My mother did not want me to donate: She did not want a large scar on my unmarried abdomen. But to be a living organ donor is a curious pressure itself, knowing that you can save a life with your decision. The health care system treats organ donors with unusual respect, too: Laboratory technicians moved me to the head of the line and congratulated me for my courage. Doctors praised me, pointing me out to other patients.

My father was like a child, wandering off on his own, his mind clouded by his failing liver. I wanted to pick him up before he never came back. But there was the remote and real possibility of death — one in 200 liver donors die because of the surgery. What if I never woke up after anesthesia? I didn’t have the courage and readiness they credited me with.

Yet at the hospital, I noticed women all around me — mothers, sisters, daughters, daughters-in-law and sisters-in-law. They were donors or donors-in-waiting, heavily outnumbering male donors. I was stunned by the apparent gender disparity in organ donation.

I used India’s Right to Information law, which empowers citizens to demand almost any information from the government, to find out if women were, indeed, the majority of donors in the country. Data from four major hospitals from 2008 to 2017 revealed that women constituted 74 percent of kidney donors. Between 2009 and 2018, women were 60.5 percent of donors for liver transplants, according to the data I received from five private hospitals. Those are all legally verified transplants, approved by Indian law. They don’t include the organs stolen from women.

Data from several other countries shows that the majority of living organ donors are women. In the United States, which performs the highest number of living donor organ transplants in the world, women were 62 percent of kidney donors between 2008 and 2017 and 53 percent of liver donors.

And women represent a small proportion of organ transplant recipients in India. Based on the data I received, women made up 19 percent of recipients of kidney transplants and 24 percent for liver. Indian women give more and receive far less.

An Indian crowdfunding platform, Milaap, further illustrated this gender disparity. Of the 495 funded liver transplants — among the most expensive surgeries in India — 66 percent of the campaigns were for men and 34 percent for women. The gap is narrower for pediatric transplants: Of the 305 pediatric liver transplants campaigned for on the platform, 56 percent were for boys and 44 percent for girls. Yet, biliary atresia — the most common condition that necessitates pediatric liver transplants — is slightly more common in girls than in boys.