rajasthan-probe-ordered-20110416-064400-855.html

Share of Americans working lowest since ’83

The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.

The bad economy, an aging population and a plateau in women working are contributing to changes that pose serious challenges for financing the nation’s social programs.

“What’s wrong with the economy may be speeding up trends that are already happening,” says Marc Goldwein, policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan group favoring smaller deficits.

For example, job troubles appear to have slowed a trend of people working later in life, putting more pressure on Social Security, he says.

Another change: the bulk of those not working has shifted from children to adults.
In 2000, the nation had roughly the same number of children and non-working adults. Since then, the population of non-working adults has grown 27 million while the nation added just 3 million children under 18.

USA TODAY analyzed employment numbers and 2010 Census data to see how the ratio of workers to non-workers has changed.

Other key findings:

•Men leave. Working-age men have been dropping out of the labor force for decades. The disappearance quickened when construction and manufacturing jobs vanished in the recession from December 2007 through June 2009. Until the 1960s, more than 80% of men worked.

•Women stay. The trend of women getting jobs offset the loss of working men until the late 1990s. The share of women holding jobs rose from 36% in 1960 to 57% in 1995, then leveled off. The rate was 56% in 2010.

The aging of 77 million Baby Boomers born from 1946 through 1964 from children to workers to retirees is changing the relationship between workers and dependents.

Retirees generally are more costly to support than children.

The average public school education costs $10,000 a year. The average retiree gets $25,000 a year in benefits — $13,000 in Social Security and Medicare benefits of $12,000.

In all, taxpayers will spend about $125,000 educating a child and $500,000 caring for a senior, in today’s dollars at current life expectancies, according to federal education and retirement program data. The costs are paid differently, too. State and local governments, through sales and property taxes, pay most education expenses. The federal government, though income taxes, pays most retiree costs.

“No matter how wealthy you are, you have a problem if half the population is not working and depending on those who are,” says John Goodman, president of the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis. “Wherever you look, we’ve overpromised.”

Economist Eileen Applebaum of the liberal Center for Economics and Policy Research says the real problem is a lack of jobs. Another 25 million people would work in a healthy economy, and incentives such as child care assistance could help, she says: “We’re getting richer. We can afford things. We just need to fix what needs to be fixed.”

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110414/BUSINESS04/110414021/0/NEWS02/Share-Americans-working-lowest-since-83?odyssey=nav|head

Can Women Be a Catalyst for Japan’s Renewal?

{sometimes the capitalist press just spells it out so clear. this piece not only explicitly spells out capital’s basic contradiction re: women but also talks about the way crisis and devastation can kickstart capital accumulation.}

Japan faces the daunting task of rebuilding after the earthquake and the tsunami. But these natural disasters struck a nation with deep structural issues, including a slow-growth economy, an aging population, often sclerotic political, bureaucratic, and business leadership — and significant workplace discrimination against women.

Many commentators have speculated that Japan’s response creates the possibility — though hardly the certainty — of broader renewal. Indeed, prior to the natural disasters, The Economist in a special report on the Japanese economy last November stated that “people almost seem to be yearning for a proper crisis to shake the country out of its stated lethargy, ingrained after 20 years of economic stagnation and almost 15 years of decline in the working age population.”

Japan’s unequal treatment of working women is no mystery:

• Employment rates for Japanese men are 20 percent higher than for women, the greatest disparity in the industrialized world. On average, women only earn 60 to 70 percent of compensation paid to men.

• A 2006 UN study found that Japan was last among industrialized nation in economic empowerment of women, with women holding only 10.7 percent of managerial positions in government and business (compared with 42 percent in the U.S.). The World Economic Forum’s recent analysis of women’s progress in politics, economics, education, and health showed that Japan ranked 101st out of 134 nations, down from 80th in 2006.

• Japanese women are often put on an “administrative” job track, not a “career” job track by Japanese companies. And, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, nearly 70 percent of Japanese women leave the work force after having their first child and don’t return to work due, among other things, to absence of child care and inflexible work conditions (in contrast to the U.S. where only one-third don’t return to work after having a child).

• In Sony, 3.2 percent of the managers in Japan are women, with women constituting 32 percent of managers in the U.S. In the past year, Japan Airlines named its first woman flight captain in its air-freight subsidiary; American Airlines had its first woman pilot near a quarter of a century ago. Kirin Beer recently announced it was going to double its female managers by 2015 — to six percent! The November Economist analysis reported that there are more women directors of companies in Kuwait than in Tokyo.

• Japan again is last in the league rankings among industrialized nations for representation of women in the national legislature.

