Fight-Back.net

Hello all,
You HAVE TO check out this wonderful website. Do write in your opinions! www.fight-back.net
Love,
Sonia

A lady's fight against harrasment

Read this story and your heart goes out to this fiesty lady and her suposrtive son. I do hope she finds justice. Meanwhile, feel free to write to the paper about this story on mirrorfeedback@indiatimes.com.

A former employee of a US-based accountancy firm is on a hunger strike outside the company’s office since Monday demanding an apology for sexual harassment and ruining her career.Sonia Udhwani claims she left the job in September 2007 after working for five years as senior colleagues refused to investigate or even entertain her complaint against A Siddharth, a senior partner in Deloite Haskins & Sells. She alleges the company foiled her attempt to make a honourable exit by giving adverse reports about her performance at places where she had applied for jobs. With her back to the wall, Udhwani and her 17-year-old son began their protest outside the company’s office at Worli. Company officials apparently met her. “Senior partners came and met me while I was on strike. But I refuse to budge till I get an apology letter from them, which they are not ready to give,” she claims.On Tuesday, she registered an FIR under Section 509 of the IPC [word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman] against Siddharth at the Worli police station. It states: “I (Sonia) joined the firm in 2002. Soon Siddharth would call me to his office for some work and would try and hold my hand. When we were making his daughter’s wedding cards, he would blow me kisses or make other lewd gestures. He even asked me out for dinner and for trips out of the city.”She further mentions in the complaint that she had brought the “harassment” to the notice of another superior, but in vain.“When I gave my resignation in September 2007, the firm asked me to take it back then but finally accepted it in November. My future job prospects were ruined. I applied for other jobs but I was refused employment twice as the HR of Deloitte gave them a bad review of my performance. How can they say this when their appraisal forms speak highly of me?”Repeated attempts by this newspaper to contact Siddharth proved futile. However, Hemendra L Shah, chief ethics & compliance officer, Delloite Haskins & Sells, said, “We have received a complaint from a former employee. We take a serious view of any complaint we receive from staffers and they are accorded the highest importance. We are presently inquiring into Sonia’s allegations in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations.”When contacted, inspector Soni of Worli police station said, “An FIR was lodged on the basis of an application by Sonia and we are investigating her complaint.”
Read the story on the Mumbai Mirror site: http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?page=article&sectid=2&contentid=2008053020080530032425418f1082cd2

An interesting twist

I didn't know whether to be amused or to feel sorry when I was reading the piece of news that is to follow. We've repeatedly discussed the implications of a skewed sex ratio as a result of practices like female foeticide on this blog. In addition to the consequences that we have already discussed, a brand new implication came into light recently.

Times of India reports:

The craze for a male child has skewed the sex ratio to such an extent that the growing army of bachelors in Haryana are facing a tough time getting brides. As if it weren't bad enough for them, the men are now being victimized by organized gangs — who provide 'wives' — and are robbing the men and their families.

The matter came to light with the arrest of two 40-year-old women from Ludhiana identified as Preeti and Jyoti. The duo, apparently, are members of one such gang that provides women for 'marriages', after which they rob the family and disappear. The Hissar police arrested the pair from a local bus stand, following a complaint by Ram Singh, a resident of Baragurha village, who told the police that a Ludhiana-based woman had duped him by taking money for arranging the marriage of one of his relatives. Singh claimed the 'bride' ran away with ornaments and other valuables.

"The women have admitted to having duped families at Jhajjar and Uklana in a similar fashion," said Surjeet Singh, PRO of the SP, Sirsa. "The two had been carrying on this activity for quite some time. Young girls, sold as brides, are also members of the gang." The women were produced before the chief judicial magistrate, Sirsa on Saturday, who remanded them to judicial custody for 14 days. The modus operandi — look for a potential bridegroom well past his marriageable age, strike a deal for a 'wife' for amounts ranging from Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000, depending on the attributes of the 'bride to be', arrange the 'marriage' with fake parents and then wait for the 'bride' to return with cash and kind.

Nearly a dozen such cases were reported in Sirsa-Fatehabad area last year. In most cases, the 'parents' were also gang members and helped the 'bride' escape by taking her out of the nuptial house on the pretext of visiting her maternal home. Jagmati Sangwan, president of the Haryana unit of the All-India Democratic Women Association, said the social implication of the gender imbalance, which was not visible earlier, has manifested itself in the past eight to 10 years. (link)


This is one of those very rare moments in my life when I don't have an opinion. I wouldn't know who is right and who is wrong. Cheating is wrong but so is skewing the sex ratio so much that such crimes are possible.

What do you say? You have to admit that the story does manage to tickle the funny bone a bit followed by an expression of "what else did you expect?"

Related reading:
the Problem, the Causes, the Consequences objectified

British-Indian couple abandons girls ...

The British tabloid - The Sun - created ripples today by reporting that an Indian born British couple abandoned their twin daughters in an English hospital as soon as they were born because they were of the 'wrong' sex. The Sun reported:

A BRITISH couple abandoned their newborn IVF girl twins at a hospital – because they wanted boys. The mum aged 59 and dad, 72, conceived in India with fertility treatment and returned to England for the birth. They told horrified
medics they did not want the “wrong sex” babies immediately after the Caesarean section in Wolverhampton.
The husband then asked how soon it would be before his wife was fit enough to fly out again for further IVF in the hope of getting a boy to continue the family name.
[...]
Female babies are often abandoned in India for being the wrong sex – but it is the first time here. It will send shockwaves of revulsion through multi-cultural Britain.
The parents were born in India but are British citizens living in Birmingham.
They had fertility treatment in India as it is illegal here at at such an advanced age. (link)

TimesOnline, however, contested The Sun's claims by stating as follows:

NHS West Midlands, the strategic health authority involved, disputed the report.
In a statement it confirmed the details of the twins' birth and the fact that they had been transferred to a Birmingham hospital closer to their parents' home.
"The parents are visiting their daughters whilst they are being cared for in hospital and are attentive to their needs," the statement said.
"For patient confidentiality reasons, the identity of the family and the babies are
not being disclosed. The identity of the hospital is also not being disclosed.
"We are not aware of a referral to social services." (link)

Either of the two papers could be telling the truth but the truth that really bites me is that the accusations of an elderly British Indian couple abandoning their IVF twins because they were girls may have shocked Britain but it barely raises an eyebrow in India. As this article in TimesOnline states:

The killing of newborn girls has long been common in rural India, where a
daughter is perceived as a financial burden because her family has to pay a hefty dowry when she is married.
Boys, by contrast, are regarded as future breadwinners and heirs who will look after their parents in their old age.
Since the advent of ultrasound technology, abortion of female foetuses has also become increasingly prevalent, not only in rural communities but also among city-dwellers.
An international team of researchers estimated in 2006 that 10 million girls had been aborted in India over the past two decades. The Indian Medical Association says that five million are aborted annually. (link)

As I was watching Zee News Punjabi with my grandmum this morning, there was news of girls being sold into marriage now due to a stark shortage of girls in Punjab and Haryana. This led us (me and grandma) to talk about the prevalent female abortions that are very much a part of our society now. She gave me a few names of family members who had got their daughters aborted not just once but multiple times. I couldn't believe her words. I know these people. I would've never known that they were also guilty of killing their daughters had my grandmum not imparted that information to me! I am so proud of my grandmum though for saying (before giving me a hug) towards the end of our conversation that she feels sorry for all of them for they lost such precious gifts. I am sure she wouldn't have said that a few years ago, but today, when she is realizing that her granddaughters care for her as much as her grandson, she has changed with times. I only hope for such change to prevail within our society on a massive scale.

