July 10, 2007
Another "Isolated" Incident of Infanticide.Issues
A few days ago, I wrote a surprisingly controversial post about a baby girl who had been buried alive, in Andhra Pradesh. Stupid me, I thought everyone would find such news abhorrent. But, in a shocking and to some, sickening twist, it would seem that condemning infanticide is wrong because it is more important to engage in the worst sort of cultural relativism.
Disagreeing with a man’s choice to bury his newborn granddaughter alive would be Western and especially Feminist stupidity. Are you perplexed? Wondering what I am going on about? Ah, then enjoy the following amuse bouche of comments from a few lurkers and readers, which that post inspired:
Dont get carried away by sensationalism
Everyone has it bad in India. you’re the only one who choose to single out the plight of women and measure it by YOUR western standards. It MUST be measured by Indian standards, i.e. the plight of Indian men, children, grandpas, grandmas, the whole society. Everyone has it bad in India, not just little girls.
just don’t forget, we live in the West, lets not judge everything by Western standards…If they want to kill their girl babies because girls mean one less hand to till the soil (by hand, of course), that is their buisness.
Poor people will do anything to survive. As long as its their family, and not anyone else’s, no one has a right to interfere.
you, possessing such a craving for attention, would rather start a thread focused on a single baby, a TOTALLY isolated incident, just so you can feel better!
Yes, I felt much better after that depressing thread, especially after I naively attempted to offer a counterpoint to it while proving that feminism can be a desi concept, too. As one of you said via email, after wading through comment-sewage, “I can’t believe there is so much misogyny and so little outrage here.”
::
Isolated. I thought of all those apologist quotes when I read the story which MasterVK was alert enough to submit to our news tab earlier today, about another newborn baby girl, who was also found and rescued:
AHMEDABAD: Her feeble cries help almost drowned in the din of the heavy downpour near Kankaria lake on Monday. Until a fireman found the newborn baby shivering in the rain, abandoned mercilessly without a piece of clothing on her body!
The child’s cries had gone unheard for hours and she had turned pale, lying in the incessant rains, near Kankaria lake. The baby was found by a team of firemen led by Rajesh Goswami who heard the faint cries early in the morning when they embarked on duty to check the oxygen levels in the lake.
Instead of the fish, the firemen found the freshly delivered girl who was dumped from the womb straight into the lake to die. “The girl did not have any clothing on her and had turned completely white. We had become sceptical about her survival,” said Goswami.
The firemen first thought of waiting for the police but were alert enough to realise that any wait may compromise the life of the infant. The fire personnel immediately took the girl to L G Hospital where she was admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit. “The girl was hypothermic as her temperature had dropped due to exposure in the rain. She was also covered in sand,” said Dr Abid Vijapura, assistant professor in the paediatrics department.
Dr Vijapura said that the girl was probably delivered at home as her umbilical cord was cut non-surgically and tied with a thread. “Her condition is stable. We have screened her for infections and will treat her accordingly,” he said.
I’ll close with a different quoted comment from one of you, because I hope someone else declares similar fifteen years from now:
Every time someone (sometimes me) reprimands my 15-year old daughter for her highly “spirited” personality, I can’t help but think that she was born on the streets of Kolkata (one can only guess), spared infanticide, and turned over to an orphanage at the tender age of 5 days.
Just look at her now!
anna on July 10, 2007 06:58 PM in Gender, Issues, News · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
This seems to have reached epidemic proportions and nothing short of an emergency should be declared in India. Adoption laws should be freed up to allow for the quick and efficient adoption for these baby girls by both Indians and foreigners for the swift adoption of these infants. A mass campaign needs to be put in place where parents who wish to abandon their baby girls, or boys for that matter, can just drop them off at some local center and they can easily be adopted out without any red-tape or waiting period whatsoever.
The ordinary screening process that usually takes place for adoptions should be temporarily suspended, in order to give these infants a chance at life.
poverty is no excuse. The sole duty of the parent(s) is to ensure the wellbeing of their offspring--whether you pump water by hand and shovel shit for those above you on the economic ladder or you are in the enviable position of telling others to shovel your own feces. In fact, short of evil djinn occupying this attempted murderer's head, there are no excuses.
And to those who persist in peddling the poverty excuse, I would enquire as to whether you come from these humble circumstances and whether you or someone you know had to make a similar choice and chose to end the life of a newborn girl.
Also, why aren't these men getting vasectomies if they don't want babies? Or the very least they could do is wear condoms (cheap as hell), or pull out before coming. Stupid bastards!
Makes me want to endorse eugenics and Indira Gandhi's attempts at population control.
I'm sorry (or actually, I'm not): THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS. I am tired of hearing people defend this and other evil acts with messages of cultural/ moral relativism. "Who are we to judge them?" and "Well, that's how it is in culture." This is an outrage, and should be treated as such... everything that makes someone's culture look bad is an "isolated incident". Honour killings, female infanticide, FGM... they're all "rare, isolated incidents" and "part of soandso's culture".
Enough is enough. I hope I get nothing but girls from this point out so I can bring them up to thrash people like this.
I think all those comments stem from that weird mix of insecurity, nationalism ,false sense of cultural superiority in most Indians while dealing with social issues. This mixture of feelings sometimes manifests as not having the moral courage to call spade a spade or in other words calling something wrong as wrong. They try to rationalize their wrong doings in some way or other. Is this mentality because of the "karma" concept ?
No more bang lassi's for VK.... he's a bad man and I don't think he's handsome, either.
OMG, no, I am so sorry-- Master VK didn't say any of those things. He submitted the news story about the abandoned baby-- he's not responsible for those awful quotes. Changing post now.
you Go Anna! you're my super girl!
However i do partially agree with what the email said atleast the first few lines, the poor have it really bad in India, the man is tired of saving up for his daughters and grand-daughters trying to get them married, looking out for them etc etc when he can barely make ends meet.
I dont blame him as much as I blame the system. How many of us men getting married (predominantly in an arranged marriage situation) expect our future wife's family to foot the bill for the wedding expenses?
