I am a woman and I am writing from India. So, what is special about that, you may ask.
Save the girl child of India
India is the country that gave the world the second woman prime minister (Indira Gandhi in 1966). India has sent its women to space; its women have marked their places in sports, the corporate world, Hollywood and just about everywhere else, too.
But I will not bore you with statistics and data that you can check out on your own here, here and here. The point of my post is to bring to light the reasons behind this statement. First, there are some sociocultural pieces I would like to highlight.
- In India, a girl is ‘married off’ and sent away to live with her husband and in-laws. It is called the joint-family system (couple, children, husband’s parents, sometimes even the husband’s brother’s family in some cases) opposed to the nuclear family system (couple and children). In some cases this creates a healthy emotional life for a child because he/she grows up with a lot of family around. But nevertheless, the social system views this as a tool to send away the married daughter to live with her husband’s family. The husband living with the wife’s family is not the norm and this is viewed as below the dignity for the husband and is considered unmacho. So, the daughter is never the ‘property’ of the parents, unlike the son (who brings home the daughter-in-law) and is considered the ‘property’ of the family. In a nutshell, sons are insurance and daughters are liabilities. Whew! I hope I explained this fairly well.
- So, now the income of the daughter is lost. It is spent on her husband and his family. She is not an income generator for her parents. Whereas the son is an income generator and he takes care of his parents in their old age. The parents mostly stay with the son and those who beget sons instead of daughters have a better life style, is the belief.
- Dowry is still very prevalent in India. Having a girl is definitely costly in this case. Moreover people who ask for dowry also ask for expensive weddings and lavish gifts which almost always is borne by the girl and her family. Who would want that? I think an educated boy should stand up to his parents and say that he has enough money to share half of his marriage expenses. Slowly this is happening nowadays.
- Sons are the progeny, they are responsible for family continuity and they bear the name of the family. Alas, what can a woman do who changes her name after her marriage, changes her customs, traditions and lifestyle to suit her in-laws family?
- And lastly, to save face. To say, one has a son rather than a daughter has an air of greater dignity amongst friends and relatives, it ensures a stronger hold on the society and helps one live with ‘his head held high.’ It is extremely of a higher social status to claim to be living with the son than living alone. (*Too tedious to explain why, perhaps a separate post, later on.)
There is more, too, all of which amounts to viewing daughters as liabilities and sons as assets. These factors have their roots strongly based on the tradition, culture, customs and unreasonable and illogical superstitions.
Did you know, finding out the sex of a fetus is illegal in India because abortions in cases where its a girl are so high? This has increasingly led to more female infanticide.
The girls of India will be safe only if personal attitudes change. Laws could be created but people will always find ways to break them and/or work around them.
The point is, you and I and women all around the world need to feel confident about being a woman, about begetting a girl and creating a strong woman of her. There needs to be a revolution in the minds of people. It is about achieving, about strength, about confidence, about loving and cherishing girls (as much as boys).
Educate a boy, you educate him, educate a girl, you educate the whole family, runs the campaign in India to educate girls.
And I say: love a girl, you teach the whole world to love.
Mother’s love is the highest and purest form of love; say the ancient sages and saints of India. And when you love the girl baby (because she becomes a mother), you teach her to spread love and unify humanity which is the need of the hour of the world.
The Unwanted Girl Child, Pooja Chopra who went on to become Miss India 2009 and Miss World – Beauty with a cause.
Now for some cheerful reading– Here is a wonderful story by the mother of Miss India 2009. Pooja Chopra was an unwanted girl and her mother had to choose between her husband (and his family) and the future Miss India.
Guess whom she chose when her baby girl was just 20 days old!? Isn’t this an inspiration to want a girl?
What are some of the Social Evils still present in your country?What are your views regarding eliminating them?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by The Alchemist, our Indian mother writing from Chennai, India. Her contributions to the World Moms Blog can be found here. She also rambles at The Alchemist’s Blog.
Photo credit to Times Of India and Indian Child.
Purnima Ramakrishnan
Purnima Ramakrishnan is an UNCA award winning journalist and the recipient of the fellowship in Journalism by International Reporting Project, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her International reports from Brazil are found here . She is also the recipient of the BlogHer '13 International Activist Scholarship Award . She is a Senior Editor at World Moms Blog who writes passionately about social and other causes in India. Her parental journey is documented both here at World Moms Blog and also at her personal Blog, The Alchemist's Blog. She can be reached through this page . She also contributes to Huffington Post . Purnima was once a tech-savvy gal who lived in the corporate world of sleek vehicles and their electronics. She has a Master's degree in Electronics Engineering, but after working for 6 years as a Design Engineer, she decided to quit it all to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom to be with her son! This smart mom was born and raised in India, and she has moved to live in coastal India with her husband, who is a physician, and her son who is in primary grade school. She is a practitioner and trainer of Heartfulness Meditation.
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Thank you for this well written and very informative post.
Thanks for reading. It indeed is a horror story out here.
Wonderful, wonderful post! Thank you so much for writing about this important issue. I am sharing this with everyone I know! Best wishes, Jennifer
Thanks Jennifer. I hope the word really spreads out.
I agree, what an important post. I was aware of the problems for (many) girls and women in India but to have this in front of me to read was harrowing. What changed things do you think – from the loving wisdom of the ancient sages who understood how important mother-love is and therefore how important girls/women are – to the current situation?
