An estimated 160 million babies in China, India and other Asian countries have been aborted or killed over the last 30 years -- just because they were girls -- in a phenomenon some are calling "gendercide." A strong cultural preference for sons has existed for centuries in Asia. But in recent decades anti-female bias has combined with falling fertility rates, China's coercive one-child policy, new, high-tech prenatal gender-detection tools and widespread access to abortion to produce unprecedented gender imbalances in the region. An alarming shortage of females is changing the fabric of societies, with many villages so devoid of women the men cannot find wives. Governments are struggling to reverse societal attitudes toward daughters, but the changes will be too late for the 30-50 million Chinese men who over the next 20 years won't be able to marry. The gender imbalance already has led to increased kidnapping and trafficking in women and higher prostitution rates in the area. And experts worry that having so many unmarried men could threaten stability and security, because studies show that having large numbers of unattached young males leads to "the criminalization of society."

Robert Kiener is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the London Sunday Times, The Cristian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, Time Life Books, Asia Inc. and other publications. For more than two decades he lived and worked as an editor and correspondent in Guam, Hong Kong, England and Canada and is now based in the United States. He frequently travels to Asia to report on international issues. He holds a M.A. in Asian Studies from Hong Kong University and an M.Phil. in international relations from Cambridge University.