Breaking down the question

This short-note question asks for the trends — the direction and pattern over time — of the Infant Mortality Rate specifically among females. The Infant Mortality Rate is the number of deaths of infants under one year of age per thousand live births in a given year. The gendered focus is the whole point: the examiner wants a sociological reading of why female infant mortality behaves differently from male.

The biological norm is that female infants are hardier and should die at lower rates than males. In much of India this expected advantage has historically been eroded or reversed by social discrimination, so any account of the trend must combine the demographic fact of overall decline with the sociological fact of a persistent gender penalty.

Key elements to unpack:

  • The overall downward trend in infant mortality, shared by both sexes.
  • The anomaly that female infants have often lost their natural survival advantage.
  • The social causes — son preference, neglect and discrimination — behind the gendered gap.

How to approach it

State the definition and the biological expectation first: female infants should, other things equal, survive better than male. Then give the trend — infant mortality in India has fallen steadily over the decades, and female infant mortality has fallen with it, but the gender gap has narrowed only slowly and in some periods female rates exceeded or matched male rates against the biological norm. The components of population growth notes set the demographic context.

Explain the social causes: son preference, unequal feeding and immunisation, delayed medical care for girls, and outright neglect. Link this to the wider evidence of adverse child sex ratios and Amartya Sen's argument about "missing women". Conclude that recent improvement is real but the gendered disadvantage has not been fully eliminated.

Model answer

The Infant Mortality Rate measures the number of deaths of children under one year per thousand live births, and it is one of the most sensitive indicators of a society's health and welfare. Biologically, female infants are known to be more resilient than males and, in the absence of discrimination, should record a lower mortality rate. The trend of female infant mortality in India must therefore be read against this expected natural advantage, for the gap between what biology predicts and what society produces is itself the finding.

The dominant trend is one of steady decline. Over the decades since independence, the overall Infant Mortality Rate has fallen substantially with the spread of immunisation, institutional delivery, better nutrition and public-health programmes, and female infant mortality has fallen alongside it. In absolute terms, far fewer female infants die today than a generation ago. This is a genuine and important improvement.

Yet the more revealing trend is the persistence of a gender penalty. For long stretches, female infant mortality in India remained close to or even higher than male infant mortality, reversing the biological expectation that girls should survive better. This anomaly points to social rather than natural causes. The underlying force is a deep-rooted son preference: in a patriarchal, patrilineal society, sons are valued for continuing the lineage, providing old-age support and performing ritual duties, while daughters are seen as an economic burden. This preference translates into the differential treatment of infants — girls receive less and later medical attention, are breastfed for shorter periods, are immunised less completely and are given a smaller share of scarce nutrition. Such everyday neglect, rather than any single dramatic act, keeps female infant mortality higher than it should be.

The gendered pattern of infant survival is part of a wider demographic distortion visible in the adverse child sex ratio, which discrimination against the girl child, sometimes extending to sex-selective practices before birth, has worsened in several regions. Amartya Sen captured the human scale of this discrimination in his concept of "missing women" — the millions of women and girls absent from the population because of unequal care and survival chances. Female infant mortality is one of the mechanisms producing that shortfall.

The recent trend is cautiously encouraging. As female literacy, health awareness and women's status have risen, the gender gap in infant mortality has begun to narrow, and in some states girls have started to regain their natural survival advantage. But progress is uneven across regions and social groups, and the disadvantage has not been wholly eliminated.

In sum, female infant mortality in India has declined markedly in line with the general fall in child mortality, yet it has been shaped throughout by discrimination that eroded the biological advantage of the girl child. The trend is one of improvement overshadowed by a stubborn, if slowly diminishing, gender penalty.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners reward candidates who read the trend sociologically rather than merely reciting numbers. The decisive move in a ten-marker is to note the biological expectation — that female infants should survive better — and then explain why Indian society has often reversed it through son preference and neglect.

Weak answers describe the general decline of infant mortality without the gender focus the question demands. Strong answers hold two things together: the real downward trend and the persistent gender penalty behind it, linked to the adverse child sex ratio and Sen's "missing women". A closing note on recent narrowing of the gap, tied to rising female literacy and status, rounds off a top-band response.