Until then, the struggle is on.

Agle janam mohe bitiya.........

Many thanks to Shankari Murali for this write up.

It was still the early chapters of The Pelican Brief. Strange how some irrelevant associations endure and they usually point to books I was reading when something significant was happening in my life. But that Thursday night, I was reading it and reading it rather desultorily.

Without any prejudice to the writer or the plot, let me explain why it was so. There was a growing unease within me which was extremely discomfiting, unlike anything I had ever felt before, induced both by my own body and exaggerated by the slooow Syntocinon drip on my right arm, which produced syncope-like feelings. In addition were the gut-wrenching moans and wails from the invisible woman in the next cubicle, a primi who had to undergo the labours of ejecting a piece of tissue which had grown in her for eight months before quitting spontaneously. Far more disturbing than all these was the low but clear tones of a discussion that two people were clinically having in that unreal endless night- the burden of the conversation and an extremely heavy burden it was, was how the two women wished they did not ever have daughters as girls would have to undergo all the travails of child bearing which they were exposed to as Ob-Gyns day and night.

What disturbed me was not the fact that these were not merely trained educated doctors speaking but that they were real women and yet did not feel the joys of being a woman. All through my pregnancy I had fervently hoped for a daughter and I could not believe my ears that here were women (women who participate in the birthing process, no less) who wished that their own progeny did not participate in the most visible celebration of life!
***

A dear friend of mine, one of my 'anchors', is from the cultural (and very political) holy city from the banks of the Ganga whose guavas are as sweet as the language and fine sensibilities of its people.

Now constrained by physical distance, we talk over the phone about this and that and all the rest that goes into our lives- about birds in the bird bath, crows having a parliament and such important matters. During the course of one such invigorating session, she asked me to listen to both the versions of this song- this and that. She knows just how much I appreciate these songs so I presumed that the newer version of Umrao Jaan would, if any, be better - with songs to match.
Alas, more fool me - the lyrics of Shahryar and the music of Khayyam with even a gem of Khusro, how could they be matched by a 'politically correct' poet who receives such public proclaim and is even proclaimed by his enlightened wife of having re-written history.
***
When I was pregnant with my second child, I had to, for some obscure reasons, undergo five ultrasound scans- four of them with a self-proclaimed expert radiologist who never picked up the congenital defect my baby was born with but invariably harped on whether I wanted to know whether I'd have a cricketer or a cheerleader. No, I did not take him to court, which he deserved to be especially given his acclaimed academic background, though some may pig-headedly disagree.

At the end, if I were to do things again, I'd say agle janam mohe bitiya hi kijo. Now to talk to my friend...

All the best to the initiative of Unchaahi!

Interesting Blog for men, by men!

Hi All,

Came across this wonderful blog that aims at educating and sensitizing men against rape. Check it out here: http://mencanstoprape.blogspot.com

Cheers
Sonia

Zari worker rapes two children

Is this really happening?? Yet another case of a teenager raping children. In this case, the victims are two little girls below the age of 5. It's about time that rapes of minors be punished with death sentence. So, so depressing. I cannot even imagine what the parents must be going through. Please do write to the editors of your local newspapers protesting against this steady rise of crime against children.

Mumbai, May 22: A 19-year-old zari worker was arrested on Tuesday for raping two minor sisters aged three and five. The police said he has confessed to his crime and has been sent to prison.

At around 10 am on Tuesday, the two girls were playing outside their home in the Sangam Nagar slum at Antop Hill. Spotting them unattended, zari worker Atiqul Mohammed Matihur Rehman lured the children into his workshop where he committed the crime.

Shortly after 6.30 pm, the elder daughter described the incident to her mother who approached the police. "We picked up Rehman from the zari unit and he confessed his act," said PSI Janardan Tarde of the Wadala Truck Terminus police station.

A case has been registered and the accused has been sent to prison.

Views from the blogworld

1. Mother's Day and Gender Unpacked
Happy Kitten artfully balances and discusses the notion of Indian mother being one of the most disadvantaged women and the changing times wherein she is beginning to gain appreciation for who she is.

2. A discussion on the customs surrounding a menstruating woman in some parts of India has caused quite a stir in the Indian women blog-world. As Imp's mom aptly calls it: 'The Period Revolution'. You can follow the discussion on Imp's blog starting with her own views. A rather interesting charade of varied views on the same matter. I'll add my own bit in due time.

3. MisterSingh weds the idea of lavish weddings and female foeticide here.

What The H?????

Six People Rape and Murder 5-yr-old

Contributed by Sonia C

Okay, I couldn't hold back my tears back anymore. You teach yourself to desensitize when you read news like this. But this was too much. I cried for this girl, what she went through, what her tiny body went through, and what her parents will go through for the rest of their lives. Even death seems too small a punishment for these rapists and murderers. That's if they are convicted. I wish i could talk to them and ask them how they could do such a thing. I want to know if they are remorseful or regretful. Had they not been caught, would they have raped again? i came to put this post up and saw a new post about two 4-year-old girls abused. Are things ever going to change? What can we do to bring about a change?

NAGPUR: In an incident putting humanity to shame, six persons raped a five-year-old girl for four hours before poisoning her to death at Bhagiratha park area in Jagtap layout on Friday night.

The body of the missing girl, who was kidnapped by the accused, was traced on Saturday morning within 100 meters of her residence. MIDC police arrested five persons, including two minors, for their alleged role in the kidnapping, rape and murder of five-year-old Anchal.

One of the minors arrested in connection with the case, confessed that he along with five others raped the girl at the house of accused Mangesh Kapate, which is at a stone's throw distance from the victim's house.

Read the rest of the article here.

Two 4-year old girls raped in Delhi

The Hindu reports:

In a crime most hideous, two four-year-old girls were criminally assaulted allegedly by a neighbour in the Capital's Tilak Nagar area on Monday evening. The 22-year-old accused is absconding.

The young victims are cousins and have been admitted to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Hospital where the condition of one of them is stated to be serious.

According to the police, accused Vikram lured four children, three of them girls, to his house from a nearby park promising them chocolates and sweets. He then took them to the first floor of the four-storey building and allegedly assaulted two of them. He also made a vain attempt to criminally assault the third girl, said the police.

[...]

Deen Dayal Upadhyay Chief Medical Officer Dhananjaya Kumar said: "Both girls were operated upon and bear serious injuries... . One of them has been bitten on the cheek. The condition of the other girl is still serious, though she recognises her parents and talks passively. We are awaiting the forensic reports to confirm criminal assault."

Alleging inaction on the part of the police, the distraught father said the cops turned up an hour after the first phone call was made. "We made the first call at 9 p.m. but no one turned up. Half-an-hour later one of my neighbours, a retired CRPF constable, called them up again and finally the police arrived at 10 p.m. Had they come on time, the accused would not have escaped," he said.

Read the entire story here.

Stray dogs eat unwanted girl

Weeks ago, I wrote about an abandoned baby girl who was rescued by stray dogs in Bihar, India. Today, I am sad to inform you about another unwanted abandoned girl who was also found by stray dogs but instead of being rescued, she was eaten. The baby girl was only 2 days old. What must her parents be going through now? Of course, they never cared for her anyway. They didn't care whether she lived or died when they wrapped her up in a bag and threw her out as if she was kitchen refuse. Why would they care now when they hear that she died a gruesome death? Heartlessness amazes me in general but heartlessness as a parent is incomprehensible, is it not? The news report states:

In yet another sad commentary on female foeticide practised in Punjab, an infant girl thrown away in a Ludhiana locality was eaten up by stray dogs Tuesday. Locals on Tibba road saw the dogs around a gunny bag. By the time help could reach the infant, the dogs had already eaten the head and one hand.

The residents informed the police who took away the body. Police officials said they were investigating who could have thrown the infant. The dead infant appeared to be just two days old. The police were checking the births in nursing homes and hospitals to find out about the parents.

Punjab has one of the worst sex ratios in the country with just around 800 females per 1,000 males.

Can it get any more heart-breaking? May her parents live in a perpetual state of unhappiness, guilt and misery for the rest of their lives. May her soul rest in peace.

I have nothing more to add.

Related Reading:
More on Punjab's sex ratio

Social Security System an answer for dowry?

As mentioned in my previous post, changing mindset and implementing laws are two solutions that activists and social scientists of India are suggesting. However, I have read 'social security system' being hinted as a solution in some papers as well. I've always been a strong supporter of a social security system due to various other reasons (example: to assist the unorganized sector like domestic help) but could the same support system also help girls being valued?

My thoughts were further strengthened by a wonderful article written by Janet Bagnell for The Montreal Gazette. She has written about a documentary that a Quebec filmaker Karina Marceau has made on Sex Selective Abortions in India. The documentary is an hour long and is available for purchase on http://www.pvpmonde.ca/. Janet writes:

Dowries are the main reason behind sex-selective abortions, said Marceau. The average dowry, she said, is about five times the average annual salary in India. In Canada, a comparable dowry would cost $300,000.

India's economic miracle is making the dowry problem worse. As society becomes richer, the demands increase. Poor families are crippled by the debts they have to undertake to find husbands for their daughter.

What are missing in India are public pensions, old-age security, fully subsidized health care and education, the speakers said. Without these public supports, the son remains his parents' sole means of long-term support. Without public supports, raising a daughter is, as an Indian proverb puts it, like watering the neighbour's garden - to no point. With pressure increasing on Indian families to have only two children, too many families want only boys.

That's the recurring thought process that we keep hearing of, isn't it? Daughters being the 'paraaya dhan' (someone else's wealth) don't deserve to be wasted money on. Therefore, it's better that they are not even born.

I wouldn't say that dowry is the ONLY culprit but it most definitely is one of the main culprits. Dowry needs to be done away with but, obviously, it's only getting worse. Ostentatiousness is only increasing manifold with the increase of wealth inflow. I recently had a conversation about dowry with a well educated young man from a small town in Bihar (India) who is now settled in UK. His younger sister, 23, is betrothed to be married soon. Therefore, he is in the process of saving money to help his parents pay dowry for his post-graduate sister. "Shouldn't you be speaking up against it?", I asked him. He responded with a shrug, "That's just the way it is. Never thought of debating it." Owing to his nonchalant response, we had a detailed conversation about the gravity of the situation. He agreed with everything negative I had to say about the dowry system but he still wouldn't be bothered to do anything about it. That's just the way it is for him and that might just the way it will be for his children too. Having said that, I must mention that he's a great guy. Just the kind you would want as a friend, a brother or even a father.

Given such attitude from even the educated and 'good' people goes to show that dowry is to stay. Anti-dowry laws were introduced in 1960s and they have had no effect. Dowry is still going and going strong. As Janet writes, an average of 15,000 Indian women a year are killed over their dowry. Most are burned to death in their kitchens, a method of killing which can be disguised as an accident. My naive assumption based on these facts is that dowry is here to stay for a while at least. With dowry, commodification of women stays too. With commodification, daughters being considered a financial burden is also a must. Why not try and ease this financial burden on parents by not only giving them financial incentives that government has offered to parents with girl children in the past but also introduce a workable social security system which includes 'public pensions, old-age security, fully subsidized health care and education'?

Perhaps that could work as a solution in combination with changing mindset and implementing laws as suggested in the previous post. What do you say?

Related reading:
Dowry increasing?

Law or changing the mindset? What's the solution?

Finally, I have internet at home and, hopefully, I won't be traveling soon! I am now in Houston and will start the ground work for Unchaahi here within the next month. I'll keep you guys updated. In the meantime, here's a well made video that you must have a look at. Embedding is disabled for the video; therefore, I can't post it here. However, do watch it on YouTube itself.

A woman in the video says, "beti hoyega to kaat daalne ka". hmm.
Translation: If it's a girl, then she's to be cut off (killed).

Some issues brought up in the video:
1. Female foeticide is a well-organized crime wherein doctors and politicians are collectively involved because a lot of money can be made in this field owing to the girl-hatred in the societal mindset.
2. Changing mindset is required but cannot be the only solution since the change is unaccountable.
3. Criminals (doctors and politicians involved) must be convicted of their crimes. (but is it even possible in a country where no law is ever implemented?) PCPNDT act has long been in place but it has had no positive effects. What's the use?

Law or changing the mindset? What do you say?

Related Reading:
Is implementation of Law urgent?

Divorce Wars to make you Cringe

Sonia C contributes:

Hi all

I read this article in Elle magazine and it made me wonder why it should be so difficult for a woman to leave an unhappy marriage. It's truly sad. And this is not happening in a Third World Country but in New York! Read on and let me know what you think:

STUCK ON YOU

Imagine not being able to leave a bad/boring/sexless/loveless marriage - ever. Diana Kapp reports on the bitter divorce wars in States where 'till death does us part' is more than just a marriage vow-it's practically the law!

On May 1, 2006, 10 jurors silently filed out of a White Plains, New York, courtroom into a small, poorly lit conference room down the hall. After about an hour, the chamber door opened and the all-male group shuffled back in. A 37-year-old blond in classic dress pants and a crisp white blouse, her hair pulled tight into a low ponytail, leaned in to her attorney and whispered, “Is a quick decision a good sign or a bad one?”

“A good one,” he reassured.

The foreman gave his verdict. The Westchester County Supreme Court officially denied Dana Godner a divorce.

Earlier, before the judge had excused the jury to deliberate, he turned to the group and issued this stern instruction: “It doesn’t matter if you deem this a deadbeat marriage or a loveless marriage,” he said. “The only thing that matters is: Are there grounds [for divorce]?” He then listed the four legally sanctioned grounds in New York, one of only three states that do not confer unilateral or one-party divorce (the others are Mississippi and Tennessee) and the only state that doesn’t provide a “no-fault” ground (i.e., irreconcilable differences). Rather, one must be able to prove one’s spouse guilty either of “cruel and inhuman” treatment, adultery, abandonment for one year, or having spent at least three years in prison. The only exception is if a couple mutually consents to the divorce and all financial and custody terms, which in acrimonious, contested situations—about one fourth of cases—just does not happen.

In this instance, Godner was suing to leave her husband of 13 years, Michael Godner, for cruel and inhuman treatment, which must meet a standard of abuse that “renders it unsafe or improper” for a couple to continue to cohabit. Clearly in the minds of these jurors, her husband’s behavior just wasn’t bad enough.

After crying her eyes out on the courtroom’s back steps, surrounded by her parents and lawyer, Godner climbed into her silver Range Rover and drove to her colonial-style home in the tony New York City suburb of Armonk. Michael, who had driven back from the courthouse separately, was in the kitchen with their three children. “Hey, how’s it going?’ he asked when she walked in. On one level, this scene resembled many other evenings in the Godner household for the previous two years since Dana had first asked for a divorce: the children, ages five to 10, tiptoeing around their parents’ chilly conversation; Dana cooking dinner for herself and the kids (and tossing the leftovers down the disposal when she heard the key in the door), then retiring to bed separately in the guest room. This evening’s pleasantries, however, followed 15-plus hours of searing court testimony over two weeks, in which Dana, an affable soccer mom, tried to prove to 10 strangers that her husband, the CFO of a $14 billion investment firm, was a controlling bully and their marriage “empty,” “demeaning,” and “the farthest thing from a partnership.” Unfortunately, she couldn’t garner any female sympathy, as almost every one of the women screened for the jury said they would never send a woman back to her husband against her will—effectively disqualifying them—and the one woman who did get picked dropped out midtrial because of a family obligation.

