What do you think?
Rate this book
Disappearing Daughters: The Tragedy of Female Foeticide
Now they no longer feed them paddy husk or poisoned milk...they stifle them with a pillow or with a cloth. (Kanchamma, a midwife from Alligundam village in Tamil Nadu).
We knew the doctor at the scan centre and...went to the clinic that he suggested and had the foetus removed. The next two times were also okay except that I got very tired and had to give up my job. My husband said having a son was more important than having a job. (Renu, from Chandigarh, who has had four abortions in five years).
India has historically had a deficit of women compared to most other countries, but we now live in a time when a systematic extermination of an entire gender is taking place right before our eyes. Until the 1980s, women and girls were dying either of neglect or were killed soon after they were born. Today, the horrifying reality is that, thanks to advances in medical technology, they are now eliminated while still in the womb. Female foeticide has become an organized crime and the ultrasound machine has mutated into an instrument of murder.
In Disappearing Daughters, Gita Aravamudan uses the tools of investigative reporting to expose the imperatives that drive this horrific phenomenon. She unravels an appalling story of deeply embedded and destructive patriarchal beliefs, disempowered women who have no claim on their own bodies and the active complicity of a ruthless and callous medical and social system. This book makes it chillingly clear that the macabre practice of eliminating female foetuses spells doom for our sons as well as our daughters and is bound to have a disastrous impact on future generations.
We knew the doctor at the scan centre and...went to the clinic that he suggested and had the foetus removed. The next two times were also okay except that I got very tired and had to give up my job. My husband said having a son was more important than having a job. (Renu, from Chandigarh, who has had four abortions in five years).
India has historically had a deficit of women compared to most other countries, but we now live in a time when a systematic extermination of an entire gender is taking place right before our eyes. Until the 1980s, women and girls were dying either of neglect or were killed soon after they were born. Today, the horrifying reality is that, thanks to advances in medical technology, they are now eliminated while still in the womb. Female foeticide has become an organized crime and the ultrasound machine has mutated into an instrument of murder.
In Disappearing Daughters, Gita Aravamudan uses the tools of investigative reporting to expose the imperatives that drive this horrific phenomenon. She unravels an appalling story of deeply embedded and destructive patriarchal beliefs, disempowered women who have no claim on their own bodies and the active complicity of a ruthless and callous medical and social system. This book makes it chillingly clear that the macabre practice of eliminating female foetuses spells doom for our sons as well as our daughters and is bound to have a disastrous impact on future generations.
188 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2007
5 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Gita Aravamudan
10 books7 followersGita Aravamudan was born in Bangalore. She started her journalistic career at Hindustan Times, New Delhi, at a time when there were very few women in journalism. She has also worked with and written for Indian Express, India Today, Sunday, Filmfare, Femina, Illustrated Weekly and Sunday Midday. Her first book, Voices in My Blood, was published in 1990. Her second book, Disappearing Daughters: The Tragedy of Female Infanticide, was published in 2007 and became an instant bestseller. The Healing is her first novel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 20, 2021
4.5/5
"Ghur khaveen, pooni katteen, aap na aveen, beere nu datten"
(Eat jaggery, spin yarn, You don't return. Send your brother)
"...She was referring to the traditional method of female infanticide in this part (Punjab) of India. Here, she told me, the female infant was sealed alive inside a pot with a piece of jaggery and a bit of unspun cotton. She was then buried in the field while her elders stood around her and chanted (above quote)"
"The law could not be implemented unless attitudes changed and attitudes would not change unless the law was enforced."
"... son-preference resulting in female infanticide had existed in some pockets of India for av ery long time. But it had remained confined to these pockets. It was only after the corrupt medical practitioners stepped into the arena with their sex detection technologies that the elimination of women became akin to mass genocide."
"... in Punjab and Haryana, the sex ratios were best among the scheduled castes and Dalits simply because they had no land and so they had no issues of family status, division of property and so on. To them, children, irrespective of their sex, meant more hands to bring in food and money."
"Even in my generation, women were educated not so that they could be economically independent but because a college degree would enhance a girl's value in the 'marriage market'. Men preferred education wives not only because they move easily in their social circles but also because they could take care of all the 'outside' work like paying the bills, doing the grocery shopping, taking care of the day-to-day problems of the kids' school and homework."
"It seemed so ironic that the very men and women accused of treating the tribal girls like commodities were the ones who said they did not want daughters because they were afraid they might be ill-treated by their in-laws."
