Table Of ContentDemographic Transformation and Socio-Economic
Development 8
Sharada Srinivasan
Shuzhuo Li Editors
Scarce Women
and Surplus
Men in China
and India
Macro Demographics versus Local
Dynamics
Demographic Transformation
and Socio- Economic Development
Volume 8
Editors-in-chief: Yves Charbit and Dharmalingam Arunachalam
This dynamic series builds on the population and development paradigms of recent
decades and provides an authoritative platform for the analysis of empirical results
that map new territory in this highly active field. Its constituent volumes are set in
the context of unprecedented demographic changes in both the developed—and
developing—world, changes that include startling urbanization and rapidly aging
populations. Offering unprecedented detail on leading-edge methodologies, as well
as the theory underpinning them, the collection will benefit the wider scholarly
community with a full reckoning of emerging topics and the creative interplay
between them.
The series focuses on key contemporary issues that evince a sea-c hange in the
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centered on numerical growth in favor of more complex assessments that factor in
additional data, for example on epidemiology or the shifting nature of the labor
force. It aims to explore the obstacles to economic development that originate in
high-growth populations and the disjunction of population change and food security.
Where other studies have defined the ‘economy’ more narrowly, this series
recognizes the potency of social and cultural influences in shaping development and
acknowledges demographic change as a cause, as well as an effect, of broader shifts
in society. It is also intended as a forum for methodological and conceptual
innovation in analyzing the links between population and development, from finely
tuned anthropological studies to global, systemic phenomena such as the
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8813
Sharada Srinivasan • Shuzhuo Li
Editors
Scarce Women and Surplus
Men in China and India
Macro Demographics versus Local Dynamics
Editors
Sharada Srinivasan Shuzhuo Li
University of Guelph Institute for Population and Dev’t Studi
Guelph, Ontario, Canada Xi’an Jiaotong University
Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development
ISBN 978-3-319-63274-2 ISBN 978-3-319-63275-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63275-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951126
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Preface
A three-year research project Demographic Shifts and Gender in Asia: ‘Scarce
Women’ and ‘Surplus Men’ (2011–2014), led by Daniele Belanger of the University
of Laval and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, examined the consequences of sex ratio imbalance in China, India and
Vietnam. This research in turn inspired us to bring together other scholars who were
trying to understand how the impacts of a male surplus and female scarcity unfold
at the micro-level, in the form of an edited book. The editors of this book coordi-
nated the India and China research, respectively.
Following a call for papers in 2014, 12 papers were invited. In preparation of the
manuscript, a 3-day workshop with the contributors was held in the Netherlands in
May 2015. The workshop was hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced
Study (NIAS) and funded by the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing
Countries (Hivos) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). At
the workshop, authors did not present their papers since all contributors read all the
papers prior to the workshop. Rather each paper was discussed by an assigned dis-
cussant and then by the entire group. The workshop generated rich discussion on the
issues around the scarce women-surplus men phenomena, the challenges of gather-
ing high-quality data as well as relevant feedback for each author.
There is much scope and research needed to examine the impacts of scarce
women and surplus men. This collection offers insights on one such aspect, namely,
bride shortage and the prospects and strategies of single men in daughter deficit
contexts in China and India.
We acknowledge the support from Daniele Belanger in initiating the edited col-
lection. Thanks go to Yves Charbit and Dharmalingam Arunachalam, the editors of
the Springer series in demographic change and socio-economic development, who
provided encouraging, critical and practical feedback on various chapters. Thanks
v
vi Preface
are also due to the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Finally we thank
Alicia Filipowich for logistical assistance with the workshop, and Samantha
Postulart and Andrew Vowles for the assistance in copy-editing.
Guelph, ON, Canada Sharada Srinivasan
Xi’an, China Shuzhou Li
Contents
1 Unifying Perspectives on Scarce Women and Surplus Men
in China and India .................................................................................... 1
Sharada Srinivasan and Shuzhuo Li
2 Being ‘Bare Branches’: Demographic Imbalance,
Marriage Exclusion and Masculinity in North India ............................ 25
Paro Mishra
3 Household Division, Intra-generational Inequality
and Marriage Prospects of Single Men
in Multi-son Families in Rural China ..................................................... 47
Y. Li, W.D. Li, and S.Z. Li
4 ‘Who Said I Was a Forced Bachelor?’ Single Men’s Voices
and Strategies in Rural China ................................................................. 67
Kun Zhang and Danièle Bélanger
5 “Now It Is Difficult to Get Married”: Contextualising
Cross-Regional Marriage and Bachelorhood
in a North Indian Village .......................................................................... 85
Shruti Chaudhry
6 The Sex Ratio Question and the Unfolding of a Moral Panic?
Notions of Power, Choice and Self in Mate Selection Among
Women and Men in Higher Education in China .................................... 105
Lisa Eklund
7 The Impact of Bride Shortage in South India: Vellala Gounders
in Western Tamil Nadu ............................................................................. 127
Judith Heyer
vii
viii Contents
8 Sex Ratio Imbalances in Asia: An Ongoing Conversation
Between Anthropologists and Demographers ........................................ 145
C.Z. Guilmoto
Index ................................................................................................................. 163
Chapter 1
Unifying Perspectives on Scarce Women
and Surplus Men in China and India
Sharada Srinivasan and Shuzhuo Li
1.1 Introduction
Nearly a quarter of a century after Amartya Sen’s (1990) essay on the missing
women of Asia, China and India’s demographic imbalance between men and women
creates growing concerns about ‘scarce women’ and ‘surplus men’ and how the
reconfiguration of local and national population structures will affect the future of
societies in Asia and beyond. At the heart of the unfolding crisis is the crucial role
of patrilineal and patrilocal heteronormative marriage in facilitating procreation,
lineage continuity, old age care, access to women’s sexual and domestic labour. The
impetus for this edited book lies in the current inadequate understanding of dynam-
ics at work in localities where demographic pyramids are slimmer on the female
side, compared to the male side. Some existing accounts—particularly those from
security studies—are fraught with unsupported hypotheses, unclear assumptions
and sensationalistic accounts. There is an urgent need to examine, at the ground
level, processes that are unfolding in communities.
This edited book contributes to the advancement of knowledge by first docu-
menting how individuals and families experience, adapt and adjust to recent demo-
graphic shifts. Second, the chapters discuss how demographic change interacts with
other concurrent processes of change with respect to economic development and
globalization, gender, sexuality, generation, class, caste, marriage, families, notion
of self, migration and work. The book includes case studies in selected communities
of China and India conducted by experienced and emerging scholars from diverse
S. Srinivasan (*)
University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Li
Institute for Population and Dev’t Studi, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1
S. Srinivasan, S. Li (eds.), Scarce Women and Surplus Men in China and India,
Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development 8,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63275-9_1
