英文原文：
How to stop half the sky crashing down
Baby girls are thus victims of a malign combination of ancient prejudice and modern preferences for small families. Only one country has managed to change this pattern. In the 1990s South Korea had a sex ratio almost as skewed as China’s. Now, it is heading towards normality. It has achieved this not deliberately, but because the culture changed. Female education, anti-discrimination suits and equal-rights rulings made son preference seem old-fashioned and unnecessary. The forces of modernity first exacerbated prejudice—then overwhelmed it.
But this happened when South Korea was rich. If China or India—with incomes one-quarter and one-tenth Korea’s levels—wait until they are as wealthy, many generations will pass. To speed up change, they need to take actions that are in their own interests anyway. Most obviously China should scrap the one-child policy. The country’s leaders will resist this because they fear population growth; they also dismiss Western concerns about human rights. But the one-child limit is no longer needed to reduce fertility (if it ever was: other East Asian countries reduced the pressure on the population as much as China). And it massively distorts the country’s sex ratio, with devastating results. President Hu Jintao says that creating “a harmonious society” is his guiding principle; it cannot be achieved while a policy so profoundly perverts family life.
And all countries need to raise the value of girls. They should encourage female education; abolish laws and customs that prevent daughters inheriting property; make examples of hospitals and clinics with impossible sex ratios; get women engaged in public life—using everything from television newsreaders to women traffic police. Mao Zedong said “women hold up half the sky.” The world needs to do more to prevent a gendercide that will have the sky crashing down.
参考译文：
因此，自古以来性别歧视和现代更偏爱小家庭观念相结合，让女婴就成了受害者。只有一个国家成功地改变了这个局面，90年代，韩国的男女比例和中国一样不平衡，但现在已经接近正常了。这个结果并非刻意为之，而是由于文化的转变。女性教育，反歧视案件和男女享有同等权利的判决令对儿子的偏爱既过时又不必要。现代化的力量一开始加剧了歧视，随后又改变了歧视的局面。
但是，韩国发生转变的时候已经很富有了，而中国和印度的收入还仅仅是韩国的四分之一和十分之一。等到中国、印度和韩国一样富裕，又是好几代人。为了加速这种变化，出于这些国家的利益，它们需要采取些措施。显然，中国应该首先废除其独生子女政策。出于对人口膨胀的担忧，中国领导人肯定反对这一点。另外，他们也不希望西方国家关注其人权问题。但是，现在降低生育率并不需要独生子女政策。而且，独生子女政策会使性别比例不平衡，带来灾难性后果。胡锦涛主席把“和谐社会”作为其执政要务，但如果有政策对人们的家庭生活产生了严重的负面影响，和谐社会是不可能实现的。
每个国家都应该提高女性价值。鼓励女性接受教育，废除规定女性不能继承财产的法律和风俗，惩罚出生性别比例有问题的医院和诊所，允许女性从事一切工作，无论是播音员还是交通警察。毛泽东说过“女性能顶半边天”。这句话愈发重要，让女性不至于被“性别灭绝”，让这“半边天”不至坍塌。
