In 1990, Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen alerted the world to the phenomenon of “missing women.” He said that more than 100 million women were missing from the world, which challenged the commonly held belief that women make up fifty percent of the world’s population. A horrific and growing trend contributing to the largest genocide in human history is taking place- female gendercide-. This trend is challenging our most basic human structures and values. These core structures have held societies and communities together throughout history – the balance and relationship of male and female. Procreation and new life-. While children around the world continue to face various forms of hardship in the 21st century, girl children in particular are subjected to multiple forms of oppression, exploitation and discrimination due to their gender. Forms of discrimination against girl children are numerous and vary depending on the traditions, history and culture of a particular society
The world health organization estimates that every year over 20 million babies are born in India. That amounts to 42,000 babies born each day. For those 42,000 families, there are three words that most of them never want to hear, “IT’S A GIRL”. Every week in India thousands of girls are either aborted, killed, exploited or abandoned all because of their gender (commit to change, n,d). Across India the number of boys dramatically outweighs the number of girls, and those numbers are only getting worse. Majorly, this is happening because girls are seen as an expensive dowry. Which is an expense that many Indian families cannot afford. In addition, boys are able to carry the family name, as opposed to girls who cannot. The united nations named India as one of the most dangerous places for a girl to live. 1 out of every 6 girls does not live to see their 15th birthday. For those girls that do make it past their birth. Many are left in an alley or on the side of a road, abandoned by their parents.
According to the 2006 UNICEF study, “State of the World’s Children,” in India, 7,000 girls a day are aborted just because they are female. The Lancet study finds, “in 80 percent of India’s districts, a higher proportion of boys are born every year than a decade ago as a result of the growing availability of fetal sex-testing services.” In a 2008 report from India’s National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, it is stated that “declining sex ratio is an issue of grave concern in India. Family and social pressures to produce a son are immense. In most regions, sons are desired for reasons related to kinship, inheritance, marriage, identity, status, economic security and lineage. A preference for boys cuts across caste and class lines and results in discrimination against girls even before they are born. In a gross misuse of the technology that facilitates pre-natal diagnosis of any potential birth defects and associated conditions, female fetuses are selectively aborted after such pre-natal sex determination. This is happening across the country in spite of a massive influx of legal regulations banning the same.”
700,000 girls are killed by parents every year in India even before they are born, says NHRC (India’s National Human Rights Committee) member Satyabrata Pal. When a woman finds that she is pregnant, anxieties set in about the sex of the unborn child. Ruthless feticide often follows if tests that are illegal, but easy to get, show it is a girl, he added.
While selective-sex abortion is by far the more popular option, girls in India’s poor areas in particular are yet at risk of being disposed of by their families directly after birth. In the 2007 book, “Disappearing Daughters: The Tragedy of Female Foeticide,” Gita Aravamudan, claims that thousands of girls are killed annually in Kerala alone. Another study has found that in Bihar state, midwives are routinely asked to do away with newborn girls.
How the Babies Die:
• Lacing their feed with pesticides
• Forcing grains of poppy seed or rice husk down their throats
• Stuffing their mouths with black salt or urea
• Starving them to death
• Suffocating them with a wet towel or bag of sand
• No or Fewer months of breast feeding.
• Rubbing poison on the mother’s breast, so that the baby girl is poisoned as she nurses.
• Leaving the baby to die in the fields
• Burying the child alive.
“She was thrown in the garbage dump outside the village for dogs that ate her. Her only fault — she was the fourth girl born in a poor family,” said Harshinder Kaur, pediatric doctor, recalling the first time she witnessed discrimination against female infants in Punjab’s rural side.” (The Hindu- April 16, 2010)
The causes of female foeticide and infanticide are complex. The important causes of female foeticide and infanticide as revealed by studies made by these authors are as follows:
1) According to a study by Williams College Department of Economics and the World Bank Development Research Group, “the average dowry with the expenses for the marriage celebration can amount to three to four times a family’s total assets. Thus, if there are an excess of daughters to be married, parents could go into life-long debt. “The dowry payment includes cash, gold, silver and expensive consumer items like TV and refrigerators, and in many cases a vehicle, preferably a car or motorbike. A portion of the land and property is also transferred from the girl’s family to the boy’s. ‘whenever the price of gold goes up, the value of the girl goes down.”