• The rates of participation in the job market of Japanese college-educated women are 5 to 15 percent less than other developed nations. And, at the elite Tokyo University, women only make up 20 percent of the student body.

The impact of this differential treatment is a significant loss of economic growth, according to a 2010 economic study by Goldman Sachs (“Womenomics 3.0: The Time Is Now” [PDF]). If the gender employment gap could be closed (80 percent of men work; 60 percent of women), then more than 8 million additional people would participate in the economy (with attendant increases in production and consumption), which, the study argues, would increase Japan’s GDP by 15 percent.

The reasons for this fundamental problem of women’s workplace differences in participation rates, job tracks, wages, the professions, and leadership include: weak and poorly enforced anti-discrimination laws; poor diversity programs in firms and government; inadequate and insufficient child care; a patriarchal society with aging leadership and few women role models; pressures to have children in a de-populating society; and rigid immigration laws (which prevent both women and men from entering Japan to provide essential functions). These gender-specific causes relate, in turn, to the broader traditional culture of Japan which has made institutional change in the past generation so difficult and which would include such characteristics as humility, loyalty, respect, seniority, and consensus.

The need for significant change comes not just from fissures in institutions revealed by the recent earthquake and tsunami but from the much remarked-upon long-term demographic tsunami which threatens Japan. With current birth rates, Japan’s current population of 127 million will decline to under 100 million by 2046 and to about 90 million by 2055, according to the Japan government. The working-age population (ages 18 to 64) was 50 million in 1950, 87 million in 1987 and will be 50 million again in 2050. In 2000, four workers supported one retiree, but by 2020 only two workers will support a retiree. And those over 65 were 20 percent of the population in 2006 and are estimated to be 40 percent of the population in 2055.

So Japan must confront a basic paradox. It needs much greater participation of women (and women immigrants) in productive jobs at all levels of the economy to increase growth and provide more workers per retiree. Yet it also needs higher birth rate to slow the absolute decline in total population and the inexorable increase in proportion of the society over 65. It thus faces the same issues as other nations of work-life balance, of men and women sharing more equally in day to day family responsibilities, of making a productive career and child-rearing, for women who wish it, the hallmark of success, not a painful trade-off.

Japan, unfortunately, starts significantly behind other industrialized nations — and resolving the paradox will require a concerted and sustained effort, with changes in public policy (e.g. anti-discrimination laws, more child care, child-care credits tied to work, etc.) and in the private sector (e.g. changes in attitudes, aggressive programs to give women opportunities, and to promote them).

In the very near term, Japan still has to find the dead, house the homeless, repair the infrastructure, and deal with the uncertain aftermath of the nuclear plants. The disasters have, however, raised deeper questions about the structure and practices of Japanese society, politics, and economics. Whether processes of fundamental change can occur is a question for the future.

But if deeper cultural change is to occur then improving the role of women in the workplace — and providing flexible support so family and work co-exist more easily — could be a leading indicator, indeed a vital catalyst.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/04/can-women-be-a-catalyst-for-japans-renewal/236820/

Lise Vogel on Gender and Social Reproduction, from “Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory”

“Any production is, at one and the same time, reproduction. ‘A society can no more cease to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time, a process of reproduction.’… Among other things, social reproduction requires that a supply of labor power always be available to set the labor process in motion.

The bearers of labor power are, however, mortal. Those who work suffer wear and tear. Some are too young to participate in the labor process, others too old. Eventually, every individual dies. Some process that meets the ongoing personal needs of the bearers of labor power as human individuals is therefore a condition of social reproduction, as is some process that replaces workers who have died or withdrawn from the active work force. These processes of maintenance and replacement are often imprecisely, if usefully, conflated under the term reproduction of labor power.”

“At the level of total social reproduction it is not the individual direct producer but the totality of laborers that is maintained and replaced. It is evident that such renewal of the labor force can be accomplished in a variety of ways. In principle, at least, the present set of laborers can be worked to death, and then replaced by an entirely new set. In the more likely case, an existing labor force is replenished both generationally and by new laborers. Children of workers grow up and enter the labor force. Women who had not previously been involved begin to participate in production. Immigrants or slaves from outside a society’s boundaries enter its labor force… Not all present laborers will work in a subsequent production period, moreover. Some will become sick, disabled, or too old. Others may be excluded, as when protective legislation is enacted to prohibit child labor or women’s night work. In sum at the level of total social reproduction, the concept of reproduction of labor power does not in the least imply the reproduction of a bounded unit of population…

What raises the question of gender is, of course, the phenomenon of generational replacement of bearers of labor power  – that is, replacement of existing workers by new workers from the next generation. If generational replacement is to happen, biological reproduction must intervene. And here, it must be admitted, human beings do not reproduce themselves by parthenogenesis. Women and men are different.