Priya- fixed. ;)
How many times do we have to say that this is not rooted in economics only!? Where one person's head banging left of, another's begins. GAHH.
it is every man woman and child for themself in this cruel, harsh, world......i'm willing to bet--no hyperbole here--that 15-20% of women in india would rather be in the place of that baby girl and no rescuer in sight....india is a nasty [deleted] in every way; this is objective talk from a very proud indian. it is easily the crappiest of the six countries i have visited...i just spent 4 months there and saw everything there is to see...villages, cities, big cities....this place was throroughly raped by foreign devils for hundreds and hundreds of years. they made sure the culture and thought was completely napalmed before they left...what we see is the remnant of that...the worst, most disgusting part of india is that when you walk down the street (north india), you never see any girls; it's only men....they are all dead, killed at birth or aborted (maybe 6 girls to 10 boys), and the rest are locked in their houses.....i read some moron saying in the original thread, 'maybe we don;t want to make our country like the rest of the world.'....this is tantamount to the rapee being forced to marry the rapist...ie the rapist should be blown away and the victim should start fresh.....
Oh look, is it our favorite troll from the last post?
Kannan, there is no excuse, and you have no idea how many daughters this person has or what their socioeconomics are. We are assuming that because it was a home-birth they are not affluent. For all you know, they have only 1 child, and it's the one that was left to die in the water. The problem is that desi society (at large, in aggregate) has no value for women. You DO NOT see the same levels of female infanticide in other poor regions of the world, sans China and SEAsia.
Man, I really hate people today.
Camille, no drink for you!
Ironically, India has kept it's culture(s)pretty well in tact more than many places on the globe. And not just the bad stuff either, there is STILL alot of good going on India.
Despite invasions, migrations, colonization, etc, India's religions are thriving, some of them almost untouched since their inceptions (that could be good, bad or both, depending).
I would'nt blame foriegners entirely for India's plight. Sure, as kids we were influenced by our family, but as adults it's what we make of ourselves that counts. If we are disfunctional adults because of what our family did to us as kids, well, then we get therapy. Similarly, sure India lost (and gained) due to foreigners' presence on her soil, yet what is she going to do with that NOW?
If killing babies is the example of adult India, then grown India definetly needs therapy.
Take a seat on the couch... tell me about your mother...
Many of those same men have wives at home 24/7. It's just another cultural thing, does not neccessarily mean they are gay, although some are.
It's similar to the practice of not taking their wives out on social visits, to hang out or to weddings. It's just part of (some) cultures. Not saying I think it's cool, but it is the way it is.
In the west the wife is like a "girlfriend" whom you hang out with, take on dates, etc. Not so in all regions of the world. The institution of marriage is approached in a much different way, less for companionship, love and romance, and more for familial duty. So then that gets played out in the intimate relations (or lack thereof) between husband and wife.
FGM (female genital mutilation) makes it's way to Britain.
.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_he_me/britain_female_circumcision
Why, why, why, do they have to bring these ideas with them??? I thought the whole point of moving to a new country was to get rid of the old and ring in the new? The West has already fought and won over these types of beliefs for the past 100 years (thanks to hardcore feminists) and now we have to revisit the middle ages? Why, why, why???
Forward ever
Backward never
24-7:
india is a nasty, nasty gutter in every way....this place was throroughly raped by foreign devils for hundreds and hundreds of years. they made sure the culture and thought was completely napalmed before they left...
________________________________________________
I'll say, old egg--they cert. "napalmed" any nuance out of your world view--what, what!
The problem is that desi society (at large, in aggregate) has no value for women.
I understand you qualified the "desi society" with "at large" but I just also want to add that the dominant interpretation in desi society is not to value women...but there are plenty of other desis who interpret their desi culture that does uphold women. Just like the example Anna gave about her father. Just like the amazing men and women all over India who engage in human rights work. I think I mentioned my sis doing research at Sakhi an organization in Kerala, and everytime I read about their work, I'm just really moved...just really moved what amazing working these women do, even though the dominant interpretation of their culture can be viciously misogynist.
So just b/c I've been hearing about Sakhi in Kerala so much lately and read some interviews conducted with the women who work there, I just want to stress that there's much in our desi culture that upholds women...I know this might seem obvious (to most of you) but I just want to clearly say it. And of course it's not f**king Western to respect women, it's South Asian - there are plenty of desis like Anna's father, who interpret and practice their culture in a way that treasures any human life, whether man or women.
I just read through some of that other post's comments and.. wow, just wow. Look, one may attempt to understand the reasons behind such action (economic, cultural, etc.) but there is *no* justification for this, period. We cannot allow ourselves to conflate comprehension with justification. The first step with this, is to recognize the profound, *profound* immorality and injustice inherent in the act. As part of our solution to the perennial existence of this crime, we must, inevitably, look to reasons that could provoke people to do this -- *without* ever, ever forgetting the culpability of these individuals, be they peasants or rich farmers. There may be causes that lead an individual to such actions, but ultimately it is that individual's choice and their inhumane crime.
Once any attempt at justification is removed, and it is universally recognized as both a moral problem and a social crisis, there may be much greater success at reducing infanticide rates than currently. We may blame the system, but we must never forget that these individuals and their actions are absolutely, horrifyingly wrong and immoral.
No, I wouldn't think so. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so, if these people understand the karma concept correctly, they know that they will have to suffer a similar or worse fate in the future, as a reaction to what they do to baby girls. Rather, they must be in denial of the karma concept, if anything.
If you read or listen to some of the folklore that many desis grow up around, it can at times be anti-woman and at times be pro-woman, and then of course anything can be interpreted in any way. Generally, as it stands now, I would say the overall cultural ethos is not entirely in favor of women's rights to the extent that some of those rights might embolden women to live completely independently. Of course if your daughter can bring home a big pay check, you're not going to refuse it, but it's the other stuff that that paycheck might embolden her to do -- move out, get her own place, get a boyfriend, that you might be afraid of.There is also a bond between desi moms and sons that I have not seen the equivalent of anywhere else, nor the equivalent of in a desi dad and daughter relationship. Not saying it's not there, just saying I didn't see it and it might be harder to come by.
It is also corraborated in literature and folklore.
God, the Internet really brings out the freaks. So on the one hand, we have Indians in India practicing infanticide. Horrible, terrible. It makes me ill.
And now we have you, on the other hand, ready to dismiss the whole country based on your extensive four months in the country. Wow, you must really be an expert on all things Indian, as is clearly evidenced by your neutral and unbiased commentary.
Your style sounds familiar... did your PR firm have the Boxer Rebellion account by any chance?
