In a recent issue of this journal, Klasen [1996] and Svedberg [1990, 1996] have expressed diverging opinions on the nature of gender bias in sub-Saharan Africa. The divergence arises partly out of the choice of indicators and partly out of the choice of standards. It is possible, however, to infer the existence of such bias without using referents from some external ‘standard’ population. Such an approach, using the infant and the under-five mortality data by sex and the data on sex ratios in the 0–4 and 5–9 age groups from the Indian population census of 1981, is described below. It is suggested that this type of approach will be useful in resolving the above debate.