The Sad Tale of an Indian Girl

I read in the SMH News Review about the social problem of having daughters and the new social problem of technology that allows parents to see if the sex of their baby is female and an abortion if a daughter is confirmed ("A most serious calamity", 21-22 Jan, 2006). Briefly, having a daughter if you are a wealthy Indian basically means that when she is of marriageable age you will need to pay a large dowry when she hooks up with a husband and your business affairs are subject to the meddling of your son-in-law. It's the gender opposite of the poverty-stricken maidens looking for a rich husband a la Austen's world, except in this case the Indian women don't have the power of an English lord. A calamity indeed.

Writer Louise Williams notes that "in some of India's wealthiest districts as few as 750 girls are now born for every 1000 boys" compared to the national average of 930:1000. In one particular incident that brought a tear to my eye, a newborn baby girl was apparently flushed down the toilet of a passing train with her umbilical cord still attached. The girl was lucky - she suffered some bruises but is otherwise healthy and has been adopted by a family in a slum community. Other daughters will not even get the right to be born.

Two things worry me about the information in this article. One is the concept of being able to 'choose' a baby (see the film 'Gattaca') and the obvious gender imbalance it will cause in the next generation, not unlike China's one child policy that saw a similar rise in the ratio of male to female births (recorded births, that is - it is not known how many female babies died as a result of infantcide). Remember that this is occurring in two of the most populous countries in the world. Secondly, the article says "speculative work by the World Bank on China and India suggests a link between a high number of unmarried young men and crime, violence, prostitution and the trafficking of women." I would believe such a finding. Men can be competitive creatures and sometimes a sense of entitlement (to women, among other things) leads them to do things that destroy the person or people they are supposed to value. This is saddening.

I suppose what saddens me most is that using my rather Western/capitalist view on the situation, this does not make sense.

1. A life should not have a financial value


2. Men are no more valuable than women


3. Marriage should not be the sole path of life paved by a family for their offspring.


4. A family does not need to relinquish control to their son-in-law when they have a perfectly capable daughter (if only they'd had enough sense to educate her instead of not investing in her assuming that she would become her husband's property), or even pass a business or wealth into family hands at all, if they don't want to.


5. If there are less women in these societies, then a shortage should see the rise of their value, which in turn should see men with dowries. Why should a woman have a dowry when she has more choice of husband?


6. Why have a dowry at all? My understanding of a dowry is that when women used to outnumber men, a family would have to entice men to marry their daughter/s. Which also led to marriages that were more about how rich the family was rather than anything to do with the suitability of the daughter and man. It shouldn't happen in this day and age, especially when so many more women are financially independent and India is opening up (as a labour and trade market) to the world.

Okay, I know my opinions live in an idealistic world where gender equality exists unchallenged and a patriarchal culture of thousands of years is banished but they also acknowledge the simple commercial aspect of supply and demand. I thought this might be a transaction that the new Indian market might understand. Less women and more men mean that women become rarer and therefore more valuable and, you would think, more valued. Same with China. But instead there's an apparent increase in crime and violence, as if the two developing economies are coming to terms with the realisation that *shock, horror* patriarchal societies can be wrong and perhaps their respective societies need to get rid of this whole notion of business and wealth being a man's domain and instead embrace the new world order - women can be just as good if you give them a fair go. A rather Australian concept, don't you think?

When tradition is thrown out the window there needn't be a cause to discriminate between sons and daughters and their future impact on a family's finances. And I'm not saying there won't be trouble in ditching tradition but such a change is happening as we speak and I just hope that there will be fewer and fewer sad tales about Indian girls in time to come. I'm lucky enough to have two good friends of Indian heritage who happen to come from liberal families who have emigrated into a more liberal society. May this influence the new, burgeoning Indian society.