Michael, meanwhile, asserted he was a generous, attentive husband and dad. In his defense, he argued that Dana was well provided for—spoiled, even—and that their problems were the typical ebbs and flows of any longtime union. “Just look at her life—help, money, vacations, a great house,” he testified. As evidence, Michael passed the jurors 31 birthday and anniversary cards Dana had written over the years, described the mink coat and diamond necklace he had bought her, and offered a photo of the two of them, arm in arm on a trip to Vermont. “Don’t we look happy?” he asked.

The marriage, according to Dana, had unraveled slowly, though there were worrisome signs from the start. The couple had met in Manhattan when Dana was in her early twenties and working as a sales rep for a fashionable sportswear company. Michael was exactly the type she’d always thought she should marry—a hard-nosed, sophisticated financier, seven years older and clearly going places. “I loved the way he yelled on the phone when he was doing business,” she recalls.

But their intense, three-month courtship—fueled by weekend getaways and wine-filled evenings—included regular blowouts and deep-freeze periods, usually, she says, over his emotional evasions. Underlying his behavior, Dana felt, was a lack of trust that could be traced to his parents’ difficult divorce when he was a young child. Dana’s parents, meanwhile, who’d been married for more than 40 years, encouraged the couple to go to therapy, which they eventually did. In spring 1993, they had a black-tie wedding for 250 guests at the Mamaroneck Yacht Club.

After two years, the couple moved to Westchester, where Michael was raised, and Dana quit working, which they both wanted. Soon they had a son, followed two years later by a daughter. Michael was totally consumed with growing his investment business; Dana was focused on her new mommy role. Three years later, their third child, another boy, was born.

As sometimes happens to young parents, they began to share less and less. Michael was preoccupied with work and resented being pulled into household concerns. “I don’t ask you to solve problems in my office,” Dana says he once snapped when she phoned to ask for help juggling the kids’ schedules. Dana allowed Michael to take control of all family financial matters—“I was an idiot,” she says now. Everyday expenses required his approval—buying a rug, booking airline tickets, signing off on a contractor’s bill. Michael insisted on separate bank accounts and would replenish Dana’s monthly “allowance” on the first of the month. This was money she could spend on personal needs—clothes, hair, tennis lessons. The only domain left to Dana was day-to-day care of the kids. “It’s like he was the grown-up and I was the child,” she recalls.

Read the rest of the article here.

Reason for being away ...

As you might've noticed, I haven't updated the blog regularly recently. My apologies. I am caught up in moving to a new apartment et al. We've finally signed a lease and now it's my job to sort the place out. I also don't have internet access at home yet. I'll be back as soon as I am online (it could be as early as tomorrow). In the meantime, thanks Sonia!! :)

Films/Media action on Female Foeticide

Contributed by Sonia C.

Teachers pool in money for film but screen it in housing societies due to lack of funds

In the last few years, female foeticide may have featured as the dominant topic in seminars and conferences, but for Arjun Jagdhane, it goes beyond just talk.

A teacher of Hindi and Marathi at Goregaon’s Nandeep High School, Jagdane’s obsession for educating people about the death of the girl child found a medium on the silver screen, with the movie Savitichya Lekhi — a two-hour Marathi film on female infanticide.

The film traces the journey of the protagonist, an educated female lawyer from a middle class family who leaves her husband and in-laws when they pressurise her to abort her second daughter after a pregnancy test. The husband remarries, only to have a hard time managing his new wife and puts his parents in an old age home. The protagonist and her daughter who the family had abandoned then take up the responsibility of her in-laws.

“I then took my story to director Sanjay Pawar (Mukta, Dombivli Fast, Viruddh). Pawar immediately liked the story and agreed to convert it into a movie,” he said.

“We then collected the sum for nearly a year by including more teachers as members in the Kalpak Creation Parivar — the banner under which the film has been released.”

Seventeen other school teachers from schools like Vivek Vidyalaya, Vidya Mandir High School, Balvikas High School and Yusuf Meher Ali in Tardeo have taken personal loans of up to Rs 2 lakhs each for it.

Ramesh Mohite, one of the teachers, said that the group had failed to set aside money for publicity. “We weren’t aware of the money to keep aside for publicity. We have no money to release it in theatres in Mumbai now hence we are now showing it in housing societies in a bid to recover some of the cost as well as make more people aware.” The team has now written a letter to President Pratibha Patil expressing their desire to hold a private screening for her.

Halls in affluent belts to show movies against female foeticide
by Charu Sudan Kasturi for The Telegraph

New Delhi, Jan. 3: Multiplexes in some of India’s richest localities may soon be showing films against female foeticide, a crime that statistics suggest is most common among the urban elite.

Sources said the government was planning to produce movies against foeticide and screen them specifically in multiplexes, visited primarily by the more affluent in urban India.

The initiative is part of broader plans to target better-off Indians, the sources said.

“The aim of these films will be to sensitise multiplex audiences, which are very different in character and in their choice of films from the rest of India,” a senior official in the women and child development ministry said.

The ministry has already initiated talks with the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

At a meeting with FTII officials scheduled for this weekend, minister Renuka Chowdhury is expected to outline how the government plans to go about the project.

After the meeting, the government, the sources said, would shortlist a few filmmakers to direct the movies. Upcoming director Meghna Gulzar is among the names being discussed, they said. The movies might also involve FTII faculty members and alumni, officials at the institute said.

Speaking to The Telegraph a week ago, the women and child development minister had expressed fears of a “girl squeeze” in Indian society.

“There is an increasing girl squeeze in our society. If things continue the way they are at present, soon there may be entire areas where boys don’t have enough girls to marry,” she had said.

The decision to screen movies indicates growing acceptance within the government that while education and financial stability might help overcome many socio-economic hurdles, foeticide continues to plague the better-off sections in India.

Prosperous states like Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat, and Delhi have among the lowest sex ratios in the country (see chart below).

Within Delhi, well-to-do localities — like Defence Colony, Preet Vihar and Punjabi Bagh — have among the lowest sex ratios.

Traditionally, not enough has been done to spread awareness among the elite, ministry sources said. But gynaecologist Puneet Bedi accused the government of indulging in “page three talk, based on little understanding of the problem”.

“If I drive a fancy car, I will not switch to a bicycle after watching a movie. The killers of Nithari wouldn’t have stopped killing girls because of a film they saw. Initiatives like these are an insult to the seven million dead Indian girls,” Bedi fumed.

Bedi said the government needed to make serious efforts to enforce the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prevention) Act, instead of spending money simply on awareness.

“In India, the law was introduced precisely because it became clear that awareness alone had failed. Female foeticide cannot be treated as a social evil which awareness can eliminate. It is a crime,” he said.

Bedi also questioned the government’s decision to selectively target the urban rich.

“It is true that the rich have been guilty more often. But that is only because they can afford it. As the charges for sex determination fall, the poor will also engage in the crime,” he said.

Courtesy : The Telegraph, Calcutta

Good news: CrPC offer succour to rape victims

Contributed by Sonia C.

This story appeared in TOI a few days back. It talks of policy changes being made at a federal level to assist rape victims. Surely a welcome change!! Have a read.

