Participants from acrossthe country discussed this measure at a recent workshop on SharingVisions to Adress Vietnam's Imbalanced Gender Ratio in Hoa Binh.
The gap in the ratio between boys and girls born in Vietnam beganto widen in 2006. The 2009 Census on Population and Housing reportedthat there were 110.6 boys born per 100 girls born last year.
Head of the General Office For Population and Family Planning DuongQuoc Trong said the desire to have a son is influenced by centuries-oldbeliefs that males provide additional stability for families. A surveyconducted by the Research Institute for Social Development that waspublished this year also reported that couples favour male childrenbecause boys are given the important task of carrying on the family nameand caring for the family.
Bac LieuProvince 's Department of Health deputy director Chau Tuyet Ngoc saidthe motivation to have sons differs from the North to the South. "Inthe South, parents are more likely to prefer to have both sons anddaughters than parents in the North are."
Participants at the conference discussed how new technology allowscouples to determine the gender of their child earlier, and to whatextent this technology has affected the nation's gender imbalance.
Trong said gender-selective abortions were only a small part of the big picture.
He said traditionally couples had also sought to engineer the sex oftheir child by ingesting traditional medicine, following a special dietor selecting a specific time for conception.
Participants said that in several provinces where people had limitedaccess to ultrasounds and abortion clinics, the gender ratio imbalancesat birth were still high.
Khuat Thu Hong, head ofResearch Institute for Social Development, said although the PopulationOrdinance in 2004 banned doctors from revealing the sex of a foetusbefore birth, many doctors ignore the rule.
"Patients and doctors often form close relationships during thenine-month pregnancy, which at times makes it nearly impossible fordoctors to refuse to inform the parents about the foetus's sex," saidHong.
"And actually revealing this information is very easy, some doctors just use gestures."
Trong said officials were lax on enforcing the law. Only two clinicshave been closed after investigative reporting uncovered that doctorswere informing parents about the gender of their foetus.
Most pregnant women at health clinics that were surveyed knew theirfoetus' gender, said the office's deputy inspector Nguyen Dinh Bach.
United Nations Fund for Population Activities officer Pham Nguyen Bangsaid the demand to know the gender of one's child in advance isrational, normal and humane. It was the utilisation of that piece ofinformation to eliminate a female foetuses that was illegal.
"It is time to intervene in gender-selective abortion, however, it isnot easy to distinguish between a gender-selective abortion and familyplanning," he said.
Bang said as long as abortion isused as a tool for family planning, it will be difficult to combatgender-selective abortions.
Hong said the Republicof Korea (RoK)'s experience should serve as an example to otherAsian countries. The RoK was the first of several Asian countries todeal with large gender imbalances at birth. The country effectivelyreversed the trend by implementing economic policies that opened thedoors to women into the work place. It also introduced a series ofpolicies that established equal rights for men and women. These measureseffectively empowered women and reduced the country's gender imbalance./.
