The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a $15 billion commitment, is set to expire at the end of fiscal year 2008. This critical boost in U.S. AIDS funding has helped millions of individuals infected with HIV, and in so doing, has improved developing nations’ health and education systems and decreased violence against women. In an original podcast by the Environmental Change and Security Program and the Global Health Initiative, UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot discusses how reauthorizing PEPFAR at increased levels of funding, expanding AIDS prevention programs, and coordinating global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS under U.S. leadership could amplify the effectiveness and sustainability of the global AIDS response.

Click here for the Wilson Center, “PEPFAR Reauthorization and the Global AIDS Response” event summary.

They say that a good man is hard to find. But in some countries, the opposite is true: a good woman is hard to find—because it’s hard to find women at all. According to a recent article by the BBC, the Chinese city of Lianyungang has eight men for every five women. Ninety-nine cities in China have gender ratios as high as 125 (125 men for every 100 women, or a 5:4 ratio).

But China is not alone. India has a gender ratio of 113, and the ratio in Asia as a whole is 104.4. In the United States, by contrast, the rate is 97, meaning that there are more women than men.

Gender imbalances are caused by cultural and economic preferences for male children, which contribute to sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. Over 60 million girls are “missing” in Asia as a result of these practices.

Furthermore, some government policies may intensify these gender preferences. China’s one-child policy, for example, may cause concern among parents, particularly in rural areas, that having a female child endangers their family’s future. Government policies intended to combat skewed gender ratios, such as bans on prenatal ultrasounds for the purpose of determining the baby’s sex and bans on sex-selective abortion, have proven ineffective.

Unbalanced gender ratios have consequences that reach beyond just the mothers and children involved. According to Valerie Hudson, high gender ratios leave many men without prospects for marriage, which may mean these men have fewer incentives to contribute peacefully to society. The men with the slimmest prospects for marriage are likely to be unemployed, poor, and uneducated, so they are already at increased risk for violent behavior. Hudson cites statistical evidence showing links between high gender ratios and higher rates of violent crime, drug use, trafficking, and prostitution.

Hudson and co-author Andrea den Boer cover these links in greater detail in their book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. In the 11th issue of the Environmental Change and Security Report, Richard Cincotta takes issue with some of the statistical methods that Hudson and den Boer use. He argues that what is important is not nationwide gender ratios, but the number of “marriage-age men” (25-29 years old) and “marriage-age women” (20-24).

While there may be some debate over whether the relationship between gender ratios and violent behavior is a causal one, there is little doubt about what causes the gender imbalances in the first place. An end to preferences for female children will be beneficial not only to girls and women, but to societies as a whole.

Photo Credit: A subway in China, courtesy of flickr user 俊玮 戴.

The newest podcast from the Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies highlights how engineers are using nanotechnology to develop more efficient and cost-effective ways to desalinate seawater and purify wastewater. In the future, these new water purification technologies could be adapted for use in poor countries where access to safe water is limited. The podcast is the third in the “Trips to the Nano Frontier” series, which also includes podcasts on green nanotechnology and nanomedicine. The full series is available online.

The Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) also produces an original podcast series. ECSP’s podcasts, which feature interviews with leading scholars and practitioners, have examined the role of gender in population, health, and environment programs; the challenges and opportunities presented by urban population growth; and the link between international trade and aid policies and conflict.

Gender is an oft-debated topic in the development community, usually focusing on ways to build equity and equality for women. So what are the appropriate roles of women and men? Who should take on responsibilities such as environmental management? What about family planning and reproductive health?

In the following podcast, experts Karen Hardee, senior adviser in reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and monitoring and evaluation at John Snow, Inc.; and Elin Torell, coastal resources specialist at the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center, address these questions, and specifically discuss the role of gender in field-based projects that incorporate population, health, and environment components.

The breadth and depth of statistics available on the WomanStats Project, a new online resource for statistics on women’s security, lends strength to the website’s claim that it is “the most comprehensive compilation of information on the status of women in the world.”

Remember the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? We are approaching the halfway point marking the 15-year effort toward eradicating poverty, and improving livelihoods and sustainability. Taking stock of progress in reaching these targets could not come at a better time.

In the hills near Addis Ababa, the protected eucalyptus forest presents a lucrative but risky enterprise, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The forest wood, often collected by women and young girls, can sell at market and greatly subsidize meager Ethiopian incomes. But if caught, the women are beat or raped by forest guards. No one, it seems, looks out for them:

“When the guards find us with wood, they beat us hard,” says Maselech [Mercho], who is now 10. “If we give them money, they leave us alone. If they get drunk, they try to rape us. We will scream for help, but when we scream in these forests, there is nobody to lend us a hand.”

But the organization Former Women Fuel Wood Carriers Association is expanding its operations in Ethiopia to teach girls and women new skills and livelihoods that will keep them out of the forests, away from danger, and also protect the environment.

Violence against women was highlighted as a contributing factor to the spread of HIV/AIDS at the World Social Forum, taking place this week in Nairobi. Ludfine Anyango of Action Kenya-International argued that women still have little say in negotiating their sexual relationships, which increases their susceptibility to infection:

“Many women cannot even choose when to have sex or not. Many cannot ask their husbands to use a condom because in addition to being thought as unfaithful, they fear being beaten. The woman then has no choice but to continue having unprotected sex with her spouse.”

AIDS activists are calling for new and strictly enforced laws aimed at protecting women from all forms of violence, particularly sexual violence.