Replication Data for Chapter 3: Social media and Son Preference - Evidence from India

In India, largely regarded as the country of missing women (Agnihotri et al., 2002; Sen, 1992), fewer girl children are being born and surviving, and many face relentless neglect, afflicting not only their health, nutrition and development, but also their dignity and identity. For instance, daughters are being given names which mean ‘Unwanted’, ‘The Last One’, or ‘Missed Call’, simply because a son was desired where a daughter was born (See Deshpande and Gupta (2019)).

With the advent of prenatal sex determination testing, the harmful culture of discrimination against daughters has resulted in an adverse sex ratio and the stark reality of millions of ‘missing daughters’1, because they were discriminated against before they were even born (Kabeer et al., 2014; Sen, 1992). While sex-determination has been criminalised, the persistence of an adverse sex ratio at birth illustrates that gender norms which embolden son preference are tenacious2.