Taking Stock: A more equal future
Return of the girls | Controlling methane from beef and dairy | Many wild predators snack on fruit bats, a worrisome finding for human health
The main thing: The stunning reversal of humanity's oldest bias—Bryan Walsh
‘Perhaps the oldest, most pernicious form of human bias is that of men toward women. It often started at the moment of birth. In ancient Athens, at a public ceremony called the amphidromia, fathers would inspect a newborn and decide whether it would be part of the family, or be cast away. One often socially acceptable reason for abandoning the baby: It was a girl.
‘Female infanticide has been distressingly common in many societies—and its practice is not just ancient history. In 1990, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen looked at birth ratios in Asia, North Africa, and China and calculated that more than 100 million women were essentially “missing”—meaning that, based on the normal ratio of boys to girls at birth and the longevity of both genders, there was a huge missing number of girls who should have been born, but weren’t.
‘Sen’s estimate came before the truly widespread adoption of ultrasound tests that could determine the sex of a fetus in utero—which actually made the problem worse, leading to a wave of sex-selective abortions. These were especially common in countries like India and China; the latter’s one-child policy and old biases made families desperate for their one child to be a boy. The Economist has estimated that since 1980 alone, there have been approximately 50 million fewer girls born worldwide than would naturally be expected, which almost certainly means that roughly that nearly all of those girls were aborted for no other reason than their sex. The preference for boys was a bias that killed in mass numbers.
‘But in one of the most important social shifts of our time, that bias is changing. In a great cover story earlier this month, The Economist reported that the number of annual excess male births has fallen from a peak of 1.7 million in 2000 to around 200,000, which puts it back within the biologically standard birth ratio of 105 boys for every 100 girls. Countries that once had highly skewed sex ratios—like South Korea, which saw almost 116 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990—now have normal or near-normal ratios.
‘Altogether, The Economist estimated that the decline in sex preference at birth in the past 25 years has saved the equivalent of 7 million girls. That’s comparable to the number of lives saved by anti-smoking efforts in the US. So how, exactly, have we overcome a prejudice that seemed so embedded in human society?
‘For one, we have relaxed discrimination against girls and women in other ways—in school and in the workplace. With fewer limits, girls are outperforming boys in the classroom. In the most recent international PISA tests, considered the gold standard for evaluating student performance around the world, 15-year-old girls beat their male counterparts in reading in 79 out of 81 participating countries or economies, while the historic male advantage in math scores has fallen to single digits.
‘Girls are also dominating in higher education, with 113 female students at that level for every 100 male students. While women continue to earn less than men, the gender pay gap has been shrinking, and in a number of urban areas in the US, young women have actually been outearning young men.
‘Government policies have helped accelerate that shift, in part because they have come to recognize the serious social problems that eventually result from decades of anti-girl discrimination. In countries like South Korea and China, which have long had some of the most skewed gender ratios at birth, governments have cracked down on technologies that enable sex-selective abortion. In India, where female infanticide and neglect have been particularly horrific, slogans like “Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter” have helped change opinions.
‘The shift is being seen not just in birth sex ratios, but in opinion polls—and in the actions of would-be parents.
Between 1983 and 2003, The Economist reported, the proportion of South Korean women who said it was “necessary” to have a son fell from 48 percent to 6 percent, while nearly half of women now say they want daughters. In Japan, the shift has gone even further—as far back as 2002, 75 percent of couples who wanted only one child said they hoped for a daughter.
‘In the US, which allows sex selection for couples doing in-vitro fertilization, there is growing evidence that would-be parents prefer girls, as do potential adoptive parents. While in the past, parents who had a girl first were more likely to keep trying to have children in an effort to have a boy, the opposite is now true—couples who have a girl first are less likely to keep trying.
‘There’s still more progress to be made. In northwest of India, for instance, birth ratios that overly skew toward boys are still the norm. In regions of sub-Saharan Africa, birth sex ratios may be relatively normal, but post-birth discrimination in the form of poorer nutrition and worse medical care still lingers. And course, women around the world are still subject to unacceptable levels of violence and discrimination from men.
‘And some of the reasons for this shift may not be as high-minded as we’d like to think. Boys around the world are struggling in the modern era. They increasingly underperform in education, are more likely to be involved in violent crime, and in general, are failing to launch into adulthood. In the US, 20 percent of American men between 25 and 34 still live with their parents, compared to 15 percent of similarly aged women.
‘It also seems to be the case that at least some of the increasing preference for girls is rooted in sexist stereotypes. Parents around the world may now prefer girls partly because they see them as more likely to take care of them in their old age—meaning a different kind of bias against women, that they are more natural caretakers, may be paradoxically driving the decline in prejudice against girls at birth.
‘But make no mistake—the decline of boy preference is a clear mark of social progress, one measured in millions of girls’ lives saved. And maybe one Father’s Day, not too long from now, we’ll reach the point where daughters and sons are simply children: equally loved and equally welcomed.’
@bryanrwalsh | @voxdotcom
Controlling methane from beef and dairy: Facing realities in the Global South, by Robert Paarlberg, Research Brief #9, Salata Institute Global Methane Emissions Research Cluster, 13 June 2025. Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University
‘Methane (CH4) emissions from the digestive systems of ruminant animals, especially beef and dairy cattle, are a potent greenhouse gas. Rich countries in the Global North have made surprising progress against this climate threat, more than lower-income countries in the Global South. . . . [M]ethane emissions from beef production in the Global North have fallen significantly since 1980, while they continue to rise, and from a significantly higher level, in the Global South. . . .
