The Slaughter of Eve
Do read this very disturbing Washington Times article by Julia Duin, which is the first part of a 4 part series.
A perfect storm of a historic disregard for girl children in certain cultures - especially India, China, and large parts of the middle east - and new technology means that 100 million girls are "missing" from the world today They have been aborted before birth.
"In a report released Dec. 12, UNICEF said India is "missing" 7,000 girls a day or 2.5 million a year. It is female genocide.
By 2020, the Chinese government estimates that men will outnumber women in China by 300 million - the fruit of the "one child" policy. If Chinese families are only going to have one child, they will make sure it is a boy.
One reason in India : "the dowry system, a Hindu marriage practice by which the groom's family demands enormous sums of money and goods from the bride's family as a condition for letting their son marry her." The custom is technically illegal but has spread to Muslim and Christian families as well. Even Indian Catholics follow the dowry system.
The wife's family also have to pay when she goes to the hospital to have a baby and sometime even for her funeral. "Medical clinics -- which Sister Mary calls "womb raiders" -- have advertised "better 500 rupees now [for an abortion] rather than 50,000 rupees later" [for a dowry]. The first amount is about $11; the second is $1,100."
As a result, a new class of wifeless men are scouring eastern India, Bangladesh and Nepal for available women. India, already a world leader in sex trafficking, is absorbing a new trade in girls kidnapped or sold from their homes and shipped across the country."
American companies like General Electric have profited hugely from the sales of ultrasound machines to India. Indian doctors who stand against female infanticide are black-balled and threatened.
Here is a situation like slavery which is deeply rooted in the historical practice and culture of a whole people.
What will it take to change? What can we do to help?
posted by Sherry W @ 11:44 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Sherry, can you fix the link? I clicked on it and got a "Error 404" message...
Thanks!
Done!
As usual, the root to this is extreme poverty. I was reading more about this problem in India, and the government is going to be establishing orphanage facilities as an alternative to aborting female babies, and that would help address the dowry concerns. However, a woman still has to bring the baby to term, and that is a continuing poverty issue. Despite India's advances, there are over 100 million desperately poor people, and many marginally poor. So I think direct action for India involves supporting orphanages and contributing to anti poverty programs. It is a horror and I'm glad people are finally waking up to what is going on.
China is also a poverty issue coupled with the government's one child per family limit. It's something that people are very unhappy about, and so they are tempted to make the "if one child then boy" decision. Since that is a goverment-poverty issue, it's more difficult to get directly involved in a program, unlike India where the government would welcome the help. I think that praying for the conversion of China is an extremely worthwhile effort, and could (and is) bearing fruit. I'd ask people to include the conversion of China in their daily intentions, as I do.
MMajor Fan:
Yes, it is about poverty but it is also about a deep rejection of the value of women for their own sake.
The cultural system is set up to make girls a financial liability but what seemd to drive that is a deep destain for women themselves.
The second and third parts of the series are just heart-breaking.
You wrote : "Yes, it is about poverty but it is also about a deep rejection of the value of women for their own sake. The cultural system is set up to make girls a financial liability but what seemd to drive that is a deep destain for women themselves."
Sherry, I've worked with Indians and I think that's kind of harsh, and a too simplistic judgment of the gender relationships. Just as one example, here is an article about the work that Caritas India is doing to try to mitigate the farmer suicide crisis. It's been a tragic epidemic since 1997 and there are a couple of reasons for the suicides. One of them is debt due to giving lavish weddings for their daughters (and the dowries). I think that a farmer who drives himself to suicide over failure to provide for his daughters and family is an example of how you can't really say that they have a deep disdain for the female (it actually shows the male so disvalues himself that he takes his own life rather than deprive or harm the girl). Even the government, as you'll see in this article, blames the farmers for the lavish weddings not the odious dowry. So that's just one example of where Indian gender and self definition is more complex than saying they are structured to reject women's value. Tell that to the many male and female Kali worshippers lol.
The problem of infanticide and abortion cannot be addressed by demonizing the males of a culture, anymore than militants could solve it in our own country by demonizing the abortion seeking female. Hmmm.
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-02-06T151043Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-286536-1.xml
"What can we do to change?" Hoo boy ... in India everyone says "education." But it's not just the poor and illiterate. The article talks about female feticide being rampant in the prosperous states of Punjab and Haryana. Having a girl child is still considered a huge curse, even among the educated elite who pride themselves on their modernity. "Dowry deaths" are hardly limited to remote villages. They happen all the time in the middle of Delhi and Bombay.
I would go with the analysis that suggests that the roots are cultural. No, all Indians aren't misogynists. But it is a deeply patriarchal society, in ways, (having lived both in the US and in India) that many Westerners cannot immediately fathom.
Changing cultural attitudes is a huge task, with work on many different fronts.
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