Thus, in South Asia, as elsewhere in the world, the mortality figures should be in favour of girls. The fact that they’re not even equal, but are skewed in favour of boys, means that girls’ natural power to survive is being forcibly degraded by the societies they are born into. ‘If you have parity in your survival rates, it means you aren’t looking after girls,’ says Lawn. ‘The biological risk is against the boy, but the social risk is against the girl.’