NEW DELHI: The government has cleared a path-breaking package to lessen the agony of rape victims. Completing trial of rape cases in two months, having women judges hear rape cases “as far as practicable”, and recording statements of victims at places of their choice are some of the bold changes to the criminal procedure code (CrPC) approved by the Union Cabinet on Thursday.

The proposals are part of the larger bouquet of changes in the CrPC (Amendment) Bill, which is to be re-introduced in Parliament after having been vetted by the standing committee.

In another significant change approved by the Cabinet, victims can appeal against acquittals. This provision can act as a deterrent against frequent instances of collusion between the prosecution and the accused. Put simply, those of the sort who allegedly tried to help the accused in the Priyadarshini Mattoo case may have to contend with the alert relatives of victims tracking their conduct.

The Cabinet also decided to commute capital punishment of a pregnant convict to life imprisonment, in keeping with the principle that helped Nalini, convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, escape the noose.

Though officials are not sure whether the bill would be tabled in Parliament during the ongoing Budget session, both home and law ministries are keen that the proposed legislation be taken up during the monsoon session.

The changes related to rape seek to provide protection to victims, many of whom don’t dare step forward to complain, or, in the case of the brave ones who defy the stigma to report the crime, to endure police investigations and trial proceedings.

If the proposed legislation gets Parliament's nod, investigation of rape cases will be conducted at the residence of the victim and "so far as practicable, by a woman police officer". It also makes provision for a victim to be questioned in the presence of her parents or a social worker of the locality. These provisions will spare the victims of the agony of visiting police stations and answering inconvenient — obscene in many cases — questions in the presence of unknown persons.

The suggestion for the presence of women trial judges will also cushion against the insensitive inquisition by the defence counsel which can scar the victim with the feeling of being violated a second time.

Changes have also been approved for quick disposal of rape cases without leaving scope for postponement or adjournment of proceedings.

... Read further here.

Role of Media

Alankrita emailed me a news story today about India's Ministry of Women & Child Development's efforts to crack down on Indian TV (entertainment) industry to reformat their shows to acknowledge social evils like dowry deaths and female foeticide. As per NDTV, Renuka Chowdhary - Minister for Women & Child Development - said, "They should show more meaningful stuff on television. They should bring sensible issues like female foeticide or dowry death etc. We have told them that serious women issues should be a subject to focus upon." As expected, this diktat from the Union Minister has caught the idot box fraternity on the wrong foot. They are up in arms fiercely defending their turf.

Why wouldn't they be? Why would they give up their source of income (a rather hefty one at that) so easily? I've talked about influence of media on society and vice versa in this post when speaking of Ekta Kapoor, one of the most famous TV show producers in the country. Basically, these TV shows are made for an audience who are lapping them up. If the audience WANTS to watch these saas-bahu shows, why wouldn't the TV producers make them? Do you think that shows that deal with grim issues like female foeticide would earn a viewership profitable for producers like let's say Kiyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi? If yes, more power to the audience!! If not (which I think is the case sadly), then why would TV producers want to make shows at a loss?

Assumption, of course, that I am making here is that the audience does NOT want to see the same issues that they face in real life to be depicted on screen too. I think that audience wants escapism and that's what TV shows are providing. So are Bollywood films. Who affects who? You talk. I'll listen.

Is Ms. Renuka Chowdhary's suggestion reasonable???

What do you say?

Want to make a film?

Perhaps on issues close to your heart? Female foeticide could be one ... ? A friend forwarded me information about Filmmaking workshops in Delhi if any of you is interested:

********TWO FILMMAKING WORKSHOPS IN DELHI********

----- THE INTENSIVE SUMMER WORKSHOP-----
For 6 years now, Impulse has been organising a filmmaking workshop conducted by Kavita Joshi.

STARTS LATE MAY. REGISTRATIONS ARE OPEN.

SUITABLE FOR BEGINNERS.

Prior experince in this field is not needed.
We are open to anyone 17 years and up...

THE WORKSHOP IS AIMED AT PEOPLE WHO:
- want to make their own film, but don't quite know how
- or are thinking of a career in TV/films, but are not sure if it's right for them
- or are doing a media / communication course which doesn't have enough video training
- or simply want a creative new activity

PARTICIPANTS GET TO:
- Script. Shoot. Edit. Make a film...
- Watch rare films from over the world and read film books
- Work on digital equipment
- Go for Field Trips, and more...

LOGISTICS:
- Held in (south) Delhi. Starting late May
- It is modular - 4 weeks + 4 weeks (fairly full time).
- Each batch has 16-18 people max.

CONDUCTED BY:

The workshop is principally conducted by Kavita Joshi, an independent
filmmaker based in Delhi, who has been designing and conducting training programmes in filmmaking since 2001. There will be additional inputs by other trainers.

To know more about Kavita's films and work, please visit:
http://kavitajoshi.blogspot.com

Visit the workshop web-group here:
http://groups.google.com/group/impulseworkshops

----- THE WEEKEND WORKSHOP-----
In 2008, we are launching an additional NEW weekend-based workshop, suitable for WORKING PEOPLE who hold full time jobs, and especially for NGOs that may have VIDEO SHOOTING NEEDS.

Again, beginners are welcome. Experience in filmmaking is not required.

We aim to launch this workshop by August. Registrations open soon.
In case you are interested in this, please send us an email asap.

----- REQUEST DETAILS ABOUT EITHER WORKSHOP -----
Send an email to [ impulsemail AT gmail DOT com ]

Email enquiries should include
- your full name, main email id and a back-up email id
- phone number (advisable) and city
- and mention which workshop you are interested in
In case you are working, it helps a lot if you tell us a bit about your profession, nature of work, timings, and organisation.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE PAID WORKSHOPS

Vote if female foeticide is a national shame or not

Tribuneindia.com asked its readers to cast a vote whether they 'agree that continuing female foeticide is a matter of national shame'? Results surprized me. While 90.8% of the votes cast agreed that it is a matter of national shame, there were 8.3% of people who didn't think so. 8.3% is a big figure, isn't it? These are people who have access to internet and are reading news in English. So, we can safely assume that they are somewhat 'educated'. Even out of these educated folks, 8.3% apparently don't feel it is a matter of shame at all that we're killing our daughters. I don't know what else to interpret. Was I being too hopeful when expecting a certain 100% 'yes' as an answer to the question raised in the poll?

Here's the proof:

Rapes of Congo

A documentary on the women of Congo opened my eyes to yet another sad reality. Rape of women is being used as a weapon in the civil war there. The level of cruelty being inflicted on women who are raped, mutilated, and humiliated by the so-called 'soldiers' is beyond comprehension. My worries of having put on a few extra pounds almost vaporized when hearing the stories the women had to share in the documentary. Girls as young as 2 and women as old as 80 are brutally raped by gangs of men and left to their own devices. Most of these women have to go through reconstructive surgeries as a result of the mutilation. Of course, not all of them get medical help. Out of those who do get help at a hospital designated only for rape victims, nearly 30% are infected with AIDS due to the rape. Majority of them have serious physical complications that might last for the rest of their lives. Emotional damage, needless to say, would obviously last forever.

As I type, a woman is narrating her story of how she was kept as a sex slave along with another group of women in a forest where the 'soldiers' are hiding. I don't have the guts to type the brutality that she is describing. I really cannot believe that such inhumane beasts who raped these women really exist!! In the same documentary, the film maker went to speak to these rapists in a forest. They appeared on camera with their faces covered. With huge guns in tow, they agreed to all the accusations. They said that they do rape women because they have the 'need' to. Their justfication is that they ask women to comply but when women don't, they take them by force. If a woman is strong, then they call their buddies to help them rape her. Also, that God has made man superior than a woman and that a woman should listen to a man and live by his rules. After sharing their pearls of wisdom, they arrogantly walked back into the bush they walked out of leaving the film maker (and me) astounded.

