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A Feminist Critique of Justifications for Sex Selection

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Abstract

This paper examines dominant arguments advocating for the procreative right to undergo sex selection for social reasons, based on gender preference. I present four of the most recognized and common justifications for sex selection: the argument from natural sex selection, the argument from procreative autonomy, the argument from family balancing, and the argument from children’s well-being. Together these represent the various means by which scholars aim to defend access to sex selection for social reasons as a legitimate procreative choice. In response, I contend that these justifications are flawed and often inconsistent and therefore fail to vindicate the practice.

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Notes

  1. Some United Nations sources provide estimates of up to 200 million missing women (United Nations 2007).

  2. For example, Bernard Dickens (2002, 335) claims: “The urge to select children’s sex is not new. The Babylonian Talmud, a Jewish text completed towards the end of the fifth century of the Christian era, advises couples on means to favour the birth of either a male or a female child.” Interestingly, advocates of sex selection based on gender preference argue that the practice is ethically permissible in the West precisely because gender equality exists in the region. However, some such as Dickens build the legitimacy of the desire for a gender-specified child on the grounds of its roots in antiquity, with reference to ancient patriarchal societies. This is rather inconsistent.

  3. However, while advocates for sex selection in the West claim that women’s rights are violated in non-Western regions, they imply that the social impact of the deliberate large-scale selection against female children may not be strictly negative. On the contrary, some claim that skewed sex ratios can indeed have positive implications for the society. According to Sureau (1999, 868), “These could include: an increase in the influence and responsibilities of the gender which had become rare; a slowdown in the rate of growth of the world population, and reinforcement of the interbreeding of different populations due to the preferences indicated above, with beneficial consequences from both social and medical points of view.” This view is supported by Savulescu (2006, 148), who claims that skewed sex ratios may not be a negative thing, and that “even in Asia, it is not clear that sex selection should be banned.“ Thus, even scholars who acknowledge that large-scale sex selection against female children on sexist grounds has the capacity to reinforce discrimination against women (Sureau 1999; Savulescu 2001), justify the practice.

  4. Berkowitz and Snyder (1998) reflect on this aspect in their understanding of sexism. They argue: “Sexism is a consequence of assumed sex appropriate social roles, social roles which are of human invention and not genetically determined. For example, one would be hard pressed to call sexist the situation where only woman can bear children: an irrevocable result of natural law. It would, however, be sexist to assume that women are superior to men at child rearing as this assumes that women are better suited for a particular social task” (31).

  5. Similarly, Pennings (1996, 2342) argues that the wish to have children of “both sexes” is not biased but rather a sign of “appreciation of sexual differences.” Following this line of argument, he claims: “in a society where there would be absolutely no discrimination on the basis of sex, there will still be parents who wish to have a child of a specific sex” (2342). Clearly, on his account, gender preference is based on real existing differences, which in turn justifies sex selection. However, this is a highly hypothetical argument—there is no way to prove this claim, as we have no experience with such a social order.

  6. Recent studies in neuroscience challenge the belief that “the sexes cluster distinctively and consistently at opposite ends of a single gender continuum” (Rippon et al. 2014, 3) or have distinctively feminine and masculine traits (Fine 2010; Fine et al. 2013). Instead, they suggest that all humans tend to express “feminine” and “masculine” characteristics and behaviours. These characteristics are expressed in complex ways and scales not in terms of a categorical two-dimensional gender difference. Hence, there are no two distinctively male and female personalities.

  7. These gender stereotypical expectations were captured in a recent study with Australian women who have selected or desired to select for daughters. For example, one participant explained that she desired a daughter because she wanted a close mother–child bond: “My boys are still little, but my perception is that you don’t have that same [kind of relationship with] boys … Boys grow up and fly the coop and make their own lives, have their own families kind of thing, whereas girls, my perception, is that they stay a little bit more closely aligned with their family. Girls are more family oriented than boys necessarily” (Hendl Forthcoming, n.p.). Another participant explained: “I love the boys, but I just thought it would be nice to have a daughter. It’s nice—you go shopping, and you get a bit sick of blue and red and orange and brown. Well, I just thought it would be nice to get some pink in the house” (Hendl Forthcoming, n.p.). These quotes suggest that at least some of the parents who want to conceive a female child and invest in the process of sex selection, have a particular type of girl in mind; a girl who will conform to stereotypical expectations about feminine traits, looks, and behaviour.

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  1. Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, Level 1, Medical Foundation Building (K25), University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Tereza Hendl

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Correspondence to Tereza Hendl.

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Hendl, T. A Feminist Critique of Justifications for Sex Selection. Bioethical Inquiry 14, 427–438 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-017-9797-6

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