The issues around girls and young women in India are daunting, and include some horrific acts like foeticide, abandonment/murdering infant girls, and dowry killings.
I think there are a lot of cultural norms that culminate in these problems. As I have mentioned earlier, I try to separate in my head which aspects that I observe are just the cultural norms of a different place (e.g., eating different types of foods - - you might *like* something more or less, but that is an issue of *taste*; you can’t make an objective judgment that this type of food is “bad,” unless it is objectively less healthy). Then there are things like the preference for boys, and the cultural phenomena that lead to that. And there, I do take a stand that these “cultural phenomena” are just not good.
Some background. India does not have a well-developed social security system, and there is apparently more dependence on the support of your kids as you age. The cultural norm in most Indian states is that the son (with his wife and children) live with their parents. This is certainly the norm among my colleagues, unless they are working in Delhi and their parents are in some distant state.
The girl’s family, on the other hand, is often expected to provide a dowry when they offer their daughter for marriage. And ongoing - - this part amazes me - - the girl’s family is never supposed to expect *anything* from their daughter and son-in-law. There is a saying that they should not even drink a glass of water in their married daughter’s home. (This is certainly not “followed” by all families - -but this is also not just the custom of some fringe communities…) I *think* there is a natural closeness and co-dependence between girls and their parents, so the *system* here seems to have violated a natural order, in favor of sexism.
The message that I glean here: We have given you our daughter, this burden for you to support. We have given you a dowry to soften the blow. We will not increase your burdens by also visiting your home, or expecting any care or nurturing from our now-married daughter.
Sane people in any culture agree that foeticide or infant abandonment is horrific, and it is illegal here. In fact, it is illegal for hospitals to reveal the gender of your baby if you do prenatal testing, to reduce the likelihood of female foeticide.
But if you ratchet back to root causes….the customs here have made girl-children less desirable. Let’s think particularly about poor families, scraping along. Parents of girl children need to save for dowries, and then hand their daughters off for good when they get married. There is really no dividend, then, in having daughters. I imagine that parents in this scenario also won’t “stretch” to educate their daughters…why bother? And this then becomes self-fulfilling - - when they do marry off their daughter to another family, she may in fact not have any education or good earning-skills…so she really may be more of a “burden for them to support” without skills to contribute to feeding and clothing her family.
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