The following is a guest post from Adrianne Redding. Adrianne is currently studying Political Science at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

In the words of Joseph Lenin, when one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic. What, then, is 160 million?

If you Google the words, “lack of women,” you will find many results. Top results include: lack of women in corporate offices, lack of women on boards, lack of women filmmakers, lack of women in Congress, and lack of women in science. However, what these top results don’t tell you is that there is a universal and growing problem: a lack of women in the world.

The world lacks 160 million women today, according to a recent article in the New York Times. This is the result of the popularity of sex-selective abortions in Asia and other parts of the world. Research done by economist Amartya Sen and journalist Mara Hvistendahl, as well as others, shows how dangerous a position this is for societies.

The decline of women in society has been looming over China ever since its one-child policy was enacted. It has been documented repeatedly that many Chinese families would rather their one child be a boy than a girl. Now that these only children (predominately male) are grown and looking for spouses, they find that there are few to be had. In fact, reports estimate that by the year 2020, 24 million Chinese men will be left without a wife.

India and Myanmar also have their own share of female infanticide and sex-selective abortion, as well as other Asian countries.

A predominately male society leads to many problems, the most obvious being the population distortion continued into future generations—if this can be fixed, it will take many decades for natural growth to correct the man-made dilemma. Researchers are also beginning to see a connection between the lack of women in a society and higher levels of human trafficking and prostitution. Mankind has agitated the delicate balance of our demography, and there are most likely other consequences we are not aware of yet.

160 million women are missing from the world today because of sex-selective abortions and infanticide. And unless we do something about it, abortion will kill the women of tomorrow, perpetuating the global crisis.