If you are interested and have the strength to read more on this issue, this article would be a good start.

Words cannot express the pain that these women are going through. As I type this, there is a woman on screen who is going through excruciating pain due to the rape. She couldn't get medical help and is now slowly dying in pain in her little hut without anyone to assist her in her days of misery. Victims of rape and children of rape are ostracized. They are seldom accepted back in the society. All of them have troubles living a life many of us take for granted.

There are activists speaking against this disaster. UN is quite actively involved as well. Policy changes are being initiated but there can be no implementation considering that the country is ripped by conflict. Police officers themselves are the offenders. There is no law. Is this what happens when there's lawlessness? Forced sex? For what? Control, power or just plain horniness? Rapists say they have no regret. They feel no shame. They feel no guilt. They say that they realize it's wrong but they have no choice. No choice to not hurt a human being? How monstrous can one be? Raping a four year old child? Is there no choice there?

A stellar line from the documentary that I can't get over. The rapists when asked whether they have sisters or a mother and what if they were raped ... All of them answered:
"Yes, I have raped many women but if someone did that to my mother or sisters, I'd kill that person."

.... and the struggle of existing as a female continues ....

It breaks my heart to hear the parents in the documentary hoping that their daughters will never be raped. They don't speak of their daughter having a good life or a good career. Their only concern is her not being raped.

Having said that, my respects go to the survivors of these incidences of cruelty. They might be in physical pain, emotionally crushed, ostracized from the society and families that they were once a part of but they are still trying to survive. Their strength amazes and inspires me. I would no longer look at the weigh-scale and feel obsessively concerned with the increasing pounds.

Food crisis affecting women

When writing about global food crisis on my personal blog, I came across a news story that states that women are getting even more burdened with the food crisis:

‘’Women are definitely the worst affected when food prices go up. They will have to bear additional burdens for their families,’’ Lucia Jayaseelan, CAW’s executive coordinator, told IPS following the campaign’s launch. ‘’They also end up making huge sacrifices, such as being the last to eat in a family that is suddenly faced with limited food at home.’’

In addition, women are driven to seek additional jobs in the informal sector, often compelling them to work for longer hours, she added. ‘’They take on more work, like tailoring or packing things into small packages in their homes. Some women end up having to do three jobs.’’

Compounding the problem is the lack of a basic minimum wage for such female workers, Jayaseelan said. ‘’In many Asian countries there is no minimum wage. And where they do exist, they do not take into account the rise in inflation.’’

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), women make up 38.7 percent, or some 730 million, of the Asia-Pacific region’s total workforce, currently estimated at 1.9 billion people. But close to 65 percent of female workers earn a living in the ‘’vulnerable’’ and ‘’informal’’ sector, where there are no steady wages or social benefits.

Typical among those in the vulnerable and the informal sector are women who are self-employed, working in homes to produce goods for sale, or the millions who works as food vendors in the streets of Asia’s major and minor cities and towns. South Asian women account for the largest share of these vulnerable women across the continent, some 82 percent, ILO’s research reveals.

‘’The women who work as street vendors are being directly hit by the increase in food prices, because they have no social protection nor benefits in times of trouble,’’ says Steven Kapsos, a labour economist at the ILO’s Asia-Pacific regional office, based in Bangkok. ‘’Even women working in the region’s garment sector will be vulnerable despite getting a wage, because they do not enjoy benefits to deal with such a spike in food prices.’’

Read all of it here.

Mothers and their murdered daughters

What must a mother go through when she has to kill her own daughter? Should she be punished? Should she be held guilty even if her crime was forced by her family members? I found a wonderfully written article titled Mothers and Daughters: a crime of one's own on a mother's dilemma that must be shared. It is written by Bhaswati Chakravorty for The Telegraph:

It cannot always be done neatly. Killing baby girls is most easily done immediately after birth, and even then it could be messy, especially if the mother is left to do it on her own. For example — and examples in India are countless — a 25-year-old woman from Bihar strangled her day-old daughter in 2006, and then pretended that the baby had died of natural causes. Stupid girl. She tried to get away with murder while housed in the AIIMS in Delhi. She had been brought there from her village in Nalanda because she had a bad heart and her pregnancy was complicated. She may have got away with it in her village, where she could have had complicity and understanding. Caught out, she said that she did not want a girl because that is considered a “bad omen” back in her village. Just like another young woman in faraway Chennai, who actually waited three months after the birth of her girl before she threw the baby into a canal from the terrace of her house. She said she took her decision because after the baby was born her husband’s business began to show losses, and that she too was falling sick.

Coming back to the mother in Delhi, the story reported becomes a little fuller in the days following her confession. Because she was already seriously ill, her husband and in-laws had spent a great deal on her treatment and had sold some land in order to send her to Delhi. All this was done in the expectation that the baby would be a boy. Else, she had been told, her husband would divorce her. She was already the mother of two boys, and only another boy would be welcome. They had spent enough on her; the mother quailed at the thought of further expenses, of education and of dowry, on behalf of an unwanted girl. The baby was a bad omen in every way.

The mother in Chennai, who seems to have disappeared from the national media without a trace after her arrest, remains silent to us on the specific causes of her decision. But her apparent heartlessness towards her own child is matched by a kind of protectiveness towards her husband. If she was persuaded that his business was badly affected by this undesirable birth, she was anxious to point out that she had become ill too. The reference to an other-worldly causality that helped her — and possibly everyone else — ignore the real causes of her own ill health, must have also helped her execute her nightmarish act.

But nightmares cannot be reproduced in the news. “Superstitious mother kills baby,” said one headline. And when the woman in Delhi was being taken away to Tihar jail, the police were clear about one thing: her husband “was not a party to the crime”. Of course not, he didn’t strangle the baby. The husband of a 22-year-old woman in a hospital in Chandigarh was shattered when he heard that his wife had strangled their newborn girl. He had accepted the baby “as a gift of God”. Then he is probably in a minority in a region where female foeticide and infanticide have caused a frightening imbalance in the sex ratio.

Society’s judgments are quick and harsh on a mother who kills her own children. Particularly so, when she not only survives but also tries to hide the fact that she is a murderer. She is perceived as monstrous, and no amount of data about the pressures on a woman to produce a son can alter this perception. Motherhood is a “holy” state. Everyone else can desecrate it, drive a mother crazy before and after having borne a girl, but she is a criminal, an unnatural woman, the moment she is seen to have killed her baby.

But it must be clear that she has done the killing with her own hands, without help, and has then dared to live on. All that she says subsequently will be examined in the light of society’s assumptions. When Seema Sai, from Cha village in Burdwan, finally admitted to having killed both her daughters by drowning them in a tank at Belur Math (and neither was newborn), the police expressed surprise that she should have complained to her father of torture in her in-laws’ home. “Girls confide in their mothers,” was the understanding — the implication being, of course, that she was lying.

Would these mothers have earned the collective, if not always expressed, sympathy of society that fathers do when they commit suicide after killing their children because of poverty, depression or the “debt burden”? These are somehow acceptable causes, and a father who has failed in his duty to feed his family is an object of pity and commiseration. Seema said she wanted to die too, but failed to do so. Not only that, her actions after drowning her daughters speak of an apparently well-thought-out desire to escape punishment. She lied, again and again.