"Better to kill her before she knows this miserable life. Better to send her straight to heaven rather than make her endure this beating and kicking around. What joy have we got by staying alive?"
"If a man paid to get himself a wife. he bought a chattel; a slave. If a woman paid to get herself a husband, she was buying her way into a relationship in which she remained inferior. It's a no-win situation."
"... sex-selective extermination is a great leveler. It knows no caste or creed, no socio-economic, or language or educational barriers."
"Ghur khaveen, pooni katteen, aap na aveen, beere nu datten"
(Eat jaggery, spin yarn, You don't return. Send your brother)
"...She was referring to the traditional method of female infanticide in this part (Punjab) of India. Here, she told me, the female infant was sealed alive inside a pot with a piece of jaggery and a bit of unspun cotton. She was then buried in the field while her elders stood around her and chanted (above quote)"
"The law could not be implemented unless attitudes changed and attitudes would not change unless the law was enforced."
"... son-preference resulting in female infanticide had existed in some pockets of India for av ery long time. But it had remained confined to these pockets. It was only after the corrupt medical practitioners stepped into the arena with their sex detection technologies that the elimination of women became akin to mass genocide."
"... in Punjab and Haryana, the sex ratios were best among the scheduled castes and Dalits simply because they had no land and so they had no issues of family status, division of property and so on. To them, children, irrespective of their sex, meant more hands to bring in food and money."
"Even in my generation, women were educated not so that they could be economically independent but because a college degree would enhance a girl's value in the 'marriage market'. Men preferred education wives not only because they move easily in their social circles but also because they could take care of all the 'outside' work like paying the bills, doing the grocery shopping, taking care of the day-to-day problems of the kids' school and homework."
"It seemed so ironic that the very men and women accused of treating the tribal girls like commodities were the ones who said they did not want daughters because they were afraid they might be ill-treated by their in-laws."
"Better to kill her before she knows this miserable life. Better to send her straight to heaven rather than make her endure this beating and kicking around. What joy have we got by staying alive?"
"If a man paid to get himself a wife. he bought a chattel; a slave. If a woman paid to get herself a husband, she was buying her way into a relationship in which she remained inferior. It's a no-win situation."
"... sex-selective extermination is a great leveler. It knows no caste or creed, no socio-economic, or language or educational barriers."
January 31, 2016
A shocking and chilling study of systematic extermination of women
Some books are shocking, some are provocative and some are outrageous. However, there are only a few that force the reader out of passive reverie; Disappearing Daughters lies in the category of those few. True to its title, page after page, the author makes the chilling and horrendous discoveries fostered and encouraged by men and women alike with the collective aim of exterminating women from the face of the earth. What comes out is a frightening and terrifying truth, “Female infanticide is akin to serial killing. But female foeticide was more like a holocaust. A whole gender is getting exterminated. It is a silent and smoothly executed crime which leaves no waves in its wake. It is happening while we, as a nation, slumber.”
For the complete review, please visit:
http://rainingreviews.com/2016/01/31/...
Some books are shocking, some are provocative and some are outrageous. However, there are only a few that force the reader out of passive reverie; Disappearing Daughters lies in the category of those few. True to its title, page after page, the author makes the chilling and horrendous discoveries fostered and encouraged by men and women alike with the collective aim of exterminating women from the face of the earth. What comes out is a frightening and terrifying truth, “Female infanticide is akin to serial killing. But female foeticide was more like a holocaust. A whole gender is getting exterminated. It is a silent and smoothly executed crime which leaves no waves in its wake. It is happening while we, as a nation, slumber.”
For the complete review, please visit:
http://rainingreviews.com/2016/01/31/...
December 6, 2015
Very, very powerful. So much information, so much heart rending information. It really illustrates how bad the situation is in India. I like the fact that the person who wrote this did so much research, interviewing so many people who were involved in sex selection abortion. It also touches on infanticide in the history of infanticide in India. So the conclusion she came to her surprising – that sex selection abortions are commonest among the most educated women and men. She also went into the consequences of having a society that is skewed with more men than women, with men unable to find wives. It talked about polyandry, and about villages buying brides and then treating them as slaves and son producing machines. I am very glad that this author wrote this book, with so much information, but I'm not sure what to do about the problem.