To be fair Salil, it does look weird to see so many guys holding hands outside of San Francisco. Especially in a country that is not yet out of the closet with it's homosexuality. One wonders why two guys who are not gay would want to show so much physical affection to one another, if you come from a place where such is not seen, or where it is only seen between gay men. Now maybe those persons just need to get more comfortable with the idea of same sex POD - public displays of affection. But in a country which claims to be so anti POD, one wonders why it is so comfortable with this. It gets one wondering about the state of affairs between the men and women in that country, and, the state of affairs between men and men.
Although we know that cultural relativity must often be applied when we globe-trot, still, there is a difference between theory and reality, and the reality is, some things will appear just downright strange coming from one country to another, or one culture to another.
To be fair you don't really see English educated metro desis in India showing all that much same sex affection as you do amongst the less educated small town and village guys. One might wonder why.
this is sad! unfortunately, this does not only happen in india, it happens all over the world!! there have been many cases of abandoned babies right here in the usofa. google and see how many you come up with..
Does anyone know if the "ask no questions" newborn dropoff points at police stations in Tamil Nadu have had a positive effect? Has this been tried in A.P. ?
Could you also look at the rest of 24/7's comments and see if you think they are appropriate? Because I'm not so sure.
Yes and it's sick.
There are also drop off stations for unwanted babies in USA.
Am I wrong in assuming that most of those cases are ones of either drugged up/alcoholic or downright clinically insane, depressed (bi-polar, etc) parents?
Does the Indian demographic of baby killers show the same? I assumed that they were relatively sane persons, not influenced by drugs or drink, who just wanted to get rid of their babies because they were girls. Am I wrong?
Not the same "ak", fyi.
Solution, are you PG in yet another disguise? I think this thread is being overtaken by some weird virus. I am disengaging.
Thanks, intern. It was very clear it was not the same ak, I was going to point out that the style did not jive myself. I think the trolls have decided that this is how they want to destroy these threads now.
AK, googling doesn't do much besides bring up isolated cases of American teenage girls who freakout and do something stupid. While you might point out that abandonment with death as an intended consequence is rare in India, many of us see this,along with the indisputable female deficit, as a sign of a larger issue.
Alerting folks of yet another of those horrible "girl" killings that I just saw on the news tab
Solution:
We can delve into the oddity of heterosexual men who hold hands while walking some other time. Really. I'm just not interested. Please go stand next to someone else. You're making me uncomfortable.
Solution (i.e. Pardesi Gori) welcome back. It's hard to get a bead on the mental state of desis because we are all in a state of prolonged infantile ideation and are generally inscrutable, even to old India hands/ashram denizens, and what not. What I can tell you is that in AP & TN farmers will often off themselves and their whole families if they fall in debt after a bad harvest etc. It could be that they view death preferable to the indignities of bonded labor. Or maybe they feel, as many Western enthusiasts of karma/transmigration often do, that this is all a great adventure and at the next roll of the dice they have a 1/10 chance of being born in the US or EU. My theory is that this particular evil is caused by a combination of hopelessness and gender inequity
the crux of the problem--one that is prominent on sepiamutiny too--, as with 90% of desi problems, is severe sexual repression (courtesy of middle eastern and white/christian invaders), that apart from the obvious, manifests itself in a severe pedantic strain..........there was an error in my second post that made it confusing: the girl i was talking about WAS the university professor--and she didn't find it at all appalling that baby girls get tossed away as litter, and its affects on society as a whole.......to the feeble minded who were sensitive to my previous comments, remember, in india analytical reasoning means nothing. it has no place, no value.....only backwards hearsay and heresy matter.....lying is the national sport. need i say more?
...while on the Internet, blatant bigoted generalizing, and anecdotal hearsay hold sway, apparently.
Go away.
Salil, dealing with the insane is like playing with zombies. One bite, and you'll become one of them before you even know it.
My guess is some of these are actually the "pro-India" lot, and they are going to create strawman comments so they can bravely demonstrate the blatant den of India bashing hypocrisy that is SM.
"Also, why aren't these men getting vasectomies if they don't want babies? Or the very least they could do is wear condoms (cheap as hell), or pull out before coming. Stupid bastards!
Makes me want to endorse eugenics and Indira Gandhi's attempts at population control."
I am not saying there is any excuse for killing anyone, but I also have to argue that you have to look at the social context to understand the situation.
1.) It has been shown through studies worldwide that when education and literacy rates rise in a country, the treatment of women improve. If we look at the pitiful literacy rate, especially in North India, one of the first solutions I would suggest is working on the education system, and getting education to everyone, especially woman and girls. And including sex ed.
2.) You do have to look at the cultural context to some degree. Other societies that are patrilocal (when sons marry their new wife moves in with their family) and patrilineal, also often have similar interests. Even though China has extreme population control measures, there are still high rates of female infanticide, abortion of female fetuses (India and China are the only two countries I know that had to make it illegal for doctors to tell mothers-to-be the sex of their child during ultrasound), and abandoning of baby girls. The difference might be that China seems to have implemented more safe drop offs for mothers to abandon their baby daughters, and have creating a huge and popular adoption scheme of baby girls to countries like the US.
And joint families are often seen as the best way for a family to live, -grandparents, sons, their wives and kids all in one house. This is often considered the traditional way, and mom and dad hope their son(s) will take care of them in old age. But I have also read that joint families may have actually been less normal in the past, and are increasing at present, a sort of idealization of the past, making more joint families than the actual past ever had.
Though there are far fewer matrilocal and matrilineal societies, you'll see just the opposite, everyone wants girls and no one wants to have too many (or any) sons.
Especially when you factor dowry/bride price etc into these things, and you have an even bigger problem. When one family is expected to furnish some large expenses to the bride/groom's family, that seems to make the problem even greater.
So, going back to India... issues like this are complex- there is education, there is dowry, patrilineal and patrilocal ideals... etc etc... then there is an issue of overpopulation in general. And of course, as this person I quoted so (crassly) mentions, there is also the old-wound of the forced sterilization project of Indira-dahling.
So, my point is, it's not so simple as "sexist bastards!" or "where a damn condom, will ya?" and I think it will also take some actual planning and follow through to deal with the problem and change the status of daughters.
This acronym is a bit off, Solution. I'm fairly certain that it would be PDoA, not POD, which would stand for "Public Of Displays" and nary an affection in sight.
