now, a Swiftian analysis would suggest that killing women is a far better method of population control than mere contraception or abortion, since killing a woman removes from possibility all the children she might eventually have; and I do have to wonder sometimes whether the deeply troubling global rates of femicide and selective abortion of female fetuses (particularly in Asia) are any kind of unconscious popular response to overcrowding, hunger, and insecurity.
which leads me off in another direction: there is much debate over possible outcomes of large populations skewed strongly to a dearth of females: here a recent book on the topic is reviewed, here a western blogger scoffs at concerns over the projected imbalance,, and here an important fact is noted, too often overlooked, that in natural disasters (as in war in occupied civilian areas), the majority of the victims are women: According to the report of the international aid group Oxfam, the tsunami has created a severe gender imbalance in the devastated regions. The report suggested that it killed four women for every man, which means that in some villages "up to 80% of those killed were women." According to the Sunday Times, in the Acehnese village of Kuala Cangkoy, for instance, around 117 of the 146 victims were women. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
