Female Infanticide

Female infanticide is the deliberate killing of newborn girls, a gendered form of infanticide distinct from the killing of infants generally. It has been documented across multiple societies and eras, most persistently in regions with dowry customs or a strong cultural preference for male heirs, including historical and present-day China, India and Pakistan. The practice is driven by the economic burden families associate with raising daughters, cultural stigma around out-of-wedlock births, and broader patriarchal devaluation of women; India formally outlawed it in 1870, yet it has continued at a lower and harder-to-detect rate since. It differs from femicide, the killing of women and girls generally, in that it targets newborns specifically.