Yet another China v/s India story. And not so pleasant or exciting this time.
It is believed that the Chinese kill over a million girls every year in order to have a boy. It is also believed that Indians are about to overtake the Chinese in a few years.
And Even the world’s poorest countries, including those in sub Saharan Africa, have a positive sex ratio of 103 women per 100 men. Compare this with our ratio of 933 women per 1000 men..
Indian Organizations Struggle to Remedy Frightening Sex Ratio. Clearly as struggles go, not an easy one…
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Again from my archives, Life and Times of Bharat Mata
For a nation with one of the lowest sex ratios in the world, we have managed to deify woman quite successfully.
Traditionally, the ‘feminine’ has been the nurturer, fertile and life-giving. She is the earth form, denoting life and energy. All gods in the Indian pantheon have a female counterpart goddess (except the confirmed bachelors, of course) and no Indian ceremony is complete without the presence of the woman of the household. In fact, Indian culture has given women the highest status of ardhangini – the other half – without whom no man is complete.
Yet, the woman in India remains an object – to be deified or defiled depending entirely on the curent mood of the country. With Navratri around the corner, I want to think about the idea of the woman as object – a concept by no means unique to India, but worth thinking about in any case. For few other countries have so easily and fully linked womanhood with the key twin ideas that drive popular thought and discourse – religion and nationalism.
Life and Times of Bharat Mata discusses the icon of Bharat Mata and traces its path and changes through recent Indian history. Quoting, there has always been a celebration of the nation’s female body – and of her citizens’ male gaze – beneath the seeming veneration is the need for possession and dominance
M.F.Husain for ToI’s special issue for the fiftieth year of Indian independence (ridden with symbols of prosperity, veneration, religion – the feminine form is free-flowing yet trapped within the physical boundaries of what represents ‘India’ on the map)
Martha C. Nussbaum discusses here the idea of woman as the nation, in an attempt to understand and explain (if that is ever possible) the sexual tortures inflicted on women (who suffered most in the carnage) during the Gujarat pogrom, and even before, during the partition. This widespread image of the female body as the nation helps to explain why, during the waves of communal violence at the time of independence, possession of women was such an important issue to the contending side
Related reads : Annie on the missing women
From my archives : laddu means boy, burfi means girl
Update : And this fantastic moving image from Akshay of Trivial Matters.
Linking to this post, he says, If only India valued “her” daughter. The irony lies in the personification.. Go have a look.
This is an issue that frustrates me, it’s one those things you look so badly for a solution for, but all you see is darkness.
I didn’t know about female infantacide in China – thanks for pointing that out.
Hope the future of India is not that of a Magarat Atwood Novel.
The sex ratio imbalance may not all be due to mistreatment of women. There is research claiming that a large portion of the imbalance in Asia (more in China, less in India) is due to Hepatitis B incidence.
Nice account at http://slate.msn.com/id/2119402.
i also didn’t know female infanticide in China. from what i know, they have a one child policy. one of the drawbacks of this policy is the kid grows up without a bro / sis. this has its own set of problems. growing up with a sibling is always fun.
Ban ultra-sound machines.
At a gynacologist’s clinic, their only purpose is to “kill if needed.”
Technology is not meant for monkeys.
Tomorrow, people may buy cloning kits in pawn shops.
People are irresponsible by default. They do not know, they do not care about what they think or what they do.
Tell women to marry down so that dowry can stop in a few months.
Stop picturising women as victims.
its odd a few months ago i had blogged about this in a different context. erosion of women’s rights vis-a-vis rape
read this – http://calamur.org/gargi/2005/07/04/the-handmaids-tale/
and try and read Atwood’s orignal. it is quite chilling in its prescience. here is an excerpt from wikipedia (ah where was it all these years in our lives)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale
h
Akshay, it is very frustrating and depressing to read and even think about female infanticide… but I think the solution needs to be worked out at a broader level – viz. ensuring that the girl children not just survive but also get a chance to lead a healthy and happy (however one defines this word) life… access to education, health care, no dowry worries, no worry of sexual abuse and so on…
Petar, I have seen this piece earlier – these arguments keep coming up – but the truth is something else – read this – http://ramz.blogspot.com/2005/05/amartya-sen-and-missing-women-i-guess.html
(from one of the comments there)
[begin quote]
While Oster found, for instance, that Hepatitis B can account for roughly 75 percent of the missing women in China, it can account for less than 20 percent of the boy-girl gap in Sen’s native India.