The point is that the murdering mother has to be caught out doing the killing on her own. Once the institutions of society have turned their scrutiny on this lonely act, it is a hideous crime. Some studies in the late Nineties put the number of baby girls killed every year in villages by mothers, midwives and close female relatives far over a few thousand. And this is without including the possible numbers of sex-selective abortions. But we do not find thousands of mothers’ faces splashed all over the media as Seema Sai’s has been. Granted, her crime seems particularly terrible, and her efforts to escape responsibility well planned, but would she have been a little more tenderly handled had she a supportive husband by her side?

Tamil Nadu had become known for its high rates of female infanticide from the mid-Eighties. A mother in the Kallar community there, who had just killed her baby daughter, said that she and her husband had decided it was better to let the baby suffer for a few moments than to let her live a miserable life in a landless labourer’s family. They already had a daughter. The husband, who had got the poisonous herbs to kill the baby, said that he could not dream of marrying off two daughters with the required dowry. But Seema’s husband was not a party to the crime, the police said. Does that make Seema a more “unnatural” mother than the Kallar woman? Can “natural” motherhood be constructed out of fear, ignorance, neglect and inherited guilt?

When a mother kills her child, it raises questions about the nature of will and agency, and the relationship between the two. She acts, but how does that action come about? How does premeditation function here, and what does it mean, say, in a case like Seema’s? Such questions may assume an unchanging emotion called mother-love. What form does this emotion take in a woman who has no right to decide when she will or will not have children, and who may believe, as many do, that producing a girl has something to do with her, that it is her failure, her fault?

Seema’s face is now a familiar one in West Bengal, the state with one of the highest rates of female foeticide. It is worthwhile to look into that face, to try and catch those eyes empty of everything except an unnameable terror, to gaze at that thin, racked body, and imagine a procession of thousands of such faces and bodies. Her crime — can her act be given another name? — is gruesome, her instinct for survival raw and pitiful. Social scientists and activists argue that the mother who kills her daughter is as much a victim as her child; they are both subject to the same forces of a cruelly gender-biased society. The counter-argument comes from others: no one can violate a girl’s right to live. Is it possible to make a special law for mothers who kill their baby girls? How would such a law be formulated? All other things remaining the same, can one imagine the horrors that would then ensue?

All other things remaining the same. That, ultimately, is the moral of the story. It is not the individual mother who violates the right of a girl to her life, but all those other things that have not only remained the same, but have even grown worse over the years. Greater inequality of means, opportunity and education; narrowing resources; a heightening demand for material goods; a proportional increase in frustration, impatience, insecurity and violence; harsher demands for dowry; minor marriages; the neglect of women’s education and health; the desperate need to cling on more fiercely to the old tyrannies in a rapidly changing world. All these, and more, add up to an inexpressible condition of misery that drives a woman to kill the one thing that could have given her happiness, a fleeting sense of ownership, and a sense of being needed. Can the “abnormal” mother who has killed her child have anything that can be called a “normal” life?

Unique way of action against female foeticide

Borrowed from Timesonline.co.uk:

The big fat Indian wedding has been told to slim down. Leaders of Delhi’s Sikh community have called for an end to lavish wedding celebrations featuring meat and alcohol on the grounds that they encourage the dowry system and female foeticide.

The Delhi Gurdwara Management Committee, the city’s top Sikh body, has told the capital’s one million Sikhs to boycott weddings that are not teetotal, vegetarian and over by noon. Similar measures are being considered in other Indian cities.

Sikhs are supposed to avoid unnecessary expenditure, but their weddings have become increasingly ostentatious in recent years. Many last several days, beginning with the groom’s procession to the bride’s home and culminating in a banquet featuring tandoori chicken, beer and whisky and dancing into the night.

One of the most extravagant on record was that of Vikram Chatwal, a New York-based hotelier, and Priya Sachdev, an Indian model. Their ceremony last year involved twenty-five parties, held over ten nights in three cities. The committee has ordered Delhi’s 350 gurdwaras (Sikh temples) not to issue wedding certificates to families who ignore its guidelines. Those who hold wedding processions in the evening will not be allowed to marry in a gurdwara.

“Our fight is against the exploitation by those who pose demands on the girl’s family to organise elaborate weddings,” Paramjit Singh Sarna, the committee president, said. “It is this splurge of wealth on ceremonies which is promoting dowry and practices like female foeticide.”

Although it is technically illegal to demand a dowry, most Indians ignore the ban. The bride’s family is expected to pay for a sumptuous wedding and give the groom’s family cash and other gifts. As a result, daughters are traditionally seen as a financial burden and many Indians kill newborn girls or abort female foetuses.

The Indian Medical Association says that five million female foetuses are terminated every year. The issue was highlighted last week when the wife of an Indian millionaire accused him of forcing her to abort two girls.

Sardar Ram Singh, another Sikh leader in Delhi, said that the committee’s new guidelines would soon be taken up elsewhere. “I am confident that over 95 per cent Sikhs will positively respond to our appeal,” he said.

Similar calls have fallen on deaf ears on the past. “There might be a show of restraint, but at the end of the day, Sikhs like to party,” one 31-year-old Sikh man who is about to get married said. “I don’t think we’ll be changing our plans.”

1792 and today: Woman then, Woman now

A new place, a new start, and search for a new job forced me to look into many documents that I've got saved on my hard drive for a particular file. My search uncovered a presentation that I had made a couple of years ago at a university conference in Canada on a piece of writing by Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of Rights of Women written by Wollstonecraft, published in 1792, was the first great feminist treatise. Wollstonecraft preached that intellect will always govern and sought “to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonimous [sic] with epithets of weakness.” You can read her writing here. A must-read.

Although my presentation can't even be compared to Mary's writing, I figured I might share it since I did bring it up already. ;) This is from April 2006 and was written an hour before I got up to present it (last minute as usual) ;). Here goes:

I talk to you today about Mary Wollstonecraft because decades have passed since she wrote but her pangs can still be heard. A woman today is still a woman; she hasn’t yet been elevated to the status of a human being. She is still being equated to a child which represents weakness. Irrespective of the geographical location in the world, a woman is still a babe, a chick, a girl, a flower petal or a dewdrop. In 1792, Mary writes:

One cause of this barren blooming [is] a false system of education, gathered from the books written on [women] by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers. (Wollstonecraft 1792: 289)

Before I discuss the text with you in further detail, I would like to share an example with you from the Calgary Herald from March 30, 2006. It is a news story about a doctor who got arrested for conducting sex-selective abortions in a clinic in India. Sex-selective abortions and infanticide strictly pertaining to female children in India is not a new phenomenon but what’s striking about this issue is that it is not restricted to just the lower strata of the society. It is widespread through all social and economic levels including the educated classes. Calgary Herald states:

Female infanticide has been widespread for centuries, particularly in northern India, where girls were considered a financial liability because they were unable to do manual labour and required an expensive dowry. In modern times, infanticide has been largely replaced by feticide because of the availability of legalized abortion and affordable ultrasound clinics. In the village of Jahkoli, for instance, after an ultrasound machine was installed […], the birth register showed that of 61 deliveries, only […] 22 percent were girls. (Foster 2006:A10)

According to UN, currently, the male to female ratio is 800 to 1000 in northern India and it is dwindling every day. In order to correct the ratio figures, conviction of doctors alone won't help, upliftment of women and their self-worth is also necessary. That's exactly what Mary was trying to bring about years ago and we still haven't achieved it. She stressed on the need of education for both men and women alike to create awareness about equality of a woman. Equality, according to Mary, does not mean that a woman must do the manly chores like “hunting, shooting and gaming” to be treated as an equal but she needs to be mentally competent enough to be respected for who she is, and the only way that she can gain that mental competence is through education (Wollstonecraft 1792: 289). Speaking of education, Mary says that “the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 289).

