Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen called it the mystery of “missing women” so notoriously predominant in northwestern India. The American Feminist Mary Anne Warren called it ‘gendercide’, also rampant in most populous and progressing China! In our Planet where there are far more men than women – what would be the cost of exclusion? How much do we lose for excluding women in taking more dominant roles in decision making? For generations, we failed to shift our paradigms, fooled ourselves and destroyed our own daughters? In this process, we must have also deprived our planet of possibilities of having a few more Mother Teresas or Mahatma Gandhis!

Early marriage, selective abortions, prostitution, girl-child slavery, human trafficking, minimal birth control, exposure to multiple pregnancies and our social taboo about our girl children ended up to this alarming situation. How many Kalpana Chawla we must have lost because of our mindset about our own daughters.

According to German Scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, the European imperial expansion after 1500 was the result of male ‘youth bulge’. Japan’s imperial expansion after 1914 was the result of a similar youth bulge. He further argues that it was youth-bulge countries, Algeria, El Salvador and Lebanon that saw the worst civil wars and revolutions. According to him the recent rise of Islamist extremism in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan can again very well be linked with Islamist male bulge in these countries. The author further cautions us about the writing on the wall! And the writing is that India and China with their manipulated and skewed gender position, may end up with similar chaotic situations in the near future.

As the precious little time trickles down, the reality becomes more and more ominous and the most important issue becomes clearer. Who bells the cat and who takes charge? Are the women themselves going to decide to gain control of their own destiny or are they expecting the freedom and interdependence as gifts on a platter? We must decide soon!