You could be confusing PDA with POD. I know, I know, all those three-letter acronyms are so confyoosing. But here's a tip, which you can print out and fold up and keep in your wallet: PODs are either prefixed with "i," suffixed with "cast," or deafening you with "BOOM here comes the BOOM ready or not," etc.
err, "wear a damn condom!" i meant. not tired. not at all. I swear.
Salil, maybe she was talking about this?
Such cases make me think what can cause normal people to do such things.
I thought we were evolutionarily wired to love and protect children (which is why we like kittens and plush toys, they remind us of children)
Should sex-identification be not only not banned, but made mandatory, so that people abort right at conception instead of burying and drowning children?
Can you give some examples?
Solution:
Salil, I was just pointing out that same sex public affection is not neccessarily a sign of homosexuality in all cases and cultures, and why some people find it odd.
I Would never be the first to initiate hand-holding, don't worry.
Manipuri,
all sorts of info here. The Wikipedia article mentions the Minangkabau in West Sumatra, and if I recall my cultural anthropology classes from college, the Iroquois had a matrilineal society. There are matrilineal "tendencies" in most every society, including what would broadly be called American mainstream society.
Of all the issues confronting India this is the type you regularly chose to highlight. Consistently... Must you always? There was another post on this issue. Within a week another. Reading accounts like this will provide an excuse for people who claim that child infanticide in India has reached epidemic proportions and like it is a strictly social evil without any economic influence. And that the national sport in India is lying. Blogs like this are almost a free India bashing invitation, and unfortunately they are maintained by people of 'supposedly' Indian heritage who do not feel the necessity to provide any balancing point of view, no matter how feeble.
Manipuri, unfortunately, since I study north indian cultures, I know a lot more about that than matrilineal societies, but I know there are some in South India (though I don't know how they stand in the modern times) and also there are cultural groups in Vietnam like the Mnog (I think that is how it is spelled?) But, in general there are far more patrilocal/-lineal societes in the world, that matrilocal, and many of the more matri- style cultures I have heard about tend to be smaller cultural/ethnic groups rather than large nation state types. I hope that helps. I wish I had some sources to quote for you, I could find some academic journal articles, I'm sure, if I had a little time.
African Americans tend to be matrilineal and matrilocal.
In fact, it's not uncommon for a young couple just starting out to shack up with the girl's parents until they can afford a place of their own.
additionally, I want to know why talking about various issues that have to do with India is always "India bashing". If we read an article about racism in the US, I don't often hear people suddenly yelling out "STOP BASHING THE US, it's not always about race, its more balanced, why do we have to focus on the bad?"
When people discuss issues that pertain to a certain cultural group/country etc that doesn't mean they hate that culture/place. Often it actually means the opposite. They feel a connection and passion about it, and only want to discuss the "bad" points in a way to find solutions. We don't want to live in a place where everyone forces a smile, and only is allowed to speak positive words, and sweeps all the issues under the rug. What would we get done. In any place, the first step towards changing issues is acknowledging the issues, discussing them, and trying to understand where the issues come from and why they persist.
If I was to talk about the US, or Brazil, or India, or any culture/nation, I would examine issues in the same way. Just because you focus on and discuss certain issues doesn't mean that is all you see. It just means that this is something you want to think about, debate, and discuss. Something you may find as important to you.
I haven't read all of the comments in this thread - but I'm a little uncomfortable with the wholesale dismissal of class as a relevant variable, which I particularly noticed in the related thread. Class never explains anything completely - even when people recognize it to be the main variable - but it is usually always a part of the problem some of the time. And so even just from such a theoretical perspective, completely ruling out class as part of the explanation can appear awfully arrogant and smug.
One of the reasons class gets completely dismissed in discussions originating in the US, is of course, the general discomfort with discussing it in any US context. The other is simply that conceiving the full implications of class as it plays out in India is quite difficult, if not altogether impossible, for many people who grew up over here. Therefore, such a wholesale dismissal will rankle even more to those who already have issues and resentments, to put it crudely, along the 'ABD'-'DBD' fault-line.
Even in the US, the number of babies abandoned in dumpsters is striking. And it also happens in South Africa, Canada, the UK, and other countries on a different development locus than the one India finds itself in. But in the US, does it happen more often in Oakland than in Beverly Hills? You bet.
But is class then a complete explanation, by itself? No - for example, rural Mississippi, where people might be poorer in absolute terms, and also share their skin pigmentation, might compare well with Oakland in this respect. But is class at least a possible variable? In some complicated way, I would say yes.
So when we look at India, let us also be similarly nuanced, and allow that class can sometimes, in some places and conditions, be part of, or most of the explanation, or at least is a contributing factor to, the sex-selective infanticides we hear about.
And on the Punjab sex-selective abortions - the per-capita income alone would be too crude an index - a breakdown of attempted female foeticide by income quintile, if not decile, would, I think be necessary. Before anyone does that difficult/impossible study, it might be more realistic to hope that someone breaks down the sex ratio by economic class and income decile if possible - even more important since the Indian government has set itself a goal of improving the sex ratio countrywide.
Growing up in India, and among my own friends and extended family, I never noticed any particular gender deficit - neither in high school, nor in college nor in professional school in India. However, it was the first thing I noticed when I came to graduate school here!
I lived in that place for a long time!
I don't think anyone's dismissing class as a variable in this discussion, chachaji. Clearly, there are many factors at work here.
I think the issue with regard to this thread is what happened in comment #46: immediate dismissal of this as "India bashing." That it happens in Mississippi, or Saudi Arabia, or in the backlots at Disney Studios isn't really the point, is it? It happens in India, and it's kind of indicative of a bigger picture problem with female rights and perception. Without seeking to demonize any one group, I do think that this post is relevant in certain ways to what might be called popular female memes. It's been explored ad nauseum by better writers than I, and I'm so tired.
So off to bed with me. The trolls can have this thread. Rahul, you're right.
Chachaji makes some good points.
Just because Punjab is one of the wealthier states, that does not mean everyone there is wealthy, and certainly not wealthy according to Western standards. It may be the more financially challenged amongst Punjabis and Haryanis who are doing these things. USA is seen as a wealthy nation in general, yet there are many poor people living here. In the same way, Punjab may be considered relatively wealthy by India's standards, but there may still be alot of poor people living there.
A statewise breakdown of sex ratios will show that Kerala has a positive female:male ratio. 1058:1000 A good % of variation may be due to the gulf emigration but a good part of it is also due to lesser misogyny in Kerala. Rest of India has 933:1000. A statistically significant difference.
