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Real0ne -> RE: Eradicating women. (8/21/2007 12:25:04 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
RealOne: Well the topic is cultural treament that eradictes females. I think I got a little off-track. I am going to take a shoprt break, but I shall return. I appreciate the topic was introduced - it is a very worthy one.
- Susan
Well the problem is "dowry" and inheritance related and has little to do with misogony or patriarchism. I am surprised no one has berought that up?
Written 3:02 AM May 26, 1997 by
Inheritance Reform in Maharashtra
A PNA dispatch
archives: November 1994 Gender and Inheritance Law Reform in Maharashtra
By Annabelle Perkins The government of Maharashtra State in India has recently passed a law designed to promote gender equity in property inheritance and discourage the practice of dowry-giving. The law provides for the right of a daughter to inherit parents' wealth on an equal basis with sons. Until this law was implemented in Maharashtra, daughters did not have the legal right to claim an equal share of an inheritance because of a loophole in national law. In most cases they had to be content with a dowry. Dowry is officially supposed to represent a daughter's share of her family's wealth, in the form of a pre-mortem inheritance from her parents at the time of her marriage. Dowry is also given by the parents of a daughter to compensate the groom's family for supporting her after her marriage, since she is often prohibited by social customs from earning a cash income that would contribute economically to the family into which she is married. Women may also become an economic burden in the event of widowhood, which is likely since brides are typically much younger than grooms. However, dowry has deteriorated into a method of extortion of wealth from bride's to groom's parents, leaving many parents of daughters in debt and encouraging the practice of female feticide - an increasing social evil in the state of Maharashtra, as elsewhere in India. This practice occurs as a result of great social pressure on parents to arrange socially acceptable marriages for their daughters without having the economic means to do so.
http://www.prout.org/pna/inheritance-india.html
and its not just india:
Female infanticide in India
Many cultures around the world place a much higher value on the male gender of the human species than the female. This has cultivated a deep-rooted preference for producing boys over girls in many nations, particularly Arab and Asian countries, such as Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
There is no question that society always has been, and - even though there have been improvements - still is male-dominated. The status of women had been raised in many cultures since the 20th century, but in many patriarchal societies they are still considered second class citizens and not privy to the same advantages and benefits men are. One manifestation of this is the dowry system practiced in India. If a son of one family is to get married to a daughter of another, the daughter's family is expected to give large sums of money or other goods to the son's family. Thus, having a daughter is an economic burden on the family as a whole and it can bankrupt a poor family with more than one daughter. Even though this practice has been officially banned by law, the ban is largely ignored and still practiced in all social castes.
One reason women are not preferred over men - and this goes for other societies besides India - is that they are seen as impure because of menstruation and child birth. Also in agricultural societies women are seen as a financial loss because they do not work the fields, whereas the men do. This coupled with the financial burden of having a girl has led to the practice of infanticide in regards to the female babies. Rather than face economic hardship from the omnipresent - albeit illegal - dowry system or face any accusations of dishonor, a large number of infants are killed at birth immediately after it is discovered that they are not male.
The mother often has no say in this. The decision to kill the female infants is in the hands of the patriarch of the family. But he does not do it. Midwives are very common in India. In addition to the responsibilities of assisting the mother in childbirth, as most midwives in many other countries and cultures do, for an extra fee will euthanize the female babies shortly after birth. Senior women in the patriarch's family also will take this responsibility on.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Female%20infanticide%20in%20India
Seems the women are knee deep in the practice as well!
More:According to a recent report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing from India' s population as a result of systematic gender discrimination in India. In most countries in the world, there are approximately 105 female births for every 100 males. In India, there are less than 93 women for every 100 men in the population. The accepted reason for such a disparity is the practice of female infanticide in India, prompted by the existence of a dowry system which requires the family to pay out a great deal of money when a female child is married. For a poor family, the birth of a girl child can signal the beginning of financial ruin and extreme hardship. However this anti-female bias is by no means limited to poor families. Much of the discrimination is to do with cultural beliefs and social norms. These norms themselves must be challenged if this practice is to stop. Diagnostic teams with ultrasound scanners which detect the sex of a child advertise with catchlines such as spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later. The implication is that by avoiding a girl, a family will avoid paying a large dowry on the marriage of her daughter. According to UNICEF, the problem is getting worse as scientific methods of detecting the sex of a baby and of performing abortions are improving. These methods are becoming increasing available in rural areas of India, fuelling fears that the trend towards the abortion of female foetuses is on the increase
http://www.indianchild.com/abortion_infanticide_foeticide_india.htm
Approaching this as a patriarchial practice designed against women or worse as misogony is disingenous and totally overlooks what appears to be primarily pragmatic foundations of how it came into existance in the first place and how that system has now in todays age become economically corrupted. etc etc etc
The differentiation here being that these practices are based predominantly on the "usefullness" and economics of women as compared to men in "their" society, not ours. It would not surprise me to see the same outcome if it were the same situation and it were a matriarchial society.
It seems to me this practice has nothing to do with "putting down" women (at least in the indian culture), and is really not much different than comparing the maintenance costs and work one snow blower can do versus another.
Keeping in mind we are on the outside looking in and judging this society based on ours as if we have the right to do so with 25% of all abortions in america being directly related to soci-econimic.
Now I realise Kitten wants to portray them as worse than us regardless of their social structure and traditions. That and 933:1000 versus 1050:1000 simplyu cannot be considered female genocide imo.
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