[end quote]
Kaps, the one hild policy has other “dangers” – more serious than a kid growing up without siblings. one can easily understand how the female foetus is killed in such a situation where only oine chld per couple is permitted by the law.
Harini, I remember your post on the handmaid’s tale – I went back and re-read it now… havent read the book but it sounds as you say, chilling…
And finally, Sumanth scintillates again…
Charu, that is why I mentioned that Hepatitis B explains less of the imbalance in India than in China.
But still, you do mention China in this post, and the vanishing of Chinese girls seems to be far less present than the simple sex ratio statistics suggest. I don’t have anything against considering even one tenth of a percent of “sex selection” as a shocking statistics, but if mentioning a number is important in the first place, then it should be an informative number.
[begin quote squared 🙂 ]
While Oster found, for instance, that Hepatitis B can account for roughly 75 percent of the missing women in China, it can account for less than 20 percent of the boy-girl gap in Sen’s native India.
[end quote]
Petar, exactly which number are you talking about that you find uninformative here?
Petar……could you give a reference or a link to that article? I’m just curious to know more about the Hepatitis B theory
Any way, in a typical natural environment (true for almost any animal), the number of females exceed the number of males (typically a ratio of 1.1 or 1.2 females to 1 male), and so a ratio of .9:1 is really quite awful, and can’t be explained away by some thing like Hepatitis B…..
Sunil, my first comment has a link to a nice Slate article explaining the research and linking to the original paper.
My point in commenting is to counter exactly the line of thinking you showed, and, I think, Charu implicitly shows. I’ll explain with an example.
Say one in 1000 female babies is being killed because of its sex. Is that awful and should be stopped? Yes, it is and it should. Would “everybody” know about this? Yes, of course, almost everyone would know well someone who knows well someone who killed a baby. Would this infanticide show in the sex ratio numbers? No, it won’t.
Of course, the above discussion only holds true if one cares about estimating the real size of the problem. If one is in an activist mindset, and would say anything to support one’s cause, then I guess my comment is of rather academic value and my experience (from LSE, among other places 🙂 is that we won’t have much of a productive discussion.
Petar, sure when all else fails, personal attacks always work. way to go.
Sunil, I have also provided a link to Ram’s blog where he had linked to the Slate article long ago – do read that and also the comments there… Female infanticide has been well researched and documented and I personally think even one in a thousand (which is clearly wishful thinking) is appaling.
Also, those who are interested in this issue of female infanticide may want to read this – there is a clear discussion on both India and China. http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html
(in this blog, sentences and phrases in italics are quoted from other sources – usually the one linked to right there before or after the sentence)
Not sure what you are referring to as a personal attack?
If you mean mentioning LSE, then certainly I wouldn’t attack anybody for spending any time there, sorry for being unclear. I did a masters programme and loved it. Certainly got much of my intellectual apparatus for thinking about what others say from all those literature reviews.
An interesting debate, a concrete answer to Emily Oster’s “missing women” theory, Levitt & Dubner describe in the slate article Petar pointed could come from India and China. From districts like Ratnagiri and states like kerala which have sex-ratios contrary to the general trend. Census Figures show that Ratnagiri(Maharashtra)-1205 to 1000 has the highest sex ratio in the country. A study to the socio-economics behind this could help us solve the equation.
Speaking of the imbalance, could part of the reason be that boys get more reported to the authorities than girls?
I belive that that has been an observed phenomenon in some remote villages of my country, Macedonia. The explanation given was that the parents wanted to avoid sending their daughters to the school. (The compulsory 8 years of elementary education)
I wouldn’t know enough about Indian circumstances to guess whether or not (backward-minded) parents would have inscentives not to register their daughters.
Hi Charu
I blogged about the Emily Oster article here and here, and I already emailed the link to Sunil. I’ve read the paper and it is interesting. I thought it should have been publish in a medical journal instead of an econ journal but it’s been excepted by JPE.
