In 2007, the latest year for which figures were available, 42.7 million women died due to this reason.

The report, released on the occasion of the International Women’s Day, pointed out that “Asia has the highest male-female sex ratio at birth in the world, with sex-selective abortion and infanticide leaving approximately 96 million missing women” in seven countries. In 2007, an estimated 42.6 million women died in China, while the figure was 6.1 million in Pakistan.

UNDP said “missing women” meant those who have died as a result of discriminatory treatment in access to health and nutrition or through pure neglect or because they were never born in the first place. India also has the lowest percentage of female population after Bhutan in the Asia-Pacific region despite a better sex-ratio at birth, the report said.

According to the report “Power, Voice and Rights”, India also has a large number of cases of women being married off early. Only Nepal and Bangladesh have reported more such cases than India. The mean age at marriage in India is 20 for women and 25 for men, it said.

There is also a wide disparity between male and female child mortality rates in India. While on an average 72 out of 1,000 male children under the age of five died in 2006, it was 81 in the case of female children. The report said women suffer from some of the world’s lowest rates of political representation, employment and property ownership in the Asia-Pacific region.