How do you change an entire culture's view on women?

Perhaps one day they'll realise there will be no wives for sons, nor children for the family, unless daughters are valued as well.

India's unwanted girls

Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.

In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times. "My mother-in-law said if I had a daughter, my husband would leave me. Thankfully, I had a son."

Deepali Sah Health worker

Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.

"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."

Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.

Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.

"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.

The use of abortions to select for gender is illegal in India. So, for that matter, are dowries, but the practice is still popular and great lengths are taken to weight children in favour of boys. This is fundamentally wrong. I suspect things will only get worse for a time. But eventually families will find their sons left out in the cold without wives, and therefore no children. Perhaps that will change things a bit. Both India and China will reap what they sow in terms of female abortion and infanticide, if they do not take action now.