The female of the species

Published : 24 June 2011, 03:56 PM
Updated : 24 June 2011, 03:56 PM

Many years ago, my parents decided it was time to have a child and went about the job with one aim in mind: they wanted a daughter. They got one. And they were happy. But this not always the case in this country that I call home: India.

A long time ago, or so we were taught in school, most Indian families wanted boy-children, for various reasons, some religious, some financial, some a matter of prestige and power. Most of all, a boy was necessary in a Hindu family, since only men were considered suitable to light the funeral pyre of the male head of the family when he died.

To make things worse, the girl child had to be married off at the appropriate age and to get that done, a dowry had to be provided; which meant extra expenditure for the family. Put all this together and it is understandable that a female infant was not preferred by many couples. But we would all expect that attitude to change with time, progress, education and better socio-economic status. In fact, the change has happened, though not for the better.

According to the recently released results of the census in India (2011), the sex ratio, instead of improving in favour of females, has become even worse. The number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group 0-6 over the last ten years is now 914, down 13 points. Any plans to decrease or prevent female foeticide and infanticide are, the authorities admit, not working well at all.

Astonishingly, these figures reflect not just in what most would consider 'backward' areas, but in urban, educated populations as well. Sex determination, though made illegal and punishable by law, is still being practiced in the worst way possible, sometimes with scores of female foetuses being aborted by clinics of doubtful repute, the remains found dumped in gutters or septic tanks to rot or be eaten by vermin.

Way back in 1990 reputed economist Amartya Sen spoke of the "missing women of Asia" when he tried to understand why 50 million women in China and 100 million in India were just not there any more. He explained that on a global level, at birth there are many more boys than girls; women last longer and survive better, since they are hardier. This is the case even in sub-Saharan Africa, devastated as it often is by natural calamity and war.

However, in much of Asia, especially India and China, the numbers are reversed and there are far more boys than girls, men outnumber women significantly. As Sen says, "These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women." He believes the reason to be, simply and emphatically, a matter of gender discrimination, something that could possibly be corrected with a suitable environment of employment, literacy and economic rights, including property rights.

But I, as a woman, a girl child, empowered, educated, literate, employed, economically stable, with a right to family property, wonder about that one. I have seen my own peers, classmates in college and colleagues at work worry that the child they carry within themselves as young to-be mothers could be female. I have even heard, much to my amazement and a certain incredulous horror, a close friend telling me with great relief that she was glad that her baby had been a son, or else life would have been far more difficult.

To make the situation even more confusing and, to me, irksome – to say the least – I read a CNN report recently that told me this: "If Americans could have only one child, they would prefer that it be a boy rather than a girl, by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin". This, the report says, is not too much different from "what Gallup measured in 1941, when Americans preferred a boy to a girl by a 38 percent to 24 percent margin". And this, in what considered itself to be the most highly developed nation in the world.

But Bangladesh seems to be in a rather more enlightened zone with reference to this particular subject. According to reports, the country's population is more balanced apropos the male-female ratio, at about 0.93 (male to female) in the adult age-group.

What bothers me is one simple fact – for a nation that reveres the female deity, Shakti, in Her various forms and powers, India is abysmally ignorant in its behaviour towards women and its overall attitude to the girl child. The female cannot stay the weaker sex, as she is generally thought to be, and needs to be given her rightful place in society, in the family, in the ethos of the people.

We as a nation seem to forget one small but very important fact – if there were no women, there would be no men!

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Ramya Sarma is a Mumbai-based writer-editor.