The critical theoretical import of the biological distinction between women and men with respect to childbearing appears, then, at the level of total social reproduction…”

“In a class society, the concept of labor power acquires a specific class meaning. Labor power refers to the capacity of a member of the class of direct producers to perform the surplus labor the ruling class appropriates. In other words, the bearers of labor power make up the exploited class. For a class society, the concept of reproduction of labor power pertains, strictly speaking, to the maintenance and renewal of the class of bearers of labor power subject to exploitation. While a class society must also develop some process of maintaining and replacing the individuals who make up the ruling class, it cannot be considered part of the reproduction of labor power in society. By definition, labor power in a class society is borne only by members of the class of direct producers.”

“Marx contrasts the surplus labor performed by direct producers in a class society to their necessary labor, defining both kinds of labor in terms of the time expended by a single producer during one working day. Necessary labor is that portion of the day’s work through which the producer achieves his own reproduction. The remaining portion of the day’s work is surplus labor, appropriated by the exploiting class. In reality, a portion of the direct producer’s labor may also be devoted to securing the reproduction of other members of the exploited class. Where, for examples, children, the elderly, or a wife do not themselves enter into surplus production as direct producers, a certain amount of labor time must be expended for their maintenance. Marx was never explicit about what the concepts of individual consumption and necessary labor cover. As discussed above, the concept of individual consumption has been restricted here to the direc producer’s immediate maintenance. Necessary labor is used, however, to cover all labor performed in the course of the maintenance and renewal of both direct producers and members of the subordinate class not currently working as direct producers.

Necessary labor ordinarily includes several constituent processes. In the first place, it provides a certain amount of means of subsistence for individual consumption by direct producers… A portion of necessary labor also goes to provide means of subsistence to maintain members of the exploited classes not currently working as direct producers – the elderly, the sick, a wife. And an important series of labor processes associated with the generational replacement of labor power may also take place – that is, the bearing and raising of the children of the subordinate class. As discussed above, these various aspects of necessary labor have a certain autonomy from a theoretical point of view. Together they represent an indispensable condition for the reproduction of labor power and therefore for overall social reproduction…

In a given class society, the circumstances and outcome of the processes of reproduction of labor power are essentially indeterminate or contingent. To maintain otherwise would be to fall into the functionalist argument that a system’s needs for labor power must inevitably be fulfilled by the workings of that system. The social relations through which necessary labor is carried out therefore cannot be postulated independent of historical cases. In particular, the family, however, defined, is not a timeless universal of human society. As with any social structure, the form kin-based relationships take always depends on social development, and is potentially a terrain of struggle.”

“Of the three aspects of necessary labor – maintenance of direct producers, maintenance of nonlaboring members of the subordinate class, and generational replacement processes – only the last requires, in an absolute sense, that there be a sex division of labor of at least a minimal kind. If children are to be born, it is women who will carry and deliver them. Women belonging to the subordinate class have, therefore, a special role with respect to the generational replacement of labor power. While they may also be direct producers, it is their differential role in the reproduction of labor power that lies at the root of their oppression in class society…”

“The argument hinges on the relationship of childbearing to the appropriation of surplus labor in class society. Childbearing threatens to diminish the contribution a woman in the subordinate class can make as a direct producer and as a participant in necessary labor. Pregnancy and lactation involve, at the minimum, several months of somewhat reduced capacity to work… Moreover, her labor is ordinarily required for the maintenance of labor power, and pregnancy and lactation may lessen a woman’s capacity in this area as well. From the ruling class’s short-term point of view, then, childbearing potentially entails a costly decline in the mother’s capacity to work, while at the same time requiring that she be maintained during the period of diminished contribution… necessary labor ordinarily has to increase somewhat to cover her maintenance during the childbearing period, implying a corresponding decrease in surplus labor. At the same time, childbearing is of  benefit to the ruling class, for it must occur if the labor force is to be replenished through generational replacement. From the point of view of the dominant class, there is therefore a potential contradiction between its immediate need to appropriate surplus labor and its long-term requirement for a class to perform it…

As one element in the historical resolution of the contradiction, actual arrangements for the reproduction of labor power usually take advantage of relationships between women and men that are based on sexuality and kinship. Other adults, ordinarily the biological father and his kind group, or male kind of the childbearing woman herself, historically have had the responsibility for making sure that the woman is provided for during the period of diminished activity associated with childbearing. Men of the subordinate class thereby acquire a special historical role with respect to the generational replacement of labor power: to ensure that means of subsistence are provided to the child-bearing woman.”