Life sucks in India but if you are a woman it sucks by a factor of 2 or even worse.
Very few Indian families adopt abandoned children (be it a boy or girl) even if they can afford it. Maybe that will change with increasing affluence.
I daresay greater good would come about when the NRI contingent invests in human capital as compared to exclusively focusing on steel and concrete.
Quite sickening! hopefully the baby girl will get adopted in a nice home.
Also, I agree with Rahul that comments in this thread have just gone totally weird.
Discuss away the evils of India with all your love. But provide a balance to the discussion, which unfortunately seem to be missing in the posts. Its mostly a dismissive account, and vindictive in nature. Of course a counter post will be provided on the lines of 'my dad is the best'.
I have nothing against discussions of this sort. Infanticide is a real issue in India, although I would like to see how much is prevalent today as opposed to say a two decades back. Also providing gender bias as the sole cause of some of these problems are misleading to say the least. Not again to say that gender bias doesn't exist in India.
The point is that these posts are not written with the sole objective of condemning a specific act that everybody should deservedly find abhorrent. There is always a cultural angle to it. Which in the absence of a more detailed analysis of that trend will inevitably lead to some form of India bashing. The more abhorrent the specific incident, the more damning it is against India and us Indians. I beg for more consideration, don't forget its our country we are talking about in an environment frequented also by people with little understanding of the dynamics within India.
(More OT fun)
Thanks for the post, Anna.
I wish there was some way to hear from the women (and men) who commit infanticide and abandon their baby girls. I know it's very difficult and sensitive information, but I just wish there was some way we could get a glimpse into what these women who gave birth to these girls were thinking...maybe it'll confirm that it was simply a case of, "She was a girl," or maybe there's something more? Point being, those are voices I would love to hear.
Ignoring the homophobic undertones of that sentence for now, I don't think there is anything glaringly "telling" about same-sex platonic affection in India. Have you ever been to Italy? Lots of platonic male/male affection there. Beyond the platonic affection, boys in nearly all countries often have experimental same-sex encounters in their adolescent and teen years; it's pretty normal. I actually quite like that fact about Indian society...two guys can show affection for each other without being considered "gross fags" like they are in America and other parts of the world. Ever seen the really frigid, robotic interactions between many straight guys in the US (except when they are drunk)? It's caveman-like.
And what about the softcore feminists? Do they not get any respect?
All joking aside, it really depends on how you look at it. To me, the West's obsession with breasts and breast implants is the West's version of FGM. Don't even get me started on anorexia, bulimia, size obsession, unequal pay, rape, domestic violence, etc.
Look. My whole reasoning in bringing all this up is not to fall into binary arguments which are seemingly the trend du jour on this board. God, it's so exasperating - it's either you're a "hardcore feminist" or you're a "jingoistic, image-obsessed Indian" when it comes to this debate. But I appreciate the more nuanced approaches of people like Anna and Linzi (and others). I wish to see more of that.
My point in bringing up Western examples of misogyny is not to negate Indian examples of misogyny; it's to highlight the fact that patriarchy and woman-hating is a global problem. India kills its girls; America kills other countries' girls. I am comfortable saying these two things at the same time: (a) girl killing is an endemic problem in India and the lack of outrage and attention is beyond exasperating, and (b) that doesn't make the West morally superior.
I mean, Linzi, you said:
Actually, I DO hear that sentiment almost on a daily basis in the US. It's usually expressed as, "Don't be so PC" or "It was just comedy" or "Go back to where you came from if you don't like it here." I mean, from 9/11 onward towards the start of the Iraq war, many forms of everyday dissent were NOT appreciated. Americans have their own skeletons they need to deal with.
Just as we really don't hear much about India's infanticide problem, the American media doesn't really report much on the real costs of the war in Iraq...you almost have to watch Al-Jazeera to see how much horror this country has inflicted on others.
I just wish things weren't always so damn either/or.
Aanchal, I ask this question in all sincerity: Does America kill other countries' girls, or other countries' people? I am not saying one is better than the other, but are the Iraqi casualties slanted far more towards women than men? It is hard to get accurate information about Iraqi casualties in the first place, so I don't know what to make of any numbers I see.
In America, unfortunately, the "you're with us or against us" mentality starts from the very top.
Very articulate response, btw. Hopefully, your valiant attempt at restoring sanity to the thread will work.
Aanchal, you're making some good points, and making them well. Thank you, and I hope you will continue to contribute your wisdom and eloquence here.
The problem is that there will never be any real statistics that could comprehensively account for the extent of female infanticide especially in India. So one has to rely on derived figures, and sampling evidence, whose nuetrality will always be doubted. Many figures floating around HRC, Gendercide and organizations on the forefront of this battle, are more than a century old, and most are examples of a the nature of a particular cluster of villages which displays a severe gender inbalance.
Also there is a tendency to quote historical examples of wide spread practises and assuming that the practises are still followed widely inspite of the obvious geopolitical, cultural and legal changes that have occured since. For example child marriage coupled with dowry were considered to be one of major reasons for parents killing off their daughters, and with both practises being outlawed, there is no reason why killing of daughters due to this reason should not be significantly
reduced.
Then again, is this only a cultural phenomenon or is it economical? I agree with chachaji that there is a definite class correlation which cannot be ignored. Neither can culture be ignored, but there are cultural pockets in India where some of these practises (dowry, female infanticide etc) are non existent.
So the end result of an partial analysis is an uncritical acceptance of the extent of this practise put forth by some of these organizations in international forums. Any questioning is taboo, because this is such an emotional issue.
I would like to think that things are improving in India, and it is not an epidemic proportioned problem across India it once was, if it ever was. That is not to say that we should all call for a round of drinks and a pat on the back. There is a lot of work still to be done, implementation of laws against some of these evil practices is still lax, these laws have hardly made the dent they were supposed to. Education I would assume did most of trick.
spidy, it is not just foreign/international/agenda driven organizations. There have been statistics commissioned by the government as late as 1998, as well as a very thoughtful comparative essay by Amartya Sen in 1990 (which also addresses the culture/economy question), both of which establish the lopsided male-female ratio in India. The references are in the other thread. Amartya Sen repeatedly makes the (obvious, but apparently not so :-) point that this question must be discussed so we can understand the reasons behind it, and not resort to exactly the half-hearted rationalizations that you rightly complain about.
