the other hand, in Allahabad, India, women making cigarettes both gained an independent source of income and an increase in the community's view of their perceived contribution to the household. Missing women: children Sen suggests that in areas with high proportions of missing women, the care and nutrition female children receive are tied to the community's view of their importance. Parents, even mothers, often avoid daughters because of the traditional patriarchal culture in the countries where the elimination of females takes place. Boys are more prized in these regions because they are looked upon as having an economically productive future, while women are not. As parents grow older they can expect much more help and support from their independent sons, than from daughters, who post-marriage functionally become the property of their husbands' families. Even if these daughters are educated and generate significant income, they have limited ability to interact with their natal families. Women are also often practically unable to inherit real estate, so a mother-widow will lose her family's (in reality her late husband's) plot of land and become indigent if she had had only daughters. Poor rural families have meager resources to distribute among their children, which reduces the opportunity to discriminate against girls. Because of selective parental valuation of daughters, even as women are able to afford better healthcare and economic opportunities outside the home, the missing women problem still persists. Notably, ultrasound technology has exacerbated the problem of missing female children. Ultrasound treatment allows parents to screen out unwanted female fetuses before they are even born. Sen refers to this inequality as "high tech sexism." He concludes that these biases against women were so "entrenched" that even relative economic improvements in the lives of households have only enabled these parents a different avenue for rejecting their female children. Sen then argued that instead of just increasing women's economic rights and opportunities outside the home a greater emphasis needed to be placed on raising consciousness to eradicate the strong biases against female children. The role of fertility The natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 103 to 106 males for 100 females. However, because of sex-selective abortions, the sex ratio at birth in countries with high proportions of missing women have ranged 108.5 in India to 121.2 in Mainland China. As a result, counts of missing women are often due to missing female children. It is estimated