Lack of women turns tables on suitable boys, says a rather optimistic report on yahoo news. [link through anthropology.net]
The report says that young men wanting to get married (and their parents) face a problem in finding girls – not surprising since the gender ratio in many districts is 922 girls for every 1,000 boys, and shockingly, in a few villages, less than 500 girls for every 1000 boys.
This apparently has led to a situation where parents of young girls have been spurning offers of marriage from men unless the potential groom’s family also has a marriageable daughter for their son…
The joint engagement pact, called “aata-saata,” or the “double-couple plan,” has emerged as young women find themselves much in demand in a state where the traditional preference, as in much of India, has been for sons.
Now the slightly incredible part – …dowry, where traditionally a bride’s father had to bestow riches on a groom to secure a marriage, has completely disappeared from many parts of the state. Rather the groom’s families are now offering to bear the cost of finding a suitable bride for their sons.
I doubt if the change is as drastic as all that. It is nice to think that people will wake up to the dangers of a skewed gender ratio, but that will happen only in the long run, if at all. I am skeptical – what do you think?
***
And this is why I am skeptical – Gaay aur Gori… The cow and the girl (gori also means fair-skinned, to look at another level of this). Better off than the donkey and the housewife, which again Harini points out in her post…
But, obviously for the guys who set the curriculum and write the text books in Rajasthan, the film has some sort of sacred symbolism. This from the ToI – “A donkey is like a housewife. It has to toil all day and, like her, may even have to give up food and water. In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents’ home, you’ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master”
This is my point – are people going to wake up to the fact that young men are finding it difficult to get married and therefore, hey, I need to keep my daughters and not kill them? I think it takes a lot more than a feeble threat of non-marriage in the distant future to achieve any progress in the gender bias and the female foeticide issue. And that is a fundamental shift in attitudes.
Harini also pointed out this piece to me from the Indian Express – Women versus girls – what about the right to abort?
What if aware, literate Indian women, who are not necessarily influenced by their families, consciously seek to give birth to male children by exercising their right to abortion? Here we confront one of the biggest conundrums in this debate: a woman’s right to abortion — a crucial right that has been the centerpiece of many a feminist struggle the world over — militates against the right of the girl child to exist, which is again a crucial social and feminist concern. How do we reconcile these two rights?
not until we take away the social perception of innate inequality between the gender.
chk out this gaay aur gori
until you have education like this and socialisation like this – i see no hope really!
Hi
First time here, I read that report in our paper here (NZ) – I’ve noticed more than once that most of the reports on India are derogatory, either subtly or openly. Leave alone their skewed attitudes, but it is sad, but true that India also give them so much opportunity to do so.
As you say its an optimistic report. Here is a more depressing version from BBC on consequences of skewed gender ratio…. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4862434.stm
Charu,
Does this debate take into account the increasing number of married-but-now-living-alone women? I don’t know even approximately how many are there, but I seem to meet many of them these days. Oh! I am talking about the urban scenario. In the rural scenario, its different. As some ___ removed aunt(once or twice or thrice – fill in the blank) told me, they want many sons and one daughter for the joy (I translated from telugu and do not know the exact equivalent word in English). Apparently, the daughter gives them the opportunity to participate in many rituals that having a son does not give.
-Sridhar
Even bcoz of the skewed gender ratio, women end up being the loser. There have been various report in the media of girls from Eastern India being bought especially in Haryana where the gender ratio is very skewed. Many a times these girls have to share bed with more than one male members of the family and sometimes even sold again. Their status is reduced to cattle with their existence reduced to produce a child and satisfy male libido. They live in totally alien culture without any respect and dignity.
I was recently reading a book “May you be mother of thousand sons” in which the dilemma of whether womens right to abort justifies aborting female child was discussed. I think right are not absolute and cannot exist in vaccum disregarding the social conditions. Maharashtra Government did find a way out by not banning the abortions themselves but legislating a law banning the sex determination test.
militates against the right of the girl child to exist, which is again a crucial social and feminist concern. How do we reconcile these two rights?
We urgently need to bridge the gap between the desire to produce a boy and a girl. There is a woman, A, who has 4 sons, and there is a woman B, who has 4 daughters. Everybody respects A and everybody sort of, disrespects B. A becomes like a cricket star in the “khandaan” whereas B becomes a subject of ridicule and shame. B even doesn’t get right treatment from fellow women.
I’m not talking about men because I think they have some skewed idiosyncrasy when it comes to producing a boy, but some sort of awareness needs to be created among the women. Our society has to achieve a state when girls are no longer a burden: a “paraya dhan”. People think it’s a waste to have girls when eventually they are going to go away; whereas the boys are not only going to stay in the house forever, they will always bring “barkat” by marrying and rearing children.
Even girls have to play a bigger role in this. Of course there are exceptions, most girls, even when they are earning, don’t take taking care of their parents seriously. They seem very educated and “evolved” — having an attitude and all — but just see how “demure” they become at the time of marriage and solely depend on their parents for all the expenses. I read somewhere when unmarried girls get a job their income is just a pocket money for them. A boy on the other hand immediately becomes “responsible” when he gets a job. How many girls do you see bearing medical expenses of their aged parents?
Upon boys this responsibility is encumbered by default. I’m not saying all sons do that, but that’s the impression. That impression has to be eliminated. For their own survival girls have to show that they can — they should, they must — take care of their parents when the time comes. Only then people won’t take baby girls as burdens. It’s more of a social and attitudinal problems and the solution will come from the girl themselves.
Amrit……..i’ll have to disagree with you on your last part. I’ve seen far too many girls working incredibly hard to take care of their parents. Some of the even have brothers, who are “useless”, and don’t have any interest in taking care of their families. Your thoughts might be anecdotal, but there’s just as much anecdotal evidence to prove otherwise.
Sunil, I agree to what you have said, but along with my thoughts I had written, “Of course there are exceptions,……” I too am aware of girls taking care of their elder parents even when the same parents still want to be taken care of by those “useless” brothers. Here I talked about the general attitude that prevails among the girls.