Some 60 million women who should be alive today are 'missing' because of rampant sex discrimination, according to a report presented by the United Nations International Childrens' Education Fund (UNICEF). Some girls are aborted when parents discover they're female. Some are killed as children. Others die of neglect or abuse in childhood. These 'missing' women are an example of violence against women and girls which ranks as the most pervasive violation of human rights in the world today. UNICEF made violence against women and girls the centerpiece of its annual report because sexual violence is a major obstacle to social and economic development and has corrosive effects on children. Sexual discrimination is everywhere, in every conceivable form, from assault, rape, sexual slavery and domestic abuse to torture, mutilation and disfigurement, and even murder.

The 60 million figure cited in the report is based on country-by-country projections of what the size of a 'perfect population' should be statistically, compared with the actual population. This perfect population, derived by demographers, takes into account natural gender differences in birth and mortality rates where there would be no gender discrimination. The figure, however, is an estimate, and could range as high as 90 million or as low as 40 million.

In China, the difference between this perfect population and the actual one shows 29 million missing females, in India, 23 million, Pakistan 3 million Bangladesh 2 million and West Asia 2 million.

In India, more than 5,000 women are killed every year by in-laws unhappy with the size of the dowries they receive. More than a million children, mostly girls in Asia, are forced into prostitution every year at ever younger ages, to accommodate men fearful of getting AIDS. Every day, 6,000 girls are circumcised, the ritual cutting of girls' genitals that the report described as mutilation. Some 250,000 girls die each year, primarily in South Central Asia and China, because they experience some sort of disadvantage relative to boys. What this is mainly related to is unequal access to health care. Simply put, boys get taken to doctors, girls do not.

There is overwhelming evidence that most women die simply because they are female. Aborted after pre-natal tests revealed their sex, or murdered as infants, or deprived of the same medical care afforded their brothers, or otherwise abused and simply neglected to death.

Crimes against women are vastly under-reported and most gender violence not only goes unpunished but is tolerated in silence. Educating girls is perhaps the only key to curbing the world's population explosion and achieving equality of the sexes. Educating girls is also crucial to changing attitudes about sexual violence. Laws making gender-based violence a crime are also an important step, but only 44 of the 193 nations in the world have enacted legislation against domestic violence, only 27 have laws against sexual harassment, and only 17 regard marital rape as a crime.

Any of these women could be your mother, sister, daughter, wife, friend. She could be suffering in silence. What you can do to help them is what you need to think about, and think positively. The world needs them, and so do you.