She also believes that education is important for a woman to be able to run her family, raise her children properly, and not leave the domestic affairs, which she can easily take care of, to the man of the household. She says that “it is acknowledged that [women] spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty” to which she further poses a question that “can [such women] be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 289). In addition, Mary acknowledges that “the education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 289). Unfortunately, that is still the case today, at least in some parts of the world.

I’ll take an example from my own personal experiences. Women are being educated in the east-Indian families that I know of including mine. Every family takes pride in itself for being liberal, for being in with the changing times, for getting their daughters educated just as much as their sons, but the mentality behind getting their daughters educated is still not much different from that of Mary’s time. Girls are being educated and prepared towards getting themselves potentially a rich groom. In far more than a few cases, marriage is still considered “the only way women can rise in the world” as it was during Mary’s time (Wollstonecraft 1792: 289). I often compare the mentality that goes behind raising a girl in such an environment to raising livestock: the only difference being that the livestock is sold at a profit while a girl has to be sold or married at a loss. It is not a surprise that sex-selective abortion clinics are sprouting in every town and city where assumptions as such are rooted deeply into the society.

Another idea that really stood out to me from the text is when Mary speaks of women being conditioned to behave a certain way. She says:

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least, twenty years of their lives … (Wollstonecraft 1792: 290)

How true is that today?! It is deeply embedded into our society, even the western world, that a woman has to act a certain womanly way. She is required to be like rest of the women in the society are. She is conditioned into becoming a woman by the projections of stereotypes regarding women through, for example, media, and/or through looking at other older women starting with her own mother. The perpetual state of childhood of a woman is still being forced on to us like it was the case in Mary’s world. Moreover, Mary mentions in the text is that the cunningness that is considered typical of a woman’s character is a result of oppression by the man (Wollstonecraft 1792: 292). Due to the circumstances they are in for being the weaker sex, they tend to condition themselves into being manipulative and “cunning” for keeping their minds busy I suppose (Wollstonecraft 1792: 292). Mary suggests that the only way out of being like that for women is by ceasing dependency on men. She says that “it is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 291).

I cannot close this presentation without mentioning the sentence from the text where Mary says that “rights and duties are inseparable” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 292). This sentence summarizes everything that she is trying to convey to her audience in A Vindication of the Rights of Women. She states that it is imperative that in order to empower women and to have them excel in their duties, they need to be awarded more rights, and these rights can only be awarded if the society is educated about their necessity. Also, Mary does not do away with the stereotypes pertaining to roles of women as a mother and a caretaker but she insists on breaking the boundaries adhering to these roles in order to assure independence from men. She acknowledges that there are a certain duties that only a woman can handle better than a man but she stresses that these duties can be handled even better if a woman is not denied “the rights of reason” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 292). According to her, women can only be uplifted from “the deplorable state” of innocence and ignorance through education and “independence of mind” (Wollstonecraft 1792: 290-91).

Is the uplifting that Mary talks about complete today? How often do we hear cases of honor killings in third world countries or, for that matter, even in Canada? Why is it that it’s always the woman who has to die for family honor? Why is it that if a man breaks the same rules as a woman, he is excused but the woman has to be shot dead? Uplifting of women was required in Mary’s world, it is required today, and it might be required tomorrow …


Bibliography

Wollstonecraft, M. (1792) GNS Reading Package: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. University of Calgary Press.

Foster, P. “India cracks down on sex selection.” Calgary Herald. 30 March, 2006: A20.

How can you ignore this suffering?

I took this photograph during one of the protests being held in England against Novartis and Huntington Life Sciences for their cruel tests on animals. The banner in focus reads: "How can you ignore this suffering?" When I saw the banner, it struck me that although their cause might be different than what we strive towards on this blog, the message is still the same: how can you ignore this suffering? I rushed for my camera and you can see what I witnessed.

A few stories to share ...

1. Not that this is news, but still must be told: Docs use green for boy, red for girl

At a small village near Madhugiri in Tumkur district, there are several doctors who offer to determine the sex of an unborn child for Rs 10,000. Though the child welfare department has received many complaints from this area, the authorities have not been able to take action as doctors use unique methods to convey the sex to parents.

"They write ‘+’ for a male child and ‘-’ for a female on the scanning report. The ultrasound clinics in that area are always filled with couples from Bangalore who go all the way to get the tests done," a women and child welfare department official explained. It is not just Madhugiri which is known for such practices. There are scanning clinics in the city too. According to sources, many doctors do it secretly and at home. They have methods like writing the scan report in "green" ink for a baby boy and "red" for a girl. Sometimes, it’s mixture for baby girl and sweet for a boy.

Dr Girijamma, a gynaecologist, says there is an alarming increase in foeticide with doctors adopting different methods to find the sex. "This definitely needs to be stopped. Parents expecting a child should be advised by their doctors not to go to a clinic for this," he said. The big demand for the test and easy money are obviously the reasons for the jump in foeticide. Project director at the department Mohan Raj said: "There is so much demand from parents to know the sex [of the foetus]. Doctors naturally find it lucrative."

How can laws work?

2. Again, old news but India's 'Girl Deficit' Deepest Among the Educated

Against common expectations, female feticide is not a crime of India's backward masses. Instead, it is most common among India's elite, who can afford multiple trips to an ultrasound clinic, and the hushed-up abortion of an unwanted girl. In the prosperous farming district of Kurukshetra, for instance, there are only 770 girl babies for every 1,000 boys. In the high-rent Southwest neighborhoods of New Delhi, the number of girl babies is 845 per 1,000 boys.

3. More news of Women Trafficking as a result of sex ratio imbalance: Girl, Interrupted

The repercussions on a society where there are far more men than women have begun to show. Women are being married off to men who don?t speak their language or eat their food. All over Punjab and Haryana, areas that the just-released census report says have far fewer women than men, brides are being bought and brought from the poorer regions of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam, where there is no shortage of women.

[...]

Till recently, son preference was the phrase used to describe the tendency to treat a daughter as a liability. Now, AIDWA general secretary Brinda Karat refers to it as a daughter dis-preference. Agnihotri describes it ? for want of a better word, he says ? as daughter dislike.

But daughter dislike, some argue, leads to a situation where daughters are in short supply, and therefore much in demand. A school of thought once led by the late academic, Dharma Kumar, suggests that an inverse sex ratio ends up benefiting women.

Over two decades ago, in an article in The Economic and Political Weekly, Kumar had maintained that there will be a growing demand for women as their numbers lessen, thereby raising their status in society.

The activists maintain that far from improving their social status, the scarcity of women leads to increased violence against women as the situation in Haryana and Punjab indicates. "There is no study in India on this, but I would expect an increased crime rate in areas where there are a lot more men than women," Agnihotri stresses.

[...]

Agnihotri adds to the list of dos. One of the first steps, he holds, is to improve the law-and-order situation in a place where female foeticide is a problem. And second, he believes that women have to be drawn into self-help groups. "Give them economic muscle, and give them somebody to turn to", he says. And another strong antidote, he maintains, is government policy that treats both sons and daughters as equals.

If steps are taken now, the next census may show a small improvement in the sex ratio. But if all factors remain the same, the child sex ratio, the experts warn, may fall by 10 to 15 points by the next census.

How can we ignore this suffering indeed?

Related Readings:
1. Implementation of LAW urgent?
2. Paro: the results of highly skewed gender ratio
3. Misogyny is not a function of Education or Riches