Sex Ratios and Missing Girls in History

This Conference, which builds on a previous Online Seminar, explores whether there were "missing girls", and thus discriminatory practices unduly increasing female mortality at birth, infancy and/or childhood, in historical Europe. The historical experience of non-European countries is also addressed in order to establish comparisons between different regions. As well as identifying the type of families that were more likely to be involved in this kind of behaviour and the factors that explain the existence of discriminatory practices, this conference also explores the societal effects of these practices, thus contributing to the growing literature on the link between gender inequality and economic development. Methodologically speaking, this event primarily focuses on sex ratios obtained from population censuses, parish registers and/or vital statistics. Given the importance of child abandonment in the past, the conference also features studies exploring whether sex was an important dimension in the decision to get rid of unwanted babies.

---------------------------------- Day 1: Thursday, May 5 ----------------------------------

09:00-09:15 - Introduction

09:15-10:00 - Keynote Speech

Alice Evans, King’s College London

Ten thousand years of patriarchy

10:15-11:15 - Session 1: General Perspectives

Mikolaj Szoltysek (The Cardinal Wyszynski University in Warsaw), Family patriarchy and male-skewed sex ratios in historical Europe (with Bartosz Ogòrek, Siegfried Gruber and Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia)

Fabian Drixler (Yale University), The Total Rearing Rate: A proposal for multi-stage fertility measures

11:30-13:00 - Session 2: The Mediterranean (I)

Gabriele Capelli (University of Siena), Were there missing girls in Liberal Italy? Evidence from a new data set, 1861-1921 (with Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia)

Rebeca Echavarri (Universidad Pública de Navarra), Economic development, female wages and missing female births in Spain, 1900-1930 (with Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia)

Eftychia Kalaitzidou (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Abandoning girls: Data from the Foundling Hospital of Athens, 1920-1934

14:15-15:45 - Session 3: Eastern Europe

Elena Glavatskaya, Sex ratios in the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries Perm’ province Russia: macro and micro analyses (with E. Zabolotnykh, A. Bobitskii, J. Borovik, and D. Bakharev)

Viktor Malein (University of Southern Denmark), Infant and child sex ratios in Late Imperial Russia (with Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia)

Alpay Filiztekin (Sabanci University), Child sex ratios in the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey, 1897-1965 (with H. Canbakal, Y.S. Kaçmaz, M. Özkan, L. Yılmaz)

16:15-17:00 - Keynote Speech

Monica Das Gupta, University of Maryland

Kinship systems and gender differences in demographic outcomes: Perspectives from Asia

---------------------------------- Day 2: Friday, May 6 ----------------------------------

09:00-10:30 - Session 4: Asia

Sijie Hu (Renmin University of China), The “missing” girls in imperial China: Re-estimating the survival and marriages of daughters, 1350-1900

Alexander Lehner (University of Bologna), Culture, institutions, and the roots of gender inequality: 450 years of Portuguese Colonialism in India

Cora Neumann (University of Warwick), Missing women in colonial India (with James Fenske and Bishnupriya Gupta)

10:45-12:15 - Session 5: The Nordic Countries

Marko Kovacevik (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Sex ratios in population censuses and vital statistics in 19^th-century Norway

Gunnar Thorvaldsen (University of Tromsø), Male preferences in Norway - Now and then

Sakari Saaritsa (University of Helsinki), Sex ratios at birth and missing girls in Finland: Regional evidence, 1880-1938

13:30-15:00 - Session 6: The Americas

Matthew Curtis (ECARES, ULB), Treating the filles like a roi? Sex ratios and infant mortality, Quebec 1620–1849

Miriam Camacho (Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico), Differential child mortality by sex in Oaxaca city (Mexico), 1800-1850

María José Fuentes-Vasquez (University of Barcelona), Does Latin America prefer sons or daughters? Missing girls in Latin America in the 20th century (with I. España-Eljaiek)

15:15-16:45 - Session 7: The Mediterranean (II)

Michail Raftakis (University of Sassari), An investigation of gender differences in stillbirths in Italian regions at the turn of the twentieth century (with Gabriele Ruiu, Lucia Pozzi, and Marco Breschi)

Margarita López-Antón (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona), Son preference and child abandonment in 19^th-century Spain (with Francisco Marco-Gracia and Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia)

Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia (NTNU), Demography, economy and missing girls in 18^th-century Spain (with A. Díez-Minguela and J. Martínez-Galarraga)

17:00-17:45 - Closing remarks - Implications for future research

Katherine Lynch, Carnegie Mellon University

Rethinking missing girls in history