The Inequality in Numbers

POLYGAMY AND ISLAM The proportionately higher numbers of women in society can be traced to various causes. For instance, when war breaks out, most casualties are men. In the First World War (1914-18), about 8 million soldiers were killed. Most of the civilians killed were also men. In the Second World War (1939-45), about 60 million people were either killed or maimed for life, most of them men. In the Iraq-Iran war alone (1979-1988), 82,000 Iranian women and about 100,000 Iraqi women were widowed. All in the space of ten years. Another drain on the availability of men in society is imprisonment. In the US, the most civilized society of modern times, no less than 1,300,000 people are convicted daily for one crime or another. A number of them—97% of whom are men—are obliged to serve lengthy prison sentences. (Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), Vol. 14, p. 1102). The modern industrial system, too, is responsible for the lower proportion of men in society; death by accident has become a matter of daily routine in present times. There is no country where accidents do not occur daily on the streets, in factories, or wherever human beings handle sophisticated, heavy machinery. In this modern industrial age, such accidents are increasing, so much so that a new discipline has become safety engineering. According to data collected in 1967, in that year, a total of 175,000 people died as a result of accidents in 50 different countries. Most of these were men. (Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), Vol. 16, p. 137)