Why are baby girls in India dying?

My husband's family is Indian.  Wanting to learn more about the culture, I've taken to reading travel and culture essays as well as the history and literature of India.  Something that is not unique to India, but is a problem in both India and China specifically is the death of baby girls both in utero and shortly after birth.  This high mortality rate for baby girls is creating a gender imbalance in both countries.  When the boys of these nations grow to adulthood, there will not be enough women for each of them to marry.

Why this imbalance?  I can only really answer with regards to India.

This issue can be viewed through two lenses-that of class and that of culture.

Culturally-a daughter belongs to her husband's family once she marries.  In Sexyhusband's great-grandmother's day, her very name could be changed by her husband's family (and in her case, was).  This is less true today, as Sexyhusband's cousin is still very close with her parents.  That doesn't mean that her kids won't belong to her husband's family.  They will.  Her brother is under great pressure to marry as when his father dies, he will be the head of the household as will his sons after him. 

We can't talk about marriage without discussing dowries.  Technically they're not supposed to happen, but they do.  Dowry is money or goods given to a husband's family as payment for taking an unmarried girl (who is a burden on the family after a certain age) off their hands.  Dowries are expensive, as are the two or so weeks of wedding festivities.  Thus girls are expensive, with little rewards.

Finally, at least for Hindus (of which the majority of Indians are), a son is required to light the funeral pyre of his parents and send their souls to heaven.  A daughter can not do this, according to religious law.

Class-As I mentioned, daughters require dowries and expensive weddings.  In a country where 90% of the people live in poverty and make less in a year than most of my readers do in a month, weddings and dowries often require families to take out crushing loans.  They would rather take out the loan than suffer loss of honor.  So when a poor family already has two daughters, a third would be impossible to keep.

The "middle classes" (the wealthiest 10%) can afford these weddings, but often choose not to have many daughters.  The blessing that a bride receives on her wedding day is "May you be the mother of a hundred sons" or "May you be the mother of a thousand sons."  If a woman gives birth to daughters, she has yet to succeed as a wife and mother.  Some mother in laws will even beat or at least verbally abuse their daughter in laws for not producing a son.

It was common for middle class women to get a Chorionic villus sampling (CVS) test.  This is used on women over 40 here in the US to test for Down's Syndrome and other genetic defects.  It also can tell the sex of the child with 100% accuracy at 10 or 11 weeks.  By contrast, the ultrasound that all women have isn't done until 20 weeks, and you can only tell the sex of the child if they are positioned in such a way that you can clearly see the genitals.  At 10 weeks, you're still in the first trimester and can safely abort the fetus.  This isn't the case at 20 weeks, at which point you need to finish the pregnancy.  This practice has been outlawed, but many doctors can be bribed to do it anyways.

It's almost impossible for the Western mind to comprehend the practice of selective abortion, or of allowing a newborn baby girl to starve to death (refusing her nourishment is most common).  In some ways, understanding why a poor family might make this choice is easier once you've seen the kind of squalor they live in.  A poor family in the US, or even a homeless family living on the street has a better quality of life.  Diseases like hepatitus, typhoid, and malaria are all common as is AIDS.  Unemployment is high. 

I am not saying that I think it is acceptable, but I began to understand the quality of life issue better for the poor once I visited India.  It's not all dhosas and the Taj Mahal.  It's also filthy squat toilets that are little better than a hole in the ground.  It's unreliable electricity (if you even have electricity).  It's bathing in polluted rivers. 

There is a change underway.  Life for Indian women is radically different than it was 100 years ago.  But there is still a lot of work to be done.  They view women like Americans viewed Blacks in the 1940's-technically equal under the law, but socially an underclass.  Even career women put their role as wife and mother first.  Kiran Bedi, a high ranking Policewoman (and the first female one historically) has been quoted as saying that if she didn't send her child to school with a home made lunch, she'd have failed that day even if she ended it by locking up a career criminal.  The kind of change that would result in a Western style feminism is radical in the extreme.

The religious aspect will be the toughest to change.  Hinduism is 2000 years older than Christianity.  I haven't seen anything in Catholicism recently that would lead me to think we're getting female priests or a female Pope any time soon.  So asking Hindus to accept that daughters could light their funeral pyres and send their souls to heaven is seen as equally ludicrous from a top down perspective, even as every day people are starting to question the role of women.

Until women are valued, baby girls will not be valued.  As long as baby girls aren't seen as valuable, selective abortion and female infanticide will continue.

Comments

[The Fonz]

Big wow a country that doesn't follow western christian beliefs and morals. Thats crazy man and the fact that you don't even like this damn biased christian church that gave you these morals is way ou there man. You are so cool marrying an indian. You are such a cool cat.

[Oscar the Observer]

Impressive sociological post :). You use cultural relativistic perspective with proper balancing of cold analysis and your own inner ethics being expressed. I liked it a lot :). Keep it up!