Thanks Karyn. In ancient India, women were given equal and sometimes higher status than men. Check this link –> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_India#Ancient_India
I feel as mothers and as parents, we need to bring up both boys and girls alike. What a boy can do, a girl can do too and vice versa. For example, even boys can assist in cooking and cleaning and girls can learn all the sports specifically reserved for boys. I mean, equality should be not a right a woman/girl demands. It must be natural and we can begin it at home while bringing up children in the most natural way.
Coming from a family of 3 daughters and having 2 daughters of my own, the reality of this post makes me sad. Girls AND boys have so much to offer society. And it is difficult to raise a child in an environment where they will grow up feeling undervalued.
I try to instill in my daughters that they can do anything they want in life and to be brave. I hope this is something that they carry on with in life.
The Catholic church, the religion I was born into, does not allow women to hold the higher and highest positions of their organization. This was just one of the reasons I chose to not raise my family in the Catholic church. I want my daughters to grow up in an environment where anything is possible for a girl or a boy.
The corporate glass ceiling still exists where there is inequity in the salaries that men and women are paid in the corporate world in the US statistically, too. This gap has decreased, but I hope it doesn’t exist by the time my daughters enter the work world.
In my experience a girl is welcomed into the family just as much as a boy in the U.S.
Thank you for shedding light on this very important topic. What can mothers do to help girls in India?
Jen 🙂
Jen, it is wonderful what you do indeed. Yes, a daughter can do and learn everything a son does. My father was the same. He let me do what I wanted to.
I feel as mothers we can raise girls and boys alike. But that is us, educated, empowered, realised mothers, who have a lot of exposure, dreams for their children (girls and boys). But what about those backward women who do not even realise such things. I remember that post about a public school in Nepal where education for girls was picking up. Such awareness is required. We can spread the word surely sitting at our homes from our computers. And also real field work which involves extensive travelling and counselling and reform measures is required which only the government and powerful wealthy NGOs could undertake.
Any other suggestion to improve such scenarios, anyone?
What a powerful post! Sadly this is true throughout many other countries in the world.
The reality of this is just devastating. I remember when traveling around India reading a book called “May You Be a Mother of 1,000 Sons” which touched on many of the same issues you do in this post here. It just seems that the cards are stacked against. Even loving people who cherish their girls are incented economically not to invest in them. Not sure what needs to change. The dowry system? Education? Empowerment? Hopefully the campaigns you mention are bearing fruit. Great post!
http://in.news.yahoo.com/desperate-son-father-batters-infant-daughter-075908714.html
Check the above link. This happened just last week. A father batters his baby girl for being born a girl. The wife’s mother complains about her son-in-law demanding more dowry and torturing wife too. This is just a viscious cycle. Dowry, female infanticide, lack of women empowerment, lack of education. Somewhere the circle should break. Maybe it is best to start with educating the girl child, helping her gain confidence and independence in her life…
Great post. What you said about educating women is sooooo true. On the marrying away part, one of my best childhood friends is from India and when we were little (she lived several years in Brazil) I remember we had a hard time understanding the whole marriage system.
Oh yes, it is complicated enough to be called a system.
Dear Alchemist, it’s indeed hard to accept that in the 21st century such things are still common practice. Unfortunately, many different cultures have practices which are extremely damaging to girls. I totally agree that the only way to change these customs is to educate the next generation to value all humans equally.
I’m extremely grateful that both my daughter and I were born in a society which protects the Human Rights of all!
I pray that our children will be able to succeed where we have so far failed!
Thank you for sharing and opening my eyes to this. I feel incredibly grateful that I live in a country where this is not an issue. At the same time, I am saddened for the the woman and girls who do have to live like this. I hope change is on it’s way. I saw Jen’s post, asking you about what can be done. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Here ins South Africa, girls are also sometimes unwanted or considered inferior – but not at all to the extent that it is in India. I wish I could offer a solution, but I am as stumped for a solution as the rest of the world…
This is a malady in varying degrees throughout the world. I understand nature made man and woman different. But nature did not make either of them inferior or superior to the other.
So sad these girls and their mums too. In the Caribbean some families have and extended family setup and we call get on for the most part, what family doesn’t have tension from time to time but for a young girl to be sent away from her home and take on the role of a woman so soon is sad. It used to be the case for the Indian community back in the day in Trinidad but these traditions have long since died. One wonders what it will take for the traditions to die in India?
Oh, it would take eons for traditions to vanish. BUt in spite of it, if Indian women can rise up, through education and self confidence that would be great!!
It’s funny, I know a lot of people who have adopted baby girls from China, but why don’t people adopt little girls from India? They have as big a problem with “the missing women” there…
My life has got a new meaning after I was blessed with a beautiful baby daughter 2 years ago. She’s the joy in my life, though at time’s she gives me a hard time owing to her mischievous, yet adorable nature. I’m also proud of the bengali community, that I belong to. They (generally) do not discriminate, owing to the fact most bengali men are Mama’s Boys. I hope that never changes.
Hi everyone.Its a good thing u have brought this issue in the limelight. I am an unwanted girl child myself.I and my mum had to suffer the warth of my father n his family for 16 long years.And then one day my father threw us out of his house.I was 16 then.Being absolutely pennyless we came to stay with maternal grandparents.Even here we had to endure the insults of some of my maternal uncle n aunts.Both mum n me started working in order to support ourselves.l am 20 now n i hav graduated this year so im hoping that things will start looking up for us once i gt a proper job.
How do I as a female in a free country help these girls? Is there a group that is over in India that caters and looks after these baby girls, girls and women? If so I would like to know how to be able to help them.