Mara Hvistendahl is an American writer. Her book Unnatural Selection was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
She graduated from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and Columbia University in New York City. She is former contributor for Science magazine. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic , The Wall Street Journal , Popular Science , The Intercept and Foreign Policy . [1]
Is Hvsitendahl a whistleblower, warning us of a terrible disaster we must take action to avert — and if so, what kind of action would that be? Or is she a Cassandra, describing an unavoidable destiny for humankind that we cannot prevent? In either case, she has written a disturbing, engrossing book that we can add to the tottering shelf of problems that keep us up at night.
Some developing nations have begun to recognise the need for action. With recent surveys showing its ratios worsening, India has created a new body to monitor hospitals. China has also gingerly begun to discuss relaxing its one child policy. But even if wiser policies follow it will take a generation for these unbalanced nations to get their populations back in balance. And in that time, those millions of angry, unmarriageable men could cause plenty of havoc.
Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls.