female foeticide. female infanticide. rampant in india. no no this is not an essay on this serious and very relevant (to India) issue. This is post on an anticipated social crisis.
my thoughts -
Today i found this. I hope Indian sociologists can clearly draw parallels from Japanese society and take action before its too late (and i think it already might be too late).
my thoughts -
- it is mostly people from lower and middle socio-economic classes and people from rural India who kill female infants and foetuses.
- most upper middle class and upper class, metropolitan Indians bring up their daughters as educated, free thinking, well travelled..etc etc individuals.
- skewed sex ratio = there are not enough women (this is already a reality!)
- skewed socio-economic backgrounds = greater number of traditional men from conservative backgrounds and most women who are educated, free thinking, from urban backgrounds.
- decline in marriage market = fewer kids being born (which "sounds" like a good thing for India) but...
- decline in marriage market (mostly with respect to urban women) = skewed ratio of educated urban kids to under priviledged kids from poor backgrounds
This essentially means a disaster in the marriage market.
Today i found this. I hope Indian sociologists can clearly draw parallels from Japanese society and take action before its too late (and i think it already might be too late).
its already an issue. from the report what i read last, there are only 927 women to 1000 men in our country. if you see just the numbers, the diff is just 73. but on a socialogy standpoint, its more grave than the picture what we could foresee.
on a policy maker standpoint, our country needs to become a welfare state to reduce the female infanticide.
Thank you for writing about this very serious concern! There are no words to describe how I feel about this. I understand that it is a cultural phenomenon, yet, I am saddened that there is a culture that devalues females so much to see them essentially as trash to be thrown away. I can understand what would motivate a family to do this, yet, it is such a sad, unfortunate thing that needs to be stopped. It has far reaching consequences that I do not believe some people have even begun to consider.
ai. its an issue thats more prevalent in the northern parts. eastern, north eastern, southern are mostly non-anti girl child. some are even matriachal societies.
the social crisis is already here and been here for ages. instances of one girl getting married to an entire family, purchasing of brides, etc.
also opp. instances of marry one daughter, get the other one free, but..
the population of japan is 127 mill. thats it.
why are we comparing our 1.2 bill with that?
and remember we live in a country, where most of the guys have to get married to get laid..
to end, i just love your kebab idea of representing facts. imagine kebabs with sex ratio data and soceco data dangling from the logic tree. :D
enjoy.
i knew this would happen.. just because it deals with female infanticide.. but ppl hello!.. i'm NOT talking about female infanticide. that topic would take a whole lotta posts to cover.
what i did post about was a pattern i'm imagining in my head (no jedi i will not imagine ur logic tree with mixed stuff hanging off it.. it can only be kebab or the other stuff). so the imagined pattern was linking female infanticide with india's economy in the future. :|
oh and NO it is NOT just a north indian phenomenon.. even if matriarchal societies exist in east west and south of india, so does the dowry system.. and women are not exactly women's best friends when "societal approval" is thrown in the equation.
! chamak. kebab stuff was related to use of word skewered!
i humbly request you to use 'skewed' the next time u want to use skewered! :)
and i'm not sure what the post means now. u say its not abt female infanticide, but abt female infanticide<>future economics..
and yea. breathe in. breathe out :)
ooh. girl power. did u mean to say that girls have all the power coz less girls in future means more power to them?
eh?
you have taken few factors and have tried to come to a conclusion. in any regression analysis, you have to consider all the variables involved and also the effect of one variable on the other, seeing it one sided cannot yield a result, or might give a wrong result. :)
@ jedi - *face turning red* err.. oh hehee ofcourse i knew it was "skewed" and not kabab-walla skewered .. heehe umm..
the post, well..the post is not about female infanticide as the main topic but its effects (imagined and real)
girl power> no girls = no power
vokay?
@ kid - *grumble grumble* @#%#^$$# you give them a bloody blogpost where you think you've given them something to think about, a new perspective on things and what do they want.. why they want a bloody dissertation! #$^#W$!@
anakid: bad advice. why do u want a educated,free thinking, well travelled urban female to do something regressive as regression analysis!
:D
There was this book. I don't remember what it was called. Something like "The Emerging Sex" or whatever. The point of the book was that while women have traditionally been ostracized and oppressed by men, men have not had the foresight to see the disastrous consequences of those actions. In addition, men could not have seen certain technological advances. So, whereas men used to just beat women into submission because they were weaker and they had nowhere to go anyway, now they can use a gun and a car and the other matters very little. The point is that a circle came where women can be in an advantaged position if they are informed. Of course, society does what it can to keep them ill-informed.
I used to think things generally waxed and waned. I don't know if I believe that any more. All I know are these 2 fundamental truths. A)The world would be a better place if there were more women than men in the world (not that many more mind you) and b) I would be happier if there were more women in the world.
To end, I'll ask the women of the world not to give up on us. We can do better. And to the men of the world I say, great, you've killed all the women and shrunk my dating pool. You guys suck.
there is one fallacy in this argument/pattern:
female infanticide also happens among the higher strata of society...among urban families....
so the sex ratio is always gonna be 'skewered' :P as is already the case in india
but despite being so 'moral'why is india's population so high? most people dont wait to get married and add to the inceasing population....and this is especially true among the villagers on India.
*villages in India
You know, I think Yang has a point, beyond just dating. I've often wondered about that - if there were more women in the world, how would it turn out. We are socialized to be more relational oriented, and not so much toward conquering and such. It's an interesting thought.
I found the article about Japan to be interesting. I think that some of the trends are pretty widespread, particularly the tendency of younger, educated females to take "advantage" of their more traditional mothers. Although in Italy it is the men that apparently want to stay home with momma.
I think Sou's post raises a number of good questions - the long term effect of an inbalance of females versus males on marriage, in particular.
@ li'l yang - "society does what it can to keep them ill-informed." i'm so glad you raised this point.
@tq - no girlie.. there is no fallacy coz i said it's "mostly" ppl from lower and middle socio-eco groups and ppl from rural areas. i know there are affluent ppl who do it too.. but the percentage is def not as high as the group i've talked about.
@ autogato - ooh.. i've had some really awesome conversations with quicksilver about how diff the world would be if it was a woman's world.. maybe i should post that sometime.
@ sar - thanks! (..and welcome to my blog)
@tq: one of the reasons for the rural india's population being high, has been the a. infant mortality rates, b. need for cheap manpower (who better to til the soil than ur own children who u dont have to pay). its not just the outsourcers, its been part of actually any culture to breed to assist in one's own work.. c. war/fights between regions.. till independence and actually even now we have been a region of subregions and nawabs and whatnot who have been fighting against each other..
more reasons.. but u get the drift.
~~~
it has nothing to do with morality. the so called fornication moralities have been a recent addition to our collective social consciousness.
@tq and sou: society keeping women ill-informed, could u2 stop hifiving and explain what that means..
li'l yang is not TQ.. nor is he a girl. :)
anyway.. what that means is that girls are not sent to school as much as guys, they are brought up with the very noble mission of being baby machines and good "bahu"s (daughter-in-law). also, too much intelligence is not really good for girls you see it makes them very difficult to "handle".
this's just a li'l of what that meant.
after a while i didnt really want to be going to school. so am not sure if not getting to go to school is all that bad..
jk :D
Our closest non-human relatives are (equally) chimpanzees and bonobos. (They are very closely related to each other, but they are increasingly regarded as two seperate species. However, bonobos are sometimes called "pygmy chimpanzees.") Chimpanzees have a patriarchal patern (and some disturbing similarities to human behaviors in war and such) and bonobos have a matriarchal patern (with fewer comparisons to human societal behavior, but more comparisons to human private and family behavior . . . Up to a point!).
I encourage anybody to read about those two apes to get some ideas. There was a great book about this a while back called Demonic Males that discussed tendencies among the apes (including us). We seem to be almost patriarchal by default, though not as bad as chimps . . .
What's typically happened in societies with an excess of women in the past is that men take more than one wife. Would be interesting to see what happens in a modern democracy (which in almost all cases requires monogamy), though . . .
I didn't reply to this earlier because I couldn't imagine what to say. I know why people prefer sons in India and China, where typically sons and their wives care for his parents, but a daughter will usually only care for her husband's parents. (And I know I must be vastly oversimplyfying all the factors involved . . .) Still, what a screwed up situation!
I know when I first heard of this going on in China (I heard about it there before I heard about it in India), I kept thinking, "Well, what do you do with an excess of men? You throw them into uniforms and start a convenient war!" I'm no longer so sure that will happen, but oh, man . . .
Of course, I have another solution: India and China could start a mass govt campaign to encourage male homosexuality!! (J/K) (But wouldn't the ad campaigns be fun?)