“There are about 100 million women less on this earth than there should be. Women who are ‘missing’ since they are aborted, burnt, starved and neglected to death by families who prefer sons to daughters. . The estimated number of women who are missing are 44 million in China, 39 million in India, 6 million in Pakistan and 3 billion in Bangladesh. This is the single largest genocide in human history.” -Lucinda Marshall, Feminist Peace Network
“More than 3,800 women and girls have been murdered in Guatemala since the year 2000. What local activists are calling ‘femicide’ is spreading in Guatemala and throughout Latin America. . Guatemala’s femicides are notable for their brutality as well as the impunity that exists for the perpetrators. Countrywide, a mere 1-2% of crimes against life are effectively prosecuted, meaning that someone who commits murder in Guatemala has a 98-99% chance of escaping prosecution and punishment.” -Center for Gender and Refugee Studies
acilius
believer1
lefalcon
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
Panther Red 
acilius
/ January 6, 2010Chilling. Thanks for the post!
cymast
/ January 6, 2010You’re welcome.
I don’t understand how a population can expect to stay in balance if it makes a practice of killing one gender. Do they not think about the consequences of skewing the female/male ratio?
And what are the reasons for the extreme misogyny in Guatemala? In everything I’ve read, I haven’t found a sensible answer. Not that there would be one.
acilius
/ January 6, 2010I don’t know a lot about Guatemala. I know there was a very long and extremely bloody civil war there from the 1950s into the 1990s. After something like that it would be hard to re-establish any kind of law and order, even to build a police force capable of catching murderers.
cymast
/ January 7, 2010True. But consistently targeting a specific gender is bizarre.
acilius
/ January 8, 2010You’d think that decades of near-genocidal war, followed by a period of systematic slaughter of women, would have kept the population from growing. Doesn’t seem to have had that effect, though.
cymast
/ January 8, 2010Good point. Maybe the remaining females have many children. You’d also think the competition among males for females would be high. But then again, the males who are committing femicide aren’t competing for females.
cymast
/ January 11, 2010http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-world/skewed-china-birth-rate-to-leave-24-mln-men-single-20100111-m2rl.html