FEMALE INFANTICIDE

WHAT IS FEMALE INFANTICIDE?

The deliberate killing of the girl child has been prevalent since time immemorial. An estimated 160 million babies in China, India primarily, and other Asian countries have been aborted or killed over the last 30 years just because they were girls- in a phenomenon, some are calling “gendercide”. A strong cultural preference for sons has existed in Asian cultures for centuries.

WHY?

Few reasons that have led to female infanticide, as suggested by news articles and reports:

1.) The Socio-Economic face of India:

Being faced with the stringent, orthodox culture of the male child carrying forth the family name, women of the Kallar Community in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai district are killing their unborn girls by making them ingest poison. About 6000 infanticides have occurred in the past year. Similar cases occur throughout the Indian subcontinent.

As gender detection tests are banned in the country, people resort to unimaginable, brutal means to kill the child after she is born.

And apart from the continuously spiking numbers each year, 200000 girls under the age of five each year die in India alone.

The numbers are significantly higher in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, largely because of unwanted childbearing and ulterior neglect. “For too long, the main target has been solely on prenatal sex selection”, said co-researcher Christophe Guilmoto from the University Paris Descartes in France. “Gender-based discrimination towards women does not merely forestall them from being born, it’s going to additionally precipitate the death of those who are born,” he said.

This springs from gender discrimination, where households prefer to give maximum nourishment and comfort to the male offspring.

2.) China’s One-Child Policy:

China’s one-child policy initially implemented to curtail China’s population explosion has now resulted in fundamental human rights abuse.

Due to the rampant pressure of bearing a male child, the stringent policy has led to immeasurable female infants being aborted, abandoned, or killed.

As China struggles with population control, families are faced with the necessity of bearing male children who are perceived as being an asset to the family and who are often charged with the care of their elderly parents. Reasons akin to this are also found in India.

Female infanticide has created a skewed sex ratio in China’s population. The social, economic, and physical repercussions remain to be analyzed. The restrictive one-child policy has led to female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, drowning, and the withholding of health care and nutrition which are but a few consequences.

3.) The ever-growing crime rates against women :

As reports from the World Bank state :

Gender-based violence (GBV) or violence against women and girls (VAWG), is a global pandemic that affects 1 in 3 women in their lifetime.

The numbers are staggering:

• 35% of women worldwide have experienced assault from somebody already known to them, i.e, family.
• Globally, 7% of women have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner.
• Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.
• 200 million women have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting.

This issue isn’t solely devastating for survivors of such violence and their families but also entails significant social and economic costs.

Owing to such staggering numbers, many households consider raising a girl child to be a burden.

EFFECTS

Female infanticide is on the rise and it needs to be curbed.

It has devastating effects on the entire society at large. Skewed gender ratios lead to economic and social distress. Few of them are:

1. )There is zero productivity (in terms of human resources, efforts, human-capital) from only one gender. It also creates an unnatural and artificial social environment where only one gender dominates whereas the other gender is eliminated.

2.) In certain communities in India, infiltrated with culture and traditions, female adults live in constant threat to their marriage and their very survival. Women are expected to give birth to sons and in certain cases, females are threatened to undergo late abortions to kill the unborn girl child. Late-abortions are a threat to the life of the mother as well. In these scenarios, the women live in constant fear and deal with emotional problems constantly. Women fear getting ostracized by society if they are unable to bear sons. In extreme cases, women resort to suicide with no other alternatives left.

MAJOR BREAKTHROUGHS

Despite such an inhumane and orthodox mindset, women have managed to break the chains and set an example for the younger generations to keep on fighting.

India’s Missile Woman, Dr Tessy Thomas is the first woman to lead a missile operation in India. Dr Thomas shattered a million stereotypes and proved her worth in what was stated to be “ a predominantly male arena”. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister, told the Indian Science Congress that Tessy is an example of a “woman creating her mark in an exceedingly traditional male bastion and resolutely breaking the ceiling.”

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw an Indian billionaire entrepreneur, took up fermentation science (which is considered quite a non-traditional field for women). She was the only female in her batch and graduated top of her class only to be denied to work in India. She left for Scotland to work.

Today, she is the presiding officer and director of Biocon Limited, a biotechnology company based in Bangalore, India and the chairperson of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Kathrine Switzer

Katherine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, even though her trainee dissuaded her to do so.

“No woman will finish or run a marathon”, her trainer said because men believed that ladies couldn’t complete a twenty-six-mile running competition.

She participated in the competition under the name of KV Switzer.

When she was about to finish, Jock Semple, the organizer of the marathon, tried to prevent her.

“Get out!” he yelled, but other men helped her finish. She became a symbol of perseverance.

Female infanticide is a social evil. Education is the only tool powerful enough to curb it. Addressing this problem at the grass-root level, i.e, educating individuals in rural and urban areas, right from primary education to the children to making special provisions or reservations for the girl child, the scenario can be improved.

Securing nutrition and health care by the government for the poor households will go a long way in this endeavour. Forging proper relations and maintaining equal opportunities for all genders will control the damage to a huge extent.