Gender Selectiveness

Why in news?

A Kerala newspaper offered ‘scientific’ advice for conceiving boys.

What is the current scenario?

Indian society has long had a preference for sons.
As a result, sex-selective abortion and female foeticide have led to the country having one of the world’s most skewed sex ratios.
According to the Census 2011, there were 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in India for children up to the age of six.
A report pointed to the fact that in the absence of prenatal sex selection, several families resort to repeated pregnancies in their quest for a male child and data has shown that at every family size, there were more boys born than girls.

What is the issue?

Fuelling the country’s obsession with sons, a newspaper in Kerala called Mangalam, last week offered “scientifically proven” advice on how to conceive a boy.
Among the advice offered by the newspaper are eating plenty of mutton, never skipping breakfast and always sleeping with the face turned leftwards.
The column contains more ridiculous food habits to be followed to “ensure male baby”.
Several women in the country even pin their hopes for a male offspring on what are known as sex-selection drugs.
Women are consuming these harmful drugs – linked to birth defects and stillbirths – without realising that the sex of a child cannot be altered in the womb.

What are the consequences?

The article in the Kerala daily just goes to show that gender selection is widespread despite initiatives taken by the Indian government, NGOs and health workers.
The message isn’t going through and the people still value boys more than girls.
Apart from the obvious gore in this practise, it also reflects a mentality that proves harmful to girl children, when the “escape” the sex selectiveness and enter the world.
Stereotypical gender roles that assign certain duties and ideal behaviour to people impact the way men treat women.
When children are exposed to an imbalanced power system from almost the day they were born, a sense of invincibility makes boys believe people will excuse their deplorable behaviour.
Children are not born violent, or aggressive or disrespectful of women. They learn to be so from grown-ups and other sources.

How prevalent is the crime among juveniles?

More and more young people are taking to heinous crimes such as rape are magnifications of this mentality.
Rape was the third most prevalent crime among juveniles in 2015 after theft and trespassing or burglary, says the National Crime Records Bureau.
In 2015, more than 41,000 juveniles were apprehended across the country, 1,841 on rape-related charges.
1680 cases of rape were registered under juveniles in India under Section 376. Minors were booked in 88 cases of gang rape.
Moreover, as one of our columnists noted, notions of honour are central to the discourse on rape.
The rape of a daughter, sister or wife is a source of dishonour to males within the family structure. This deters the reporting of rape to the police.

What should be done?

In order to change the long-standing preference for sons, there is a need to first change the image of girls in our society.
Violence against women will not decrease unless there is a thrust on having a gender-neutral approach towards policies and programmes.
This is because investing in men is also a way of ensuring women’s empowerment, because a gender sensitive father, brother or spouse will positively impact women’s lives.

Category: Mains| G.S-II | Social Justice

Source: hindustantimes, The Wire