Women live longer than men, yet speakers at a recent conference asserted that the low status of women and girls results in about 3.9 million excess deaths of girls relative to men.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Women outlive men, while lagging behind.

That was the parallax view presented last week at an annual summing up by the National Council for Research on Women, a New York-based network of 100 leading U.S. research policy and advocacy centers, which held a panel here at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Since 1980, women have lived longer than men in all parts of the world. In low-income countries, women now live 20 years longer, on average, than they did in 1980. In addition, over half a billion women have joined the world labor force.

At the same time, however, girls and women are often still treated as more expendable.

"One of the most egregious gaps is the number of missing women," said Jeni Klugman, director of gender and development at the World Bank, the Washington-based international organization that works with 187 member countries to reduce poverty and provide loans and assistance to stimulate development. "About 3.9 million women are lost each year because of the excess deaths of girls and women relative to men in low and middle income countries."

About two-fifths of girls are never born because of preferences for sons in China and India. One-sixth die in early childhood and over one-third die in their reproductive years.

"Unfortunately, the number of girls who die in early childhood is growing in sub-Sahara Africa," Klugman said. The same was true of child-bearing-age women in countries hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Read more:
Female Longevity Offset by Lethal Gender Gaps