“You have to begin with the optimism that you can make a difference.” As Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen concluded his speech, the audience rose to its feet, honoring him with thunderous applause for sounding the alarm on sex ratio imbalances and advocating for the world’s poorest, most voiceless women. Professor Sen addressed the subject of gendercide at the University of Texas at Dallas on Friday, April 24 in a lecture entitled “Women: Survival and Empowerment.”

Amartya Sen’s Distinctions Include:

Nobel Prize in Economics, 1998
“World’s 50 Most Influential People,” Time Magazine
“Third Most Influential Thought Leader of 2014” GDI
Professor of Economics & Philosophy, Harvard  University
First Scholar to Measure Gendercide

Much of Sen’s work has focused on the economics of poverty, famine, and development. Equally important, Amartya Sen was the first person to measure the number of “missing women” in the world. In 1990, using data from the recent world census…