Feminist Peace Network

The Times (UK) has an exhaustive piece about the horrendous rates of femicide in India. While it may look like the quotes below are long, they are only a small part of the article and I highly recommend reading the entire article although I guarantee it won’t be an easy read. According to the article,

“Although sex-selection tests have been illegal in India since 1994, unwanted female babies are now being aborted on such a staggering scale that it is estimated India has lost 6 to 10m girls in the past 20 years, a
large proportion of the abortions being carried out at five- to
six-month term. While abortions have long been legal in India,
choosing to terminate pregnancy because of the child’s sex is not. But
such practice is now so widespread that some experts estimate the
figure could soon rise to nearly 1m girls lost every year as a result
of this “female foeticide�.

One recent Unicef report estimated that that figure had already been
far surpassed, with 7,000 fewer girls born in India every day because
of sex-selective abortion – though this calculation has since been
questioned – amounting to more than 2m “missing girlsâ€? a year.”

It’s important to understand that,

“India is not alone in aborting a huge number of baby girls. The
backlash to China’s long-term one-child policy, and determination of
parents that this one child be a boy, have already led to such wildly
skewed sex ratios that it is estimated 30 to 40m Chinese men – called
“bare branches� – could fail to find brides by the end of the next
decade, which some predict could lead to considerable social and
political unrest Other affected countries in Asia include Pakistan,
Nepal, Afghanistan and South Korea. But in India, where population
growth now far outstrips that of China, with an estimated 25m births
annually compared to China’s 17m – together these two countries
account for about one-third of all births globally – the consequences
of such distorted demographics could be even more dire.”

The Times quotes the wise observation of Dr Puneet Bedi, “a respected obstetrician
specialising in foetal medicine and adviser to the Indian government” who says,

“Just as throughout history euphemisms have been used to mask mass
killings, terms like ‘female foeticide’, ‘son preference’ and ‘sex
selection’ are now being used to cover up what amount to illegal
contract killings on a massive scale, with the contracts being between
parents and doctors somehow justified as a form of consumer choice,�

As the article points out, this is a human rights atrocity that the West has ignored until the point was made that all of this girl-killing could lead to frustrated men turned violent.  In other words, by deeming women unworthy of life, they have created a situation that denies men their perceived privilege and the latter is a problem that must be solved.  Doesn’t get much more patriarchal than that, does it?   But as the authors correctly make clear, until these killings are recognized for the misogynist genocide that they are, the femicide will continue.

“That the West is beginning to pay more attention to such distorted
demographics in Asia because of the potential security risk millions
of testosterone-charged, frustrated bachelors could pose is deeply
offensive, say activists. Yet the publication of a book by the
political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer entitled Bare
Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population,
three years ago, led to a flurry of news headlines and alarmist
predictions of the “chilling� increased threat of war, crime and
social unrest in China and India as a result. The book talks of the
possibility that ever-increasing numbers of unmarried men in both
countries will push Chinese leaders towards more authoritarian rule to
control a marauding “bare branch� generation, and could threaten the
stability of India’s democracy through a swelling population of
rootless and marginalised males.

“For a long time the rest of the world condemned us as hyper-breeding,
and pumped a fortune into family planning. So the West must now accept
some responsibility for this situation,� says Bedi. But he and others
believe fewer and fewer girls will be born in India and elsewhere
until what is happening is recognised, on both a national and
international level, as the most fundamental breach of human rights:
that of a female child’s equal chance of being born.

Far from the shortage of women increasing their worth and standing in
society, as some might imagine, the result is the opposite. Women are
now being trafficked in increasing numbers from Indian states where
sex ratios have declined less rapidly. Some are sold into marriage.
Others are forced to engage in polyandry – becoming wife to more than
one man, often brothers. Those that fail to produce sons are often
abandoned, sometimes killed. This further perpetuates the cycle of
prejudice and injustice, ensuring many women themselves prefer to give
birth to a son to ensure no child of theirs suffers a similar fate.

Unicef recently concluded that “the alarming decline in the child
sex-ratio [in India] is likely to result in more girls being married
at a younger age, more girls dropping out of education, increased
mortality as a result of early child-bearing and an associated
increase in acts of violence against girls and women such as rape,
abduction, trafficking and forced polyandryâ€?.”

Many thanks to Dr. Lynette Dumble of the Global Sisterhood Network for bringing this article to our attention.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities