#dayofthegirlchild :
India has one of the worst under 6 sex ratios in the world, a mere 914 girls to a 1000 boys. What it means is that if this continues (which it will if we don't change it) in a population of 100,00,00,000 there will be about 91, 20,00,000 girls.. a whopping 8.8 crores missing. Some questions that you may want to think about:
India has one of the worst under 6 sex ratios in the world, a mere 914 girls to a 1000 boys. What it means is that if this continues (which it will if we don't change it) in a population of 100,00,00,000 there will be about 91, 20,00,000 girls.. a whopping 8.8 crores missing. Some questions that you may want to think about:
1. Why are there less girls? natural selection? Here's a fact. India would kill it's girls- so laws were made to stop female infanticide. Girls started being killed before they were born- India brought in it's Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 (PNDT). The doctors and parents got smarter and started eliminating the girls children even before fertilization. The country revised the Act in 2003 and with added clauses it came to be known as The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition Of Sex Selection) Act (PCPNDT Act). It's been 10 years and the sex ratio keeps declining alarmingly.
2. It's relation to family education and incomes: You would think that with education and more buying power the families would be empoered. I have heard this. People say only people who don't have education kill girls. Let's get our facts. Refer to the map. Surprise, surprise- hey we have lesser girls in the developed states!! How is that possible, eh? But that's how it is.
image coutesy- Actionaid india
3. Today only 65% of girls go to school compared to 82% of boys. Even after the right to free and compulsory education of every child. And more and more girl children drop out as they grow. They drop out because of reasons that range from taking care of siblings, to no toilet in schools, to household chores to child marriage. ( 47% of girls in India and one third of the world’s girls are married before the age of 18 and 1 in 9 are married before the age of 15. There's a lot of this statistic available , please take a moment to read them )
4. Health Rights and Decision Making: Women rarely have a say in their own well being. Let alone anything, they have no right on when to have children, what kind of family planning (Please look up contraception statistics. ) Even their body does not belong to them. Who takes a call on aborting the child ? Dont go far off, think who takes the call in your family, in your grandparent's , parent's and your generation.
(Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Pregnancy is consistently among the leading causes of death for girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide. This % is much higher in girls and families with lack of education.)
(Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Pregnancy is consistently among the leading causes of death for girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide. This % is much higher in girls and families with lack of education.)
Let's fast forward to the future- what do you think will happen to the generations then? Let's specifically talk about those 8.8 crores men who will not have a female partner. Let's also take off a % assuming some may like men- a valid choice and great . Let's bring it down to 8 crores who need a woman as a companion and sexual gratification? Will they all turn monks and abstain. We certainly hope so- or else ,
- there will be polygamy- by force, (It's not that distant a future- instances like this are becoming far more common in UP and Haryana than you would care to think)
- they will start borrowing from future generations. Welcome back child marriage.
- More flesh trade, bride price, treating women as mere commodities, gender based violence, rapes?
- Welcome purdah? As we enter this , the vicious circle will keep getting more viscous . More girl children being killed, aborted for fear of violence, kidnapping, rapes.
- Sounds far fetched? Think about it.
1 comment:
Anita Kurup: Is it a paradox? That the more educated and more moneyed our people get, the lesser they seem to want girls...
Kusum Mohapatra: Statistics say that. A few days before I met someone who casually told me that they went to Bangkok to get a sex determination test. They didn't mind if it was a boy or a girl but wanted to know which colour to paint the room. Well.. You have a paradox right there. Even before the child was born it's been decided that blue and pink are the colours to be painted. It was blue btw .
Srikanta Misra: Do you see a correlation between prosperity & adverse sex ratio... More the state "prospered" sex ratio is more adverse.
Srikanta Misra: Economic Dev do not accompany with social Dev generally. It does not change individual mindsets. More over, money enables the access better technology such as ultra-sound which furthers the already worse situation. That's why the sex ratio is worse in rich areas
Kusum Mohapatra:
1. The states that are
developed in India are the northern states that have seen economic growth due
to many reasons- conducive weather, fertile land, better economic policies etc.
2. These states have
traditionally been highly patriarchal societies, with high male child
preference and female discrimination. (Look at Dowry, child marriage, female
infanticide, foeticide, purdah, sati, etc) Though the social and economic status has increased,
we are lagging much behind in changing mindsets. In-fact, the societies are in
that vicious cycle where they don't want girl children, but want wives-
complicating the lives even more.
3. As Srikanta has said,
with these patriarchal mindsets and more access to information and ability to
pay for sex selection procedures, the ratios keep getting worse and worse.
On another sad note, the
tribal communities have traditionally have positive bias towards females with
positive sex ratio. Sadly that is changing as well as they become aware of the
systems like dowry (where men fetch money and resources) in tribal communities
there was reverse dowry that is also changing with more access to information.
Post a Comment