Breaking down the question
The command word underline asks you to identify and highlight the relevant factors clearly, and the qualifier socio-cultural narrows the scope deliberately. The examiner does not want a general essay on the sex ratio or a discussion of technology such as sex-selective testing except as it is driven by social attitudes. The focus must remain on the cultural values, kinship structures and social practices that produce a preference for sons and an aversion to daughters.
The skewed sex ratio refers to the deficit of females relative to males, captured in Amartya Sen's phrase about the missing women of Asia. Your task is to explain why a society systematically undervalues female life, keeping the discussion firmly sociological.
How to approach it
Structure the answer as a set of clearly underlined factors, each briefly explained and connected to the others. Begin with patriarchy and son preference as the root, then move through kinship and inheritance, the dowry system, religious and ritual beliefs, and the economic devaluation of daughters.
Use the language of kinship sociology and cite Sen and Dube to anchor the answer. Keep technology in the background as the instrument through which these cultural preferences are enacted, and close by noting that the sex ratio is a mirror of the status of women.
Model answer
India's skewed sex ratio, described by Amartya Sen in his account of the missing women, is rooted less in biology than in a set of interlocking socio-cultural factors that devalue female life.
The foundational factor is patriarchy and the deep-seated preference for sons. In a patrilineal and patrilocal social order, the son continues the family line, inherits property and is expected to support parents in old age, while the daughter is seen as belonging to another household after marriage. This makes the son an asset and the daughter, in cultural terms, a temporary member of her natal family.
Kinship and inheritance rules reinforce this. As Leela Dube's work on gender and kinship shows, women are structurally positioned as dependents who move out at marriage, so investment in a daughter is perceived as investment lost to another lineage. The economic devaluation of daughters follows directly from this kinship logic.
The dowry system sharpens the aversion to daughters. The prospect of paying a large dowry casts a daughter as a financial burden from birth, whereas a son brings dowry into the household. This transforms a cultural preference into a powerful economic incentive against the birth and survival of girls.
Religious and ritual beliefs add further weight, since in many traditions certain rites, including the lighting of the funeral pyre, are performed by a son, making a male child appear necessary for spiritual as well as social continuity. Together these beliefs sanctify son preference.
These attitudes translate into concrete discrimination — neglect of the girl child in nutrition and health care, and the use of technology for sex-selective elimination, which is the instrument through which cultural preference produces demographic imbalance.
The skewed sex ratio is therefore the demographic expression of a patriarchal value system. It reflects the low social status of women, and correcting it requires transforming kinship expectations, the dowry economy and the cultural devaluation of daughters, not merely regulating technology.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward tight adherence to the socio-cultural focus of the question. The strongest scripts underline distinct factors — patriarchy, kinship and inheritance, dowry, ritual belief — and show how they reinforce one another rather than listing them in isolation. Citing Sen on the missing women and Dube on kinship demonstrates conceptual grounding, and treating technology as an instrument of cultural preference rather than the cause itself shows analytical maturity.