‘The Global North achieved its reductions through improvements in livestock productivity based on better quality feeds, better genetics, and better veterinary care. This allowed the animals to gain weight and produce milk more quickly, instead of just eating to stay alive. The result was a reduction in the “methane intensity” of meat and milk products.
‘Methane intensity in beef and dairy production has also been declining in the Global South, but it remains at much higher levels than in the Global North. Beef production in South America today emits more than three times as much methane for every pound of meat, and in Africa more than four times as much. Producing a kilogram of milk from dairy cattle in South Asia results in more than twice as much belched-out methane, compared to milk production in North America. This persistence of high methane intensity in the Global South is a significant climate threat, since nearly all future growth in beef and dairy production will take place there. The Global South has already become the source of 73 percent of global methane emissions from dairy, and 77 percent from beef.
‘Worsening this problem, some strategies proposed for a further reduction in methane emissions in the Global North will be a poor fit in the Global South. Many in rich countries would like to see a cut back in beef and dairy consumption, since it would be good both for the climate and human health. In some cases, this is already happening: per capita beef consumption in the United States is down by more than one-third since the 1970s. In the Global South, however, many diets are still too low in animal protein (annual per capita beef consumption in France is 23 kilograms, while in Nigeria it is still less than 2 kilograms), so calling for consumption cuts would not be good for human health.
‘Substituting imitation meat products for the real thing is also an unlikely strategy in the Global South. . . . Another methane-reducing option is feed additives, such as red seaweed and new manufactured products with the same active ingredients. These could become a useful pathway for further methane reductions in the Global North, . . . [but] in the less controlled pasture-based feeding systems that prevail in the Global South, delivering a correct daily dose through animal feed is not possible. . . .
‘In both North and South, the only proven path to methane reduction in beef and dairy has been to improve animal genetics and veterinary care, and then bring controlled quantities of high-energy feed directly to the animals, rather than expecting them to rely on unimproved and frequently degraded pastures. These upgrades reduce methane intensity by speeding weight gain and milk production, thus reducing time spent simply belching out methane with little meat or milk to show for it. Farmers make these improvements for the increased production and income they bring, entirely apart from the climate benefit. Progress has been made moving down this productivity pathway both in India’s dairy sector and in Brazil’s beef sector. In both countries government policies continue to nurture traditional small-herd and pasture-based dairy and ranching operations, but the emergence of modern, controlled-feeding alternatives is not prevented. Most of resources needed to provide these upgrades come from private companies willing to invest due to strong growth in domestic demand for dairy products in India, and new demands for beef in Brazil to serve export markets.
‘These investments in beef and dairy modernization will benefit the environment in several ways, compared to a continued expansion of traditional pasture-based systems. Expanding traditional systems will result in more methane emissions while also increasing carbon emissions through continuing forest loss. Creating more pasturelands will also threaten biodiversity by destroying more wildlife habitat. . . .’
This brief summarizes a longer Discussion Paper by the same title, available from the Salata Institute at this link: https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/discussion-papercontrolling-methane-from-beef-and-dairy-in-the-global-south/
Smiling bat, Bestiary/Liber de natura bestiarum, England after 1236 (BL, Harley 3244, fol. 55v)
Bat cave footage offers clues to how viruses leap between species—Anthony Ham
Video from a national park in Uganda depicted a parade of predatory species feeding on and dispersing fruit bats that are known natural reservoirs of infectious diseases.
‘Bats carry an assortment of viruses, including infectious diseases that have jumped into humans in a process known as zoonotic spillover. In some cases, the aerial mammals have infected people directly. But in other cases, scientists believe, bats have passed deadly viruses onto other animal species, which subsequently infected humans.
A remarkable new video from Uganda provides direct visual evidence of many different wild animals interacting with wild bats, revealing just how many opportunities there are for potentially deadly bat viruses to jump into new species. It was published along with a paper posted online on Monday but not yet peer reviewed.
‘On Feb. 17, Bosco Atukwatse, a young Ugandan wildlife biologist working with the Kyambura Lion Project, set up solar-powered camera traps near the mouth of Python Cave in the Maramagambo Forest, in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. He was collecting data about leopards and spotted hyenas in the forest.
‘Through a mixture of what he called “curiosity and luck,” he filmed far more than leopards. Hundreds of nights of footage revealed a steady procession of 13 additional predator species, among them large-spotted genets, African civets, African fish eagles, African rock pythons, L’Hoest’s monkeys and baboons. Python Cave is home to as many as 50,000 Egyptian fruit bats, and the predators emerged from the cave with a winged snack, which they either hunted or scavenged, in their mouths. . . .
That is significant in part because the fruit bats, including in the area’s caves, are known to be a natural reservoir for infectious diseases, including the deadly Marburg virus.
‘. . . While the Marburg virus does not need an intermediate host en route to infecting humans, other novel viruses could follow such a path of first passing from bat to predator where it mutates into a form that infects humans. . . .’
nytimes.com | @nytimes | @AnthonyHamWrite
Arresting headline
HIV protection with just two shots a year: FDA approves Gilead drug—STAT News