Is North India violent because it has a surplus of men?
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Date
2008Author
Shlomowitz, Ralph
McDonald, John Malcolm
Mayer, Peter
Brennan, Lance
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The striking predictions presented by Hudson and den Boer in Bare Branches that
highly masculine sex ratios tend to have violent consequences find, at best, mixed confirmation
in the available Indian data which we have examined. Many of the predicted relationships are
too weak to pass the test of statistical significance. A few, most notably the correlation with
homicide, are strong and in the predicted direction. Others of nearly equal strength, most
notably female suicide rates, are lowest in the most masculine states, the opposite of what was
predicted. On the whole, then, the Indian evidence does not support the strong claims that
highly masculine sex ratios pose major threats to state security which Hudson and den Boer
advance.
In addition, we have offered evidence, historical, anthropological and statistical, which
has led us to see merit in the argument that political insecurity and the exercise of violence are
more reasonably seen as causes, rather than effects, of North India’s masculine sex ratios. In
other words, in India at least, it seems to make better sense to invert the causal sequence
proposed by Hudson and den Boer and argue that it is because of a deeply embedded history and
culture of violence in North India that there is an excess of males, rather than the reverse.