Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Female Infanticide and Foeticide
It is regrettable that female infanticide and foeticide are rapidly decreasing the female population throughout India. The main factors that is responsible for the increase in the incidence of female infanticide and foeticide is the low status of women, son preference, and the practice of dowry across all casts groups.
The low status of women and girls is due to cultural beliefs and the material cost they represent to their families. Vanaja Dhruvarajan says that there is a belief regarding the nature of men and women: "Men are ritually pure, physically strong, and emotionally mature; women, on the other hand, are ritually pollutable, physically weak, and lack strong willpower" (30). Because of these beliefs parents are unwilling to invest time in daughter health and education. This results in bad health, insufficient awareness, low income,..... Women in India


In the streets of India one finds increasingly fewer little girls. You can look in classrooms, streets, and homes to notice that the number of female children is in fact, diminishing. Although a female minority is not a new thing in India, the percentage of women to men has declined steeply. Radhika Balakrishnan reports that national censuses show the sex ratio went from 972 women for every 1000 men in the year 1901 to 936 women for every 1000 men in the year 1981. This number continued to decline to 927 per 1000 in 1991. It is not that female babies are less frequently conceived or more susceptible to disease, but rather that they are killed upon birth, or in some cases not born at all. Modern ultrasonic technology and mobility of the machines that are used to perform ultrasounds have made sex screening a regular practice in India. That availability, in combination with the traditional patriarchal preference for male children, has caused the trend of mass female feticide. Balakrishnan says that from June 1976 to June 1977 one hospital...