I too would think, and hope, that things are improving in India, and I agree that is one aspect that we (at least, I) don't seem to have adequate information on.
Aanchal,
if you think you don't hear much about female infanticide because the media choses to be quiet about it, you need to see some Indian news channels and experience a rude shock. Indian media believes in more sensationalism than Anna:) But of course these things when and where they happen are kept under wraps.
Two Comments:
1. to address one of hte main issues people keep bringing up:
to the extent that one believes discrimination is largely a economic phenomenon, improved economic opportunities might be thought
to lead to lower discrimination but there is little evidence that this is true. in fact, if south korea et al are anything to go by and
we use sex 0ratios as our measure of discrimination, rising incomes could well lead to more discriminatino (witness gujarat or punjab
for instace). there is some evidence that suggests though that discrimination is less in areas where women are more likely to work outside the home (although causality is clearly hard to establish).
i guess one big unanswered question is how public policy/ civil society can affect any of this.
2. I think that it is interesting to examine regional and time variation
in the incidence of different types of gender discrimination within India; if nothingn else, it could provide pointers
towards what contexts are important.
one important stylized fact, based on nationally representative data, are the better outcomes for girls in South India
(south of the vindhyas basically although there are clearer demarcations around) and by outcomes I mean immunization
rates and literacy (years of education). girls in TN, AP, Karnataka (not just Kerala) are on _average_ more likely to
be immunized and complete more years of schooling relative to girls in UP, punjab, bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, WB
(this seems to be more true for 'forward castes' than for SC/ST designated households btw). this holds true even after you
compare just families with (roughly) the same amount of per capita income.
i forgot to mention of course, that sex-ratios (at birth) in the 'northern' states I mentioned are all more skewed towards
boys than for the southern states I mentioned.
spidy: here's a research idea that should make an interesting paper. by a supreme court judgements states are legally required to submit a list (district or perhaps block) of all ultrasound centers. of course there will be issues with accuracy but trends will be subject to fewer criticisms. one can then just look at the corresponding block (or district) sex ratios and measure the correlation (of course one could do fancier things, but this by itself should be a pretty clear indicator)
to answer chachaji's request for decile breakdowns: if we look at sex-rations and use the nfhs surveys and use asset-indices (since nfhs doesn't collect income information) then punjab has a lower sex-ration _at all deciles_ relative to (say) tamil nadu. this is true even if you break it further by caste (although some differences are now less precisely estimated because of small sample size issues). i think its safe to say that as far as punjab and sex-ratios are concerned the difference is there across the _entire_ distribution of income.
Rahul, every organization has an agenda, including the government of India;) These organizations may all be well meaning, but somehow the numbers put across mostly put across a very telling indictment against india, although my limited exposure show that sort of evil to have a limited practise today.
I haven't read A.S's paper yet so i cannot comment, but hopefully he will refrain from classifying all Indians as chauvinistic sexist pigs.
Thank you, yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about. I would still ask if the deviation of the actual sex ratio from the 'natural ratio' is skewed by income decile or whether it is constant, relative to the 'natural' ratio, across all income deciles. If the latter, a cultural, not an economic explanation would be indicated; but if the former, it would be a mix of both, how much depending on what the skew was.
There have been statistics commissioned by the government as late as 1998
Yes.
However,
Do you know how the statistics was collected and the assumptions. The ratio are computed through Government of India Census looking at the ratio of boys and girls at the age 5. It does show abnormal disparity in sex ratio, however the disparity number is a combination of four factors: a) female infanticide, b) girls are neglected, and c) a girl child inherently more vulnerable to ravages of poverty, and d) even medical causes prevalent in tropical country like Hepatitis B, etc being manifested at the age 5. Factors a) and b) can be fixed though activism, slogans, etc. but c) and d) are deep rooted malaise. Nobody really knows the real breakup.
One can argue, that sampling from South Delhi and parts of Punjab should have factor c) minimal, as they are relatively affluent parts of India. A place like Kerala that almost have normal sex ratio at the age of five would show d) cannot be the major cause in entire India. However, all this is indirect inferences. There is some small sampling in government hospitals at the time of birth. 99% of births in India are never recorded, and most (majority) of abortion are in the back alleys with no paper trail and official record. Therefore, there is no hard data in India, as one can get from, as one has in US, western Europe. Data collection in India is in dark ages, so all these 11 million, 20 million numbers are more than often bogus (not always), and even distracting.
Sure, female infanticide is a real serious problem in India. However, I seriously doubt that the most vocal, shrill commenters @ SM from last few days on this topic even know the basic assumptions in data, and the implications. That is why I like chachaji's mature response on this topic.
Thanks, Rahul and Chachaji. Rahul, I don't know if there are more female Iraqi casualties, but you're right - wartime killing obviously targets men as well. I was just making a broad comparison to make a point in a moment of rhetorical clusterfuckery. I really don't want to fall into the rhetoric of advocating solely for "innocent women and children," as if the men are all guilty of something.
Spidy, for me the positing of economics vs. culture in regards to girl killing is very problematic because, to put it simply, it's placing the impetus for change on state-centered resources and infrastructure instead of individuals in India. Despite the compelling evidence that girl killing occurs across class lines, I'm willing to say that the problem may be a combination of culture, economics and other factors. I am now, however, wiling to place the onus of the problem on economics because it is an inefficient way to tackle this problem. Poverty allievement places much of the burden on government resources and directives, and even then you are not guaranteed a decrease in the number of girl killings. A not-so-elegant example would be education in the US. Many folks rightfully argue that the fundamental problem is the lack of elementary/middle/high school funding and infrastructure; this produces inequalities in access to resources. A private college, however, might take the position that instead of waiting around for the complete overhaul of these public schools, let's institute some sort of affirmative action program from those applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. Do you see what I'm getting at?
But the great thing about sociological problems is that they can be addressed outside the realm of the state. Attitudes embracing male preference are passed along from generation to generation, within families and communities, at small gatherings and over-the-top weddings. They exist in acidic quips of the tongue, annoying questions, exasperated reactions, bahu-saas telenovelas. You can start a cultural shift without a massive amount of capital. Government support sure does help get things moving, but the first few steps don't require the same amount of invesment that poverty relief does. Of course, this doesn't mean that poverty relief and economic strife should be put to the backburner; movements can exist side by side. But I am not relying on any state to be the frontrunner in advocating for the humane treatment of girls and women; that must begin with individuals. And that is what I mean by culture.
project idea: Are you trying to determine the correlation of the deviation in the sex ratio from the natural one based on the number of ultra sound centers in the district?
