Right to life is the most basic form of human rights. Genocide systematically denies a certain race or ethnic group the right to life. Gendercide systematically denies a certain gender, in most cases female, the right to life. This is a growing problem in Southeast Asia, in particular, India and China. Much of the population of these two nations believes that women are inferior to men because they cannot provide the same amount of wealth, strength, or power. The documentary “It’s a girl” clearly outlines this problem in each of the two nations and explains just how urgent the problem of Gendercide is. In both India and China, the problem lies within the dowry system, the government policies, and the cultural mindset, and until each of these issues is faced, thousands of women will continue to die every day.
The first problem, and probably the biggest problem, in India is the Dowry system. When a family wants their daughter to marry a man they must give the man’s family a dowry. This is extremely costly because not only is a family losing upwards of half of their wealth, but they are also losing their daughter. When a daughter is born to a family she is immediately seen as a burden due to the foreseeable dowry. The problem does not discriminate to classes either; as a future dowry is seen as a burden to the wealthy families as well. Because of this, people mainly want to have only sons and it has led to the deaths of millions of baby girls. According to the documentary, if a woman can afford an ultrasound and see that it is a girl, she will likely have an abortion. If the woman is poor she will wait until birth. If she gives birth to a daughter, she will most likely kill her by suffocation, strangling the baby, pouring acid on her, poisoning her, or crushing her neck. Also according to the documentary, 1 in 4 girls will not live past puberty, and mortality rates for girls ages 1 to 5 are 40% higher than boys. This does not just effect young girls either. Each year about 100,000 women are murdered because of insufficient dowries or their inability to procreate male children.
The next problem lies within the government. In 1961, the government in India outlawed Dowries; however, they are still prevalent in every socioeconomic class and often go unenforced. In 1994 India passed the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Technique Act making it illegal to determine a fetus’s gender and illegal to terminate the pregnancy based on gender. However, many doctors accept money to perform illegal abortions anyways. Again, the government often looks the other way.
The last main problem in India is the cultural mindset. Oftentimes women do not tell anyone of forced abortions or pressure from their families for a male child because of status. An unsuccessful marriage not only affects your personal status, but the status of the family you were born to, and this can lead to social ostracizing. The mindset of women being inferior to men needs to change as well if the problem will ever be resolved.
The government acts as a much bigger cause to the Gendercide in China than the dowry system because the dowry system is virtually nonexistent there. In 1979, however, the government instituted a One-Child Policy for population control. The policy also promotes male preference because if the firstborn child in a rural family is a female, they are allowed to have a second child to try for a male. If a woman in a non-rural area has more than one child, she may be forced to have an abortion or forced sterilization. According to the documentary, 20%-30% of all baby girls are killed before birth. The problem is handled by the Family Planning Police, which is a militant group that enforces this law. It also encourages people to report others offering rewards to those who do. Over 30 million abortions are performed every year in China.
The cultural mindset regarding women is just as big of a problem in China as it is in India. The idea that women do not provide as much strength, power, or wealth as men has led to the death of millions of Chinese baby girls and women. Also according to the documentary, 500 Chinese women kill themselves every day. This is mostly due to the fact that they no longer believe they have the right to live because they had to kill their child because she was a girl.
There is always the exception in both of these nations where there is a family who loves their daughter, keeps her alive, and does whatever is best for her. The documentary follows the story of Dr. Mitu Khurana in India, who escaped her husband after he tried to cause a miscarriage of their twin baby girls. She now fights for women’s rights in India and loves her two twin daughters. These cases are few and far in between. In order to fix the problem the dowry system needs to be completely eliminated, government policies need to be reformed and enforced, and the cultural mindset that women are inferior to men needs to change. If families learn to be okay with having daughters, the unnecessary deaths of millions of babies and women will be prevented every year.
Works Cited
It’s A Girl. Dir. Evan Grae Davis. Showline Films, 2012. Documentary.
The strongest part of this essay was its topic. While reading our class’s essays on gender, wealth, and work, I honestly expected all of them to follow the model presented in Thursday’s readings: a lament on the unequal treatment of women in the American workplace, perhaps with the inclusion of some tie in to the career impeding reality of pregnancy. But your essay transported me to a completely different cultural paradigm that presents unique and more challenging issues. Thanks a lot.
This essay is a strong response to the deaths of innocent lives that happen due to gender alone. I thought that this essay was strong in the cultural examples you provide, but a little weak in the personal reasoning. Even though your examples were very strong, I think it would have been better to group together a couple of your paragraphs and shorten them down in order to introduce a more personal commentary. Besides that, I feel that the cultural approach of this essay was very good.
Darby, I thought the topic of your essay was very interesting. I definitely learned something new while reading your essay, and I thought the way you talked about India and China’s problems with gendercide was very clear and straightforward. Very easy to understand. I would say that it seems like you do more summarizing in this essay, and maybe you could develop more of an individual opinion on the topic? Overall, it was a great essay and I really liked the last paragraph!
You picked a very interesting topic that has gotten a lot of attention in the past. You also have a lot of good information and evidence to support your argument. However, I feel like the organization of your essay could strengthen your argument further. In your thesis, I think it could be clearer that you are going to be talking about two separate cases in two different countries—as it reads it seems as though the two countries experience similar situations and the in the rest of the essay, this is not the case. Along those lines, I think that the separation between these two cases could be made clearer. Lastly, your paragraph lengths are very different in each case study which leads the reader to think that while some points are strong, others are weaker and just thrown in to make a point. For arguments such as the cultural mindset in India, perhaps some factual evidence like in the other paragraphs would equalize your argument more. Overall, I think you have a lot of good material to work with and there is a lot of potential for this essay to be really strong!