ABSTRACT
West Asia, and North Africa, a great many more than 100 million women are "missing." These numbers tell lawyers, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women. In the US House of Representatives the proportion of women is 6.4 percent, while in the present and the last lower houses of the Indian Parliament, women's proportions have been respectively 5.3 and 7.9 percent. The numbers of "missing women" in relation to the numbers that could be expected if men and women received similar care in health, medicine, and nutrition, are remarkably large. A great many more than a hundred million women are simply not there because women are neglected compared with men. If this situation is to be corrected by political action and public policy, the reasons why there are so many "missing" women must first be better understood.