2) Indian society is patrilineal, patriarchal and patrilocal. Among the Hindus, the reproduction and heredity beliefs are governed by the laws of Manu (Corcos, 1984). Following this law, Hindus believe that a man cannot attain redemption unless he has a son to light his funeral fire. Besides religious consideration, economic, social and emotional desires favour males, as parents expect sons to provide financial support, especially in their old age.
3) Contrary to the popular belief, Gita Aravamudan‟s research shows an adverse link between education and the gender skew. The more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to actively choose a boy, assuming that she decides to have one child. The only educated women likely to keep daughters are the very independent minded. Educated men, especially in the business class, also want to have sons to carry on their business.
4) Some women resort to female infanticide and feticide in order to protect their daughters from a life of objectification and subjugation in a society dominated by men, where there is a prevalent anti girl attitude.
5) The Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994, prohibits determination of sex of the foetus. It also provides for mandatory registration of genetic counselling centres, clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. However, the implementation of the law is weak and it has not been used to the fullest. The focus has been only on the registration of the number of ultrasound machines and not on the actual act of abortions of female foetuses. Furthermore, in several cases the accused have not been booked under relevant sections of the Act.
In India, there are only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys, and often far fewer. A 2009 study by the global anti-poverty agency, ActionAid and the International Development Research Center, for example “found that the gender gap in some parts of the Indian state of Punjab had increased to 300 girls per 1,000 boys.
The continuation of genocide of girl child has led to skewed sex ratio in the country. The 2001 Census figures point to a sex ratio for 0-6 age group of around 927 females per 1000 males (See Table 3). According to some rough estimates from civil registration of births, the present sex ratio has declined to almost 882 females per 1000 males. As seen in the table below.
Source: Census of India, 2001.
The consequences of female gendercide are disastrous to conemplate. The first major fallout of declining sex ratio would be increase in sex related violence against women. It can be suggested that due to the widening gender imbalance in India, rape has already become the fastest-growing crime in India, with reported cases up over 800% over the past 40 years (Center for Social Research, n,d). According to a March, 2011 global survey by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), 24% of Indian men have committed sexual violence at some point in their lives. If male-female ratios continue to decline, future outlooks are disturbing. Says UNICEF, “experts warn that the demographic crisis will lead to increasing sexual violence and abuse against women and female children, trafficking, increasing number of child marriages, increasing maternal deaths due to abortions and early marriages and increase in practices like polyandry.”
Another consequence is prostitution. Prostitution is widespread in India, with an estimated 2,300,000 prostitutes in the country, an estimated 1.2 million of whom are children. Many are girls unwanted by their families due to gender discrimination and poverty. “According to Save the Children India, clients now prefer 10- to 12-year-old girls. The soaring number of prostitutes believed to have contracted HIV in India’s brothels has helped give India the second-largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world, just behind South Africa.” In addition, girls are being sold into slavery as bonded laborers, forced to work under brutal conditions in cotton fields, farms, factories, and other industries.
The United Nation’s International Labor Organization estimates that 218 million Indian children were involved in child labor in 2004, of whom 126 million were engaged in hazardous work. Estimates from 2000 suggest that 5.7 million were in forced or bonded labor, 1.8 million in prostitution and pornography and 1.2 million were victims of trafficking.
Combating female foeticide and infanticide would require multipronged strategy. Although India has enacted laws to prevent female foeticide and infanticide, their implementation has not been quite effective. Furthermore, there are several loopholes in the laws due to which conviction rate are dreadful. According to research, education and exposure to messages from the media are “the single most significant factor in reducing son preference. Educated women are less likely to prefer sons over daughters, and highly educated women are especially less likely to do so. Access to media and cinema yields a similar result: Greater exposure to various sources of media is significantly associated with weaker son preference. That this is so, after taking into account education and wealth, suggests that access to “modern” information and ways of life can contribute to making women’s preferences more egalitarian.” (International Center for Research on Women, 2006).
In conclusion, the issue of “endangered sex” or “gendercide” is not limited to India. Cultural preference for boys extends to both China and the Republic of Korea as well, countries that have also had a history of being predominantly male. However, In India, the genocide against girl child in form of foeticide and infanticide continues to be persistent across castes, class and communities. Today, no major state in India is free from this danger. A combination of legal, economic and social factors have contributed to female foeticide and infanticide. This has led to the adverse sex ratio, especially child sex ratio. In the coming years, if this problem is not effectively tackled, it would lead to social catastrophe. Therefore, a multipronged strategy encompassing legal, economic and social reforms is required. Female foeticide and infanticide is not only about missing numbers. The very status of women, and the gains that have been made in this regard over the years, are at stake.