In the late 2000s, Raleigh resident Jill McElya was living in southern India where she witnessed firsthand what she describes as a bias against female births. When she returned to the U.S., she couldn’t shake what she had experienced.
So in 2011, McElya, along with her husband, Brad, started a nonprofit, the Invisible Girl Project, to raise awareness of female gendercide and the work of others attempting to curb the unusually high ratios of male births to female births. It’s an initiative to support India’s efforts, McElya says, not to invent a new problem for Westerners to solve.
“Throughout that year, we really studied the issue more, and we realized there were amazing Indians who were just doing fantastic work to combat this issue,” says McElya, who is now the president of IGP. “They just needed their capacity increased.”
Despite a 1994 ban on prenatal sex screening and female feticide in India, the Pew Research Center estimates at least 9 million female births went “missing” between 2000 and 2019. Although the artificially wide gap between male births and female births appears to be narrowing after years of government guardrails and a societal transformation, India’s sex imbalance still presents a cultural preference against women.
According to Pew, the approximate natural ratio in India is 105 male births per 100 female births. In the early 2010s, the ratio was 111.2-to-100, suggesting gender bias fueled by “son preference.”
In 2015, the Indian government launched a heavily-advertised effort to curb sex selection: “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” (Save The Daughter, Educate The Daughter). Since then, the sex ratio has declined, indicating that Indian families are less likely to employ female feticide. According to McElya, there’s still work to do—and IGP seeks to make those changes through championing India’s efforts and spreading awareness.
Beyond the typical push for monetary donations to support the organization’s cause, IGP volunteers can represent the nonprofit at local in-person events or encourage young women in India with cards, letters, or gifts. A RICE (rescue, intervention, care, and empowerment) curriculum available through IGP teaches people in India how to identify female gendercide, why it happens, and how to support local efforts to stop it. According to IGP’s website, more than 10,000 people have been trained so far.
Another avenue to draw attention to female gendercide in India is the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW). McElya and ISG executive director Abey George will host a parallel event at this year’s summit entitled “Educating Daughters and Supporting Mothers in India: Fieldwork Success Stories.” The panel, which takes place Thursday, March 21 at the UN Church Center in New York City, emphasizes the transformative power of education.
“If we can show that girls not only have inherent value, but they can make a difference in their communities once they’re educated, they can bring income to the family,” McElya says. “They can support themselves—we think that they can have an impact on the culture. We want to show success stories.”
Since Indian female gendercide remains underreported due to a lack of reliable data, IGP’s goal is to raise awareness on the local and national level. Feticide and sex-selective abortion is a common thread, but other elements of child exploitation and abuse—dowry deaths, for example—also deserve acknowledgement.
“We’re going alongside the Indian government to champion the message that girls should be saved and girls should be educated,” McElya says. “Through our own education—through our curriculum—we want to reach the masses, so that we see there is not only political will for change but a social demand for change.”
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