It’s a Boy! Again…
It seems as though everyday, I lose a little faith in the world…
Between the recent reenergizing of the fighting in the Middle East, the mass genocide in Darfur, and the stories of slavery still going on in Sudan, the current state of the world is rather… well, depressing.
But today I came across just one more example of the injustices in the world that can’t afford to be ignored any longer… while reading my Glamour magazing of all places (which does actually have some interesting articles, believe it or not).
While considering a female for US President and fighting the ‘glass ceiling’ may be one step forward for women, the current attitude towards females in India is two steps back. Right now, in many parts of India, daughters are considered unwanted, insignificant, and disposable. Sons are coveted while giving birth to a daughter is grounds for being hated and ostracized by the community.
However, thanks to new technology… having a daughter is almost always ‘avoidable.’ Ultrasounds are used to learn the sex of the child early on, and if it is a girl, abortions are readily available and often utilized. Abortions are advertized with such sayings as “Spend 500 Rupees (a little over 10 dollars) now, save 50,000 Rupees later…” refering to the dowry a woman’s family traditionally gives to the husband’s family. According to an Indian OBGYN, “There’s no shame associated with abortion when you’re getting rid of a pain in the ass– a girl. It’s as normal as having a cup of coffee.” While this practice, commonly referred to as ‘sex selection’, is illegal, there is virtually no way to enforce it, and most doctors choose ways to get around the law because the sex selection is a lucrative business- approximately $100 million a year.
According to Puneet Bedi, M.D., a Delhi obstetrician-gynecologist, “What we are seeing is a genocide,” and the statistics show it. A British medical journal estimates that as many as 10 million fetuses have been aborted over the past two decades because their parents did not want to give birth to a girl. Because of this, the 2001 census in India showed that for every 1000 boys six and under, there were only 927 girls, down a substantial amount from 1991. However, in certain areas, the numbers are even worse. For example, in Punjab, the ratio is a measly 628 girls to 1000 boys.
Beyond the obvious tragedy in this mass-abortion tendencies and the degradation of the female sex, sex selection has numerous other malicious effects. Firstly, because most women abort their female fetuses, those baby girls who are carried to full term (whether by choice of the mother or because the mother wasn’t able to access the abortion) are forced to deal with the hardships and inequality of living in a male-favored society. For this reason, mothers sometimes view aborting their daughters as ‘saving them.’
Secondly, the long-term effects of sex selection are beginning to surface) especially in the areas where the ratios of girls to boys are the most drastic or where sex selection has been going on for the longest). Since women are the minority, they are also in high demand… and not in a good way either. Middle-aged men are not able to find wives or ‘share’ women (which is negative for both men and women). However, much more serious is the bride-trafficking business this has given way to. The reality is shocking. Young women are essentially kidnapped or bought from their families to be taken to a new place and sold to the highest bidder. From this point on, their ‘husband’ often treats them as nothing more than a sex slave- there only to breed and be a farmhand. Sometimes they are resold to another ‘husband’ after they produce children for their ‘first husband’. Demographer Ashish Bose, Ph.D. claims, “Women [are] increasingly viewed as property that men can collect. It’s the ‘brothelization of society’.”
Meanwhile, the rape statistics have jumped tremendously, and while there is no way to actually claim causation, it seems obvious that the shortage of women would be to blame. At Delhi University, females state they are often harassed, so they are forced to rush to and from classes; therefore, even amongst the women who are able to get an education, there is a sense of being unwanted and inferior, which only furthers the cycle of sex selection.
Overall, as kidnapping, trafficking, and sexual violence could very well rise, all of the rights women have gained will be lost and “women will be pushed back into the four walls of the home.” Furthermore, the sex-selection trend has travelled with the Indian dispora. For example, anecdotal evidence suggests that some Indians in North America are also selecting baby boys over girls. Son prefrence has become ‘cultural baggage.’
An Indian woman who is working to change social norms states, “The more I work with female feticide, the more i feel it’s not to do with son preference, but with daugther hatred,” and basically, the only way to solve this is a complete change in the anti-female mindset. If you are interested in this, be sure to check out the article in the August 2006 issue of Glamour entitled “A Generation of Women Wiped Out”. There’s many more facts, quotes, stories, and statistics that I’m sure you will find intriguing…