Hi Charu
The second link somehow dissappeared. It was here.
I belong to the area most notorious for female foeticide. I have a gynecologist sister who runs a hospital in a medium size city in North India. I spent few weeks at her place this summer. And talked to her and her hubby, long hours about this issue. They shared their experience. And i am still trying to come out of the shock and depression.
A lot of gynecologist are forced to do it at the start of their career as they dont wanna lose customers. The competition is very high and “If not me someone else will do it anyway” works in lots of doctors’ mind. The initial investment which is mostly private to start a hospital/clinic is high too. So either you have no business after studying 30 yrs or do such things.
The birth of a girl(other than the first one) in most cases is treated as bad news even if the family is well off. Actually the lower section of society hasnt picked up in yet. Its mostly the middle/upper class which is involved in it.
In some cases people find it shameful to have more than 2-3 kids even if they can afford more. So they just keep aborting the female fetus until they get the male one.
Even educated couples really think that their lives were incomplete if they dont have a son.
I think Hindus should start allowing their daughters to perform last rites. It should be considered normal. VHP/RSS types would do more good to Hinduism by asking Hindus to do so.
Govt should consider something called Social Security for every Indians. A lot of desire to have a male child comes from the fact that its they who are suppose to take care of parents.
These two issues should help in reducing the benefits (so called) of having a male child.
Please read the other post I have linked to: “laddu means boy, burfi means girl” – it is shocking to see the extent to which doctors will go to make their money…
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Petar, the reason I am stressing on the female infanticide issue again and again is that wide-spread discourse on other reasons for infant mortality just gives people who kill their daughters to hide it under other names – like hepatitis or just lack of records.
in India, as I have said earlier, female infanticide is very well researched and documented – in case of rural / illiterate folks, I do not think they are partial towards registering births of boys – they are usually unaware of the need to register at all. or find the process too cumbersome and unfriendly…
Michael, Emily Oster’s research may be sound but I am sceptical about accepting the hepatitis theory entirely- for the reasons that I have just mentioned above – female infanticide and sex selective abortion is a serious issue in India and I would be wary about brushing it under the carpet because of such a theory…
Akshay, what you say is true… even in tamilnadu (which is high on most development indicators), there are some districts where female infanticide (and not necessarily abortion since they do not have access to ultrasound technology which detects the gender of the child) is very high… this is usually – and I think correctly attributed to poverty… what is shocking is the prevalence of sex-selective abortions in the “upper class” in big cities like Bombay and Delhi.
Vick, it is sad that doctors feel “forced” to help people abort their girl child. persoanlly, I think there is no excuse for being a partner to this crime…
apart from poverty (the “burden” of a girl child and her dowry and such), socio-cultural factors are very important – as you say, performing last rites is the prerogative of the son and a lt of people believe that it is essential to have a son – so they can secure a peaceful berth in their after-lives!
– “A lot of gynecologist are forced to do it at the start of their career as they dont wanna lose customers.”
Sounds like a rationalisation to me. No, there’s no excuse for being a partner to this crime.
– “If one is in an activist mindset, and would say anything to support one’s cause..”
Could someone explain this sentence to me please? Last I checked, this was NOT the definition of an activist. Indeed, implying that this is what an activist does is what sounds to me like “Saying anything to support one’s cause”.
Charu,
Your point on this issue is exaclty what I thought it was from the very beginning – you don’t care about the actual number of children being killed, what you care about is that the practice must stop, right now, and if you have to inflate the number in order to make the case, then it’s a price worth paying.
But you see, I think that this strategy backfires even in the activist aspect. Do you think I am the only person for whom you lose much of the moral higher ground in the debate when you write “hepatitis B theory can’t be true because it might be used to claim that there is no infanticide whatsoever”? So, you opponents in the debate try to insult my intelligence by claiming that all of the sex ratio imbalance comes from perfectly innocent reason, and you try to insult my intelligence by saying that all of the imbalance comes from wrongdoing. Do you really think that this is the best way to win my support as a bystander? (Had I been in any position to act on this issue)
Uma, can you notice the “, and” connector between the two sentences? Wouldn’t you agree that its meaning is somewhat different than “then [one]”.