Sounds like a good idea, but you would have to somehow factor in the income level of the district for the study to have any real meaning.
Kush, can you elaborate what you mean by (c)? As for (d), my understanding is that several studies have shown that all things being equal (food, medical care etc.), girls are more resistant to disease, both pre-birth and soon after birth.
Personally, I look at female infanticide as one of the manifestations (at the more horrific end) of the general specter of female deprivation and discrimination against women. It seems to me that the fundamental thing that is going to change it is an increase in the perceived "value" of women. One of the things that could probably help the most in this regard is improved opportunities for gainful employment outside the home, where there is a clear monetary value attached to work done by women.
I meant in a grinding poverty situation, the cards are decked against a girl child, for example iron deficiency.
Also, there is a Harvard study that Hepatitis B plays havoc with sex ratio.
Again, I think nobody really knows that real contribution, and possibly HBV is just a small factor (and the original Harvard study was more a hype but still even the critics cede its contribution). I do believe that c) and d) causes can only account for some disparity, and others are from causes a) and b) in India.
My point was: shouldn't people be aware of the full complexity of the situation.
Kush, I'm aware, especially considering my parents don't have birth certificates and have made-up birth dates :)
Rahul, you bring up an interesting point...I wonder about the value attached to boys and girls in different parts of India. While the economic value of women certainly helps things progress, I also wonder how much value is placed in the essential nature of "boyishness" (for lack of a better word!). As in, how much value is placed on a boy based on the seemingly inherent qualities they possess. Dunno. I once heard a mother say that she prefers boys because they are "easier to love." I was like, those rugrats pee in your face when you're changing their diaper, what's to love about that?! (I kid.)
Kush, I am aware of Oster's work, and agree that it was tantalizing, but also extremely well marketed, as you point out. I didn't think that you were referring to that because you said something about Hep-B at age 5, whereas Oster's analysis was that Hep-B actually tilted the sex ratios at birth. In any case, it is an additional wrench in the works, although even Oster says that it explains at most half the observed disparity.
I also fully agree with you that shrillness alone does not advance the discussion.
I have no idea what to make of that. All I can say is that I am pretty sure it wasn't my mom, at least, not after she had me :)
That wonderful image reminds me of the description in the Namesake (novel) of Gogol throwing up into Ashima's mouth once when he was a baby, and she held him up in the air. But that's something girls can do too. Hurray for equal opportunity!
because you said something about Hep-B at age 5
Rahul,
I meant that sex imbalance caused by Hep-5 (big or small), is first recorded at the age 5 by the data collection agency (GOI census). That is what I meant.
umm... its worse if you happen to be a girl and are seriously unwell...i have seen it in good middle class families. This article was in the TOI.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Father_throws_girl_into_river/articleshow/2192706.cms
I meant Hep-B instead Hep-5
sk, that is a pretty awful story, but there is nothing in that specific article that says or immediately makes me think it was because it was a girl. I am not saying that means that wasn't the cause, but everybody can interpret that story as they desire, and things could soon devolve into a shouting match as Kush points out. Soon, we will be discussing free drinks and outwitted men! While anecdotes do help make problems immediate and involve people emotionally, it is hard to draw conclusions about a billion strong country based on anecdotes.
Kush, thanks for the clarification on Hep-B and census.
Rahul,
You must remember India has absolutely no baseline sex ratio (worth any statistical significance) of sex ratio at birth.
Except, tiny data sets from Government hospitals which has no statistical significance.
The baseline for the data is age 5 data, you are looking at the composite effect at that time.
Kush - fair point. While female infanticide draws headlines and strong emotions, my bigger point is what I describe in #73, and all these cumulative effects show up. I haven't been very exercised by the contribution of female infanticide directly and specifically to the skew, and you raise valid questions about the data available to answer that question.
24/7:
"the crux of the problem--one that is prominent on sepiamutiny too--, as with 90% of desi problems, is severe sexual repression (courtesy of middle eastern and white/christian invaders)"
Do you really think that sexual repression is the core problem in South Asia (and this via "invaders" from the Middle East and Europe)? You may have had a valid point in your arguments before that comment (or perhaps not) but I dismissed everything you said after it. If you stop beating the drum of Indian nationalism for a few minutes you'd recognize that "native" Indian cultures had gender biases, many of the Muslim (yeah, I can see past your code words) invaders were not Middle Eastern, and that Middle Easterners have a pretty colorful history with sexuality.
a. the oster paper is almost certainly wrong in that hep1b prevalence can only explain a very small fraction of hte
observed sex-ration imbalance. for the most conclusive argument against, read http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~mjlin/
and also oster's (in my opinion weak) response on her web-page at uofc.
b. the project idea issue: controlling for some measure of economic development blockwise shoudl be possible using the census
which has some proxies. however, just doing a before-after comparison and comparing high and low ultra-sound blocks will go
a fair way towards addressing some of your criticisms.
c. while sex-ratios at birth are not available in ways comparable to the US, the nfhs (national fertility health survey) has
an extremely detailed birth history for all female respondents and is a nationally representative sample so inferring sex-ratios
in the cross-section even at (say) age 1 or so is possible. the data isn't perfect, but it goes a large way towards answering
the quesstions here.
d. regarding kush's
"female infanticide, b) girls are neglected, and c) a girl child inherently more vulnerable to ravages of poverty, and d) even medical causes prevalent in tropical country like Hepatitis B, etc being manifested at the age 5."
none of these can explain the precipitous _decline_ in the sex-ratio from 1991 census to 2001 census unless you _also_ argue that at least
one of these factors also grew more pronounced during this period. Prima facie, it is not obvious that (b) or (c) or (d) changed that drastically during the nineties (although this is not entirely clear, see http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/511195) while
it is well documented that there was a huge explosion in ultrasound clinics during the nineties (witness the supreme court directive on this
as a result of pils). so, while all these factors lead to a skewed ratio, it is hard for me to buy that the change in the skewness is caused in large part by the last three.
forgot to add: what seems to get missed here is the steep decline in these rations from 91 to 01 census. of all the reasons one can think of why there is gender discrimination or why sex-ratios in india are skewed which ones were exacerbated in the 90s?