“The exact form by which men obtain more means of subsistence than needed for their own individual consumption varies from society to society, but the arrangement is ordinarily legitimated by their domination of women and reinforced by institutionalized structures of female oppression. The ruling class, in order to stabilize the reproduction of labor power as well as to keep the amount of necessary labor at acceptable levels, encourages male supremacy within the exploited class.”

“The social significance of divisions of labor and of individual differences is constructed inthe context of the actual society in which they are embedded. In class societies, women’s childbearing capacity creates contradictions from the point of view of the dominant class’s need to appropriate surplus labor. The oppression of women in the exploited class develops in the process of the class struggle over the resolution of these contradictions.“

-Vogel, 1983

Only 7 in Goa identify themselves as ‘other’ gender

Only seven people in Goa’s population of 14.57 lakh have come forward and identified themselves as belonging to the “other” gender, a census official said Friday.

In a first, the Census 2011 had included “other” as a third option for those who chose not to identify themselves as either male or female.

“Seven persons have identified themselves as belonging to the ‘other’ category. We, however, cannot give you a comparative decadal increase or decrease, because we did not have the category during the last census,” census director A.K. Wasnik told reporters here.

According to provisional census figures, Goa is populated by 7,40,711 men and 7,17,012 women, which takes the state’s population to 14,57,723.

“The decadal population growth in Goa is 8.17 percent,” he said.

Vasnik also said that Goa’s least populated village Codval, located in the Sattari sub-district in north Goa, has a population of five – two females and three males. The most populated village is Shiroda, 30 km from here, where the population is 14,030.

The least populated town is Pernem, 25 km from here, with a population of 5,025, while the town with the highest population is Margao with 87,678 people.

Wasnik said Goa’s population is 0.12 percent of the national figure and it ranked “third or fourth” from the bottom in the list of most populated states.

http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-180649.html

More than 3,600 officials were engaged in the census enumeration task which was spread over two months from February and March.

Court hears claim of forced Roma sterilization

PARIS – Europe’s human rights court opened a hearing Tuesday into a Gypsy woman’s allegation that she was wrongly and forcibly sterilized at a state-run hospital in her native Slovakia because of her ethnicity.

The case at the European Court of Human Rights centers on allegations that a semiofficial policy of forced sterilization of Gypsies , who prefer to be called Roma , in eastern Europe during the Communist era lingered in some areas after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Other similar cases are pending before the European Court, but this is the first to advance to the hearing stage, said Tracey Turner-Tretz, a court spokeswoman.

The complaint brought by the woman against Slovakia’s government centers on the claim that she was sterilized through tubal ligation after giving birth in 2000 to her second child by Caesarian section. She was identified only as “V.C.” and said to be about 30 years old.

The woman alleges that in the final stages of labor, she was told by staffers at the Presov hospital in eastern Slovakia if she wanted to have more children, either she or the baby would die, the court said in a statement Tuesday. Scared, in pain and confused about the meaning of sterilization, she signed a consent form for the procedure, the court said.

“She also claims that her Roma ethnicity , clearly stated in her medical record , played a decisive role in her sterilization,” the statement said, just as the closed-door hearing got under way.

“In particular,” the statement went on, “she was placed in the so-called ‘Gypsy room’ and was not allowed to use the same bathrooms and toilets as non-Roma women.”

Hospital managers countered that the sterilization was conducted on medical grounds , amid the risk of a uterus rupture , and denied her claim that she was segregated away from non-Roma patients, the statement said. National courts and investigators in Slovakia did not turn up any wrongdoing by hospital personnel.

A spokesman for the Slovak justice ministry didn’t immediately respond to questions.

The woman “continues to suffer” today because of the operation, with feelings of ostracism from the Roma community, the statement said, and her husband has repeatedly left her because of her infertility.

The hearing in the seven-judge chamber concluded Tuesday, and a verdict is not expected for several weeks. Either side could appeal the ruling , possibly sending the case up to the court’s Grand Chamber.

The head of a U.S. human rights watchdog called on Slovakia’s government “to finally acknowledge cleraly and unequivocally that Romani women in Slovakia were, at once time, targeted for sterilization.”

U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, the chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, said that “as a matter of justice for the victims and truth about the past due to all the people of Slovakia this practice should be condemned as a grave human rights violation.”

The Communist governments in Hungary and Czechoslovakia applied a semiofficial policy of forced sterilization to limit the population of Gypsies, whose large families were seen as a burden on the state. The practice ended only in recent years, long after the fall of those regimes.
Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/features/health/20110322_ap_courthearsclaimofforcedromasterilization.html#ixzz1HPXVw4Z3
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Huge population will help Philippine economy

A SIZEABLE Philippine population can be an economic advantage especially if people have ample income and real consumption power, a lawmaker said.

