India and china are the two important trade centers of the world. While the economies of the two countries are skyrocketing, the muffled voices of the endangered daughters are still suppressed and confined to the four walls behind the closed doors.
“May you be the mother of hundred sons” are common blessings and good wishes bestowed to the newly wed couples. Either the one child policy opted by China or the dowry system practiced in India, without any hesitation, son preference and daughters discrimination are pre-dominant in these cultures.
In a patriarchal society, daughters are still underrepresented and undermined under the norms and values of the society. They are deprived of proper nourishments, health care, education facilities, family properties, and in extreme cases from the right to live. In the book, Endangered Daughters, Elizabeth Croll talks about the ‘missing girls.’ In China 1.05 as a benchmark ratio amounted to 50 million ‘missing women’ while in South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa the number escalated to more than 100 million.
The above data fairly reflect a vivid picture of sheer discrimination and inequality practiced against the female members of the society leading to high mortality rates. This reveals the imbalances in the sex ratio of male to female child in these societies. Not only strong son preference is continuing to get more sophisticated but also exacerbated daughter discrimination is turning more brutal and heinous.
In India and China, the socio-economic condition, cultural factors, and the rooted traditions have made women powerless and vulnerable; therefore, they are susceptible to domestic violence and all the other deprivation before and after their births. In both the settings, patriarchal family system is widely followed where a daughter is seen as somebody else’s property and son as old age support for his parents.
Before marriage a girl is a subject of her father and brother, after marriage she is a subject of her husband, and after her husband dies of her son. A woman is always expected to live under the sympathy of the male figures of her life. After marriage, a girl is given away and apparently all the responsibilities that the parents had towards their daughter end. In that sense, daughters are considered transient and are passed to her husband’s family after marriage.
As daughters are a part of her natal family until she is married, her stay there is just temporary and provisional. Since the daughters are detached from her natal family and incorporated with the husband’s family, parents of the daughters expect no returns of her upbringings and sometimes consider it as a waste. Also any contribution made by daughters is considered short-termed and perceived as unethical to depend on by these societies.
High infant mortality rate, low literacy rate, and gender inequality are the underlying factors responsible for the subordination of women in India. The traditional practice of dowry system— where a bride’s parents are expected to give material goods and cash to the groom’s family—compels the parents to willingly show their preference towards sons and discard daughters. This system highly commodifies women and causes gender-based violence accompanied by greater devaluation of daughters including rise in excessive female mortality.
As Croll states that the families, poor or rich, with the help of mid-wives practice the killing of a girl child by ending her life at birth. In that way, the family can escape the heavy cost of her upbringings, dowry, and continuing expenses even after marriage. To the contrary, sons are the constant ray of hope to the family and assurance of the continuation of the family line.
Moreover, the introduction of one-child family policy by the government of China in 1979 added further pressure on the incident of son preference and daughter devaluation. As sons carry the family name and inherit family property, having a son in the family was ever more crucial after this policy was implemented. As a result, the process of identifying the sex of the unborn child was widely practiced which increased the rate of female child abortion resulting in highly skewed male to female sex ratios in these societies.
Although the use of ultrasound to determine the sex of the unborn child was prohibited by the government, people practiced it anyways. Also, daughters cannot perform many rituals such as funeral, ancestor worship etc due to which sons are viewed as assets and daughters are excluded from the family.
“When a girl goes away to her own house, who will look after her parents if there is no son?” Such attitudes and mentality are dominant in both the Chinese and Indian cultures which give credibility and support to the social practices: son preference, infant mortality of a female, sex selective abortion, violence and prejudice against daughters.
Sons give security whereas daughters bring complexities. Hence, the expectation of return from the child reimburses the quality of rearing resulting in a poor nurturing of a girl child. As a result, daughters continue to be discriminated, as early as the time they were conceived, and women themselves seemed to be caught up in the act of under-valuing daughters.