At some level I can understand why some people in India hope for a boy instead of a girl. You have to give huge amounts of dowry when your daughter gets married and once she gets married she usually loses any ability to help her parents financially. There is no social net in India and a lot of old people have to completely rely upon their children to take care of them. On the other hand if you have a boy, you actually get the dowry when the boy gets married and the boy can take care of you when you are old. Also you can live in the boy's house when you are old which is way more common and acceptable than living in your married daughter's house when you are old.
I find it funny how the word isolated is in quotes when discussing topics like infanticide and female rights in South Asia, but the same word is not when the topic is terrorism and the religion of "peace" :/
I have been reading this discussion with great interest as I run an organization to help women and children in Asia. Female infanticide doesn't even begin to address the issues involved. Lack of education and opportunity, early marriage, marital rape, lack of education for girls compared to boys even in wealthy families, lack of opprtunity to grow as people for the most edcuated and talented women, after they are married, are only some of the intital issues.
While all goodwill seems to be directed towards the baby girl, the goodwill seems shallow unless backed by demonstration of understanding of what it takes to actually raise a girl in India, or for that matter in any deveoping or traditional society.
These families live on under a dollar a day.How many of you would give up your latte to pay for one girl's education, or marriage expenses? How many would give up a drink at the bar, to pay for five? I am not asking you do, but to not understand the economic horror of this situation, combined with the misogyny, is a little bit of naive outrage. The economic horror combined with misogyny, is what creates this ugliness. To be highly outraged is defnitely the right moral response. To be able to see the whole picture and look for solutions would be the right intellectual response. There are ways in each one of us actually contribute to this ugliness, or maybe condone it in our own situations.
The misogyny and economic deprivation are entertwined. The reason many hate women is they see them as consumers, and not as economic producers. How many women are able to not only pay for themselves, as well as pay for children that they may have even after being given the best opprtunitites? This question cannot be posed to women who dont have opportunities, but to the kind of women on sepiamutiny who have the best of education, opportunity, and consciousness.
The issue is economic to begin with. There are many layers of factors that distort it even further.
People do kill and commite morally heinous crimes for money. It is heinous, but that is what most war and interntational crime is all about.
All babies killed for fear of not being able to support them fall into this realuity, the world over, and is not unique to India, girls etc. The reason the male child is not kileld is he is seen as a harbinger of hope as a future wage earner, and the girl is not. I work with a friend who has been working with child trafficking for over 15 years and in that world, noone kills a girl child. She is not seen as a consumer but possibly as a future wage earner. All pregnant women killed for fear of economic burden of the child or a possible divorce fall into this category.
To make a girl safe is to bring her into the world only if the women herself can support the baby, not to place the burden on an unwilling male. I dont mean to make a provocative statement, but this is a choice available only to the most empowered women. Only they can conduct themselves with the responsibility and dignity that can make them examples for poorer women to follow. Poor women don't often have the choice of reproduction. However, if they do have children, they fight to support them for the most part even in poverty. I am learning this through my travels, work. and talks with many NGOs in developing countries. The Grameen bank model is just one example.
Just some thoughts. The outrage expressed is from the heart. That is a good start. But only when its tempered with reason and compassion, can any good action result. This can only be eraadicated through genuine good action.
This post is a counterpoint to the "isolated"-meme which kept infecting the original post on this issue. Several people on the first thread, who are quoted in the post above, kept insisting that the other attempt at infanticide was an isolated incident-- this post asks that they reconsider what "isolated" means.
Since this is a direct reaction to that first post, there have been two posts about infanticide in a matter of days, not that there is some quota which the bloggers must adhere to, versus following their interests. This post was a direct rebuttal to the ignorance spewed in the comment thread to the first post. This could be seen as an attempt at a correction of the disturbing mood here. Not in India or America or anywhere else. Here. On this blog. The only people quoted in this post were commenters from this blog.
This is not about India-bashing, sensationalism and of course, more disparaging remarks towards the author and the shrill, naive people who recognize what she was trying to accomplish, which was dialogue. No one will give up a latte to satisfy the demands of those who tut-tut at the merely outraged if they don't recognize a problem in the first place. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We need to address what happened here before any of you expect any of us to fix the world.
Also, the fact that "shrill" is being tossed about so generously is further proof that consciousness-raising about feminism needs to occur here. "Shrill", eh? How dare the author have such a female response to this isolated incident which can be explained away by hepatitis, economics and the nuanced approach which is conveniently almost impossible for the actual audience of this blog to have, since they are not from India. Poor ABCDs and their inability to have an intellectual response. Let's agree to throw our hands in the air, since talking about it isn't good enough and go get lattes. Or drinks. Preferably several.
Enough.
http://www.nj.com/news/expresstimes/nj/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1184040910175750.xml&coll=2
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21908770-5007146,00.html
http://media.www.theranger.org/media/storage/paper1010/news/2007/07/02/YouSa/Abandoned.Baby.Givennew.Beginning.Hope-2920283.shtml
http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news/localnews/display.var.1517010.0.baby_murdered_with_blunt_object.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6193964.stm
chachaji, I have been one of the most strident disavowers of the "class argument." This is not because I believe there is no class dimension (please see prev. post), but because as we have seen in Punjab and elsewhere, the infanticide in India is substantially skewed by gender ACROSS classes. There are many countries where people either kill their newborns or are unable to provide for them because of their poverty. That said, with the exception of China and SEAsia, NONE of these other LDCs have a gender imbalance that even begins to compare to India. People can continue to argue economics and class until the cows come home, but until someone can show me that this alone magically rectifies girl-killing, I remain incredibly skeptical.
And while I have really enjoyed Aanchal's posts (please stay around!), I cannot agree that economics is the solution to this problem. I do believe that India's poverty is worth addressing, and I hope that it would ameliorate some of these gender tensions. That said, I am unoptimistic so long as it is culturally sanctioned (and at times, encouraged!) to kill your female child in the pursuit of son-preference. Or worse, to underfeed her, deny her an education, etc. Women's lives are not held in the same regard as men's lives through much of India, despite legislation to the contrary. This is just the reality on the ground. It's true that misogyny/patriarchy exists world wide, including in the U.S. If it did not, why do we see such a large number of female babies put up for adoption relative to boys? However, with the exception of the desi community in the U.S., I have not met any other ethnic community (in the U.S., today) that systematically aborts its female