This developed as the House plenary started debates on a reproductive health (RH) bill that intends to give universal access to birth control and maternal care.

LPG Marketers’ Association (LPGMA) Representative Arnel Ty pointed out that a large population attracts direct investments that create jobs, which in turn generate family incomes that spur robust consumption.

“Strong consumption stimulates demand for industries, which in turn further drives employment growth, thus producing even more consumers,” said Ty, a member of the House committee on trade and industry.

Ty cited the case of China with 1.3 billion people, saying global manufacturers are aggressively building new factories there because its large population offers a highly attractive consumer market.

As manufacturers expand their facilities in the world’s fastest growing economy, they are also employing more people there, thus sustaining a positive economic cycle, he added.

“Our problem is not so much that we have a population of 95 million, but that a large number of Filipinos in the labor force remain idle. Without gainful employment, many of our people do not have real consumption power,” Ty said.

The Philippines’ unemployment and underemployment rates remain high at 7.1 percent and 19.6 percent respectively, based on the latest Labor Force Survey. The figures imply that 27 out of every 100 able-bodied Filipinos are either totally without jobs or desperately looking for extra work.

The legislator emphasized the need for the Aquino government to create new jobs
at a much faster rate.

“One way to increase employment is through more vocational public high schools and technical institutes that offer two years of post-secondary education,” he said.

Generous payments to parents aim to make Germany more family friendly

Ursula von der Leyen, a mother of seven, introduced Germany’s more family-friendly policies. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Ever since January 2007, working German couples have been entitled to take 14 months’ paid elternzeit (parental time) after the birth of each child.

The policy was the central pillar of a reform brought in by Germany’s then family minister, Ursula von der Leyen, a mother of seven, in an attempt to make the country more family-friendly.

To qualify for the full stretch, the father must takeoff at least two out of the 14 months, but couples can decide how to share the time between them.

Whoever stays at home is paid 65% of their previous salary, up to a ceiling of €1,800 (£1,560) per month.

Couples earning more than €500,000 between them annually, or single parents with a salary of more than €250,000 a year, do not qualify for the money but are allowed to take the time off.

Mothers also receive a fairly token amount of mutterschaftsgeld (maternity money) six weeks before they are due to give birth and for eight weeks after delivery. Until each child is at least 18, mothers receive generous kindergeld (child benefit) – €184 for the first and second child, €190 for the third, and €215 for the fourth and all further children.

A German quirk is that if women have seven or more children, the seventh automatically becomes the godchild of the serving president and receives a €500 gift.

Since the rule was introduced in 1949, 76,460 seventh children have become honorary godchildren of the president. However, the birthrate, already the lowest in Europe, is sinking and last year there were just 603.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/germany-payments-to-parents

Rise of a bachelor generation

NEW YORK – According to the United Nations, there are far more men on the planet than women. The gender gap is especially pronounced in Asia. In this week’s Newsweek Niall Ferguson looks at the ominous rise of a bachelor generation.

In 1927, Ernest Hemingway published a collection of short stories titled Men Without Women. Today, less than a century later, it sums up the predicament of a rising proportion of mankind.

According to the United Nations, there are far more men than women on the planet. The gender gap is especially pronounced in Asia, where there are 100 million more guys than girls. This may come as a surprise to people in the Western world, where women outnumber men because—other things being equal—the mortality rate for women is lower than for men in all age groups. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen calls it the mystery of Asia’s “missing women.”

The mystery is partly explicable in terms of economics. In many Asian societies, girls are less well looked after than boys because they are economically undervalued. The kind of domestic work they typically do is seen as less important than paid work done by men. And, of course, early marriage and minimal birth control together expose them to the risks of multiple pregnancies.

When Sen first added up the missing women—women who would exist today if it were not for selective abortion, infanticide, and economic discrimination—he put the number at 100 million. It is surely higher now. For, even as living standards in Asian countries have soared, the gender gap has widened. That’s because a cultural preference for sons over daughters leads to selective abortion of female fetuses, a practice made possible by ultrasound scanning, and engaged in despite legal prohibitions. The American feminist Mary Anne Warren called it “gendercide.” Notoriously common in northwestern India, it’s also rampant in the world’s most populous country: China.

In China today, according to American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, there are about 123 male children for every 100 females up to the age of 4, a far higher imbalance than 50 years ago, when the figure was 106. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Anhui provinces, baby boys outnumber baby girls by 30 percent or more. This means that by the time today’s Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.