The most salient development in international intellectual climate on population and its related areas in recent years is the increasing emphasis on the status and role of women in every aspect of social and economic activities and on its great relevance to various crucial population issues such as the high fertility and environmental degradation in developing countries.
The International Population Conference in Mexico City held in 1984 singled out the status of women as a most important element in relation to population activities and economic and social development. The present paper attempts to review the gender differentiated demographic and social phenomena in both developed and developing countries with particular reference to sex ratios in population segments such as sex ratios at birth by parity, in life expectancies, and in the unmarried population of selected ages.
As one of major conclusions of this study, it is noted of the existence of some very tenacious discriminatory practices against women in the access to economic and social activities and to the enjoyment of their benefits. In some cases, discrimination prevents women from an access to their survival and health. Women, particularly in developing countries do not receive the equal opportunities like men in obtaining economic and social well being.
On the other hand, however, it was noted that many time-honored practices in human life sometimes caused anomalies and imbalances in sex ratio relating to marriage and widowhood. For example, men in Japan may suffer from their superfluous number relative to women in the unmarried status. According to a comparison of sex ratios between unmarried men and women where men are three years older than women, there exist quite remarkable imbalance between unmarried men and women in respect to the supply of marriageable candidates. Such gender imbalances seem, at first glance, to create rather favorable conditions for women. Obviously, however, different mechanisms are operating and, despite favorable demographic conditions, women do not get married quickly.
But the real question comes at the end of people's life course. Along with the long process of population aging, the situation has been developed with widening gaps in life expectancies between males, particularly in old ages. There is a clear and increasing trend that the women without spouses would undoubtedly outnumber the unmarried men.
Already aged women have been considered vulnerable in respect of economic security and personal care if they are unmarried and living alone. The demo-graphic prospects of great increases in the unmarried women in the 2lst century would augur very serious problems ahead of us inasmuch as those elderly women currently living without their spouses are likely in next decades o be poorer, less economically secure and more lonely than he women with spouses.