May 15, 2012
My wife and I have done a bit of research for our film Petals In The Dust which covers female infanticide and the the rising gender imbalance in India and we found Disappearing Daughters an invaluable read. A fascinating read, Disappearing daughters is both personal and briskly paced, Gita Aravamudan takes the reader through her thought process from her assumptions of poverty and lack of education to the reality of the situation: it is not just the poor and uneducated getting rid of their daughters.
Particularly memorable was the lesson of the woman Laskhmi who asks Mrs. Aravamadan a game-changing question about female infanticide. (You'll have to read the book to find out what it is.)
The reader closes the book feeling he or she can dismiss the problem no longer.
Particularly memorable was the lesson of the woman Laskhmi who asks Mrs. Aravamadan a game-changing question about female infanticide. (You'll have to read the book to find out what it is.)
The reader closes the book feeling he or she can dismiss the problem no longer.
December 9, 2025
The book begins by tracing the shift from female infanticide—the killing of newborn girls through poisoning, deliberate neglect, or suffocation—to female foeticide enabled by modern prenatal technologies. Ultrasounds, meant to identify medical complications, were quickly misused for sex determination, allowing families to abort female fetuses long before birth. What follows is a chilling account of how technology, instead of advancing healthcare, deepened long-standing patriarchal biases.
Aravamudan shows how cultural and economic forces sustain a preference for sons. The dowry system makes daughters an economic burden, while sons represent lineage, security, and honor. In communities where these beliefs persist, the birth of a girl is mourned, and her disappearance—through infanticide or selective abortion—is normalized.
As laws tightened around sex-selective abortions, the practice moved underground. Illegal, unregulated procedures spread through back-alley clinics and travelling technicians, becoming far more dangerous. Women faced severe infections, hemorrhaging, infertility, and even death—bearing the physical cost of a system intent on eliminating daughters.
The book also exposes the consequences of skewed sex ratios. Bride shortages in regions like Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh have led to women being shared among multiple brothers, often purchased cheaply from poorer areas such as Avadi or tribal belts. Shockingly, some local voices argue for improving the gender balance not out of concern for women’s rights, but so that men can find brides within their own caste and maintain what they perceive as community “purity”—a rationale that reveals how deeply commodified women remain.
Finally, Aravamudan dismantles the myth that scarcity increases women’s value. Instead of gaining power, the few women who remain are commodified, bought, sold, shared, and trafficked. Scarcity has not uplifted them—because the patriarchal structures that devalue them have only grown stronger
Aravamudan shows how cultural and economic forces sustain a preference for sons. The dowry system makes daughters an economic burden, while sons represent lineage, security, and honor. In communities where these beliefs persist, the birth of a girl is mourned, and her disappearance—through infanticide or selective abortion—is normalized.
As laws tightened around sex-selective abortions, the practice moved underground. Illegal, unregulated procedures spread through back-alley clinics and travelling technicians, becoming far more dangerous. Women faced severe infections, hemorrhaging, infertility, and even death—bearing the physical cost of a system intent on eliminating daughters.
The book also exposes the consequences of skewed sex ratios. Bride shortages in regions like Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh have led to women being shared among multiple brothers, often purchased cheaply from poorer areas such as Avadi or tribal belts. Shockingly, some local voices argue for improving the gender balance not out of concern for women’s rights, but so that men can find brides within their own caste and maintain what they perceive as community “purity”—a rationale that reveals how deeply commodified women remain.
Finally, Aravamudan dismantles the myth that scarcity increases women’s value. Instead of gaining power, the few women who remain are commodified, bought, sold, shared, and trafficked. Scarcity has not uplifted them—because the patriarchal structures that devalue them have only grown stronger
July 29, 2014
They wanted you before you were conceived. They wanted you before you were born,
The day you are born,they got to know its you , a valuable thing ,and for which they are not worth of it.
A book with unwrapped facts , felt it would be a lie and not truth.
The day you are born,they got to know its you , a valuable thing ,and for which they are not worth of it.
A book with unwrapped facts , felt it would be a lie and not truth.
October 26, 2010
wonderful and heart wrenching
December 22, 2012
Mind boggling and helpless.
July 5, 2014
Disappearing Daughters is so much informative and hard hitting book.
I'm sure this book'll make u think about this issue deeply, and maybe spur you on to take action
against this inhuman behavior.
I'm sure this book'll make u think about this issue deeply, and maybe spur you on to take action
against this inhuman behavior.
May 29, 2016
The author has done an excellent investigative study to produce this book. Very very shocking to read about society's gender preference putting immense pressure on the mother
January 5, 2015
Powerful and I think I will be sleepless for days.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews