I read with interest a newspaper story of “wife-sharing” in a small Indian community involving women who were forced against their will to share husbands due to a paucity of men. This is indeed an indictment against a decadent practice in some Asiatic societies where there is a preference for males out of cultural and to a lesser extent economic considerations.

The latest population census puts the global population at some seven billion people, with most of the population increase coming from the developing world, notably India and China, where this practice of selective abortion seemingly is more pronounced. It is time that the UNFPA, along with other global institutions such as UNICEF, comes up with strategies to put a halt to such practices which as in the case of that small Indian village Munni, is already experiencing the negative effects of gender imbalance where some families are forced to ‘buy’ brides from other parts of the country and where others have one daughter-in-law living with many unwedded brothers.

The statistics show that investing in women pay greater dividends than investing in men, a fact which seem not to be fully appreciated in some societies.