Gendercide

An Islamic high court in northern Nigeria rejected an appeal yesterday by a single mother sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex out of wedlock.

Clutching her baby daughter, Amina Lawal burst into tears as the judge delivered the ruling.

– The Independent, 20 August 2002

In the 19th century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

70 percent of the world’s poor are women. In a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and driven by fundamentalism and chaos. Many of them can neither read nor write. Deeply-rooted cultural and social traditions are largely to blame for the grim condition of women across the world. Education, income generation and healthcare for women are some of the central concerns of the United Nations Millennium Goals. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. But many complain these issues have not been sufficiently addressed.

Traditionally, the status of women was seen as a “soft” issue — worthy but marginal. The international press roared when the students were murdered at Tiananmen Square, however, no mention was found of the report published the next year stating that 39000 Chinese baby girls died annually as parents did not give them proper medical care and attention as boys received. Those Chinese girls never received any mention in the press, which makes us wonder if the journalistic endeavor of the media is skewed towards patriarchy?

In India, a bride is burnt every two hours to punish her due to inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so that her husband can remarry. When a terrorist is captured, media finds “Breaking News”, but when 100, 000 girls are deported to a brothel, it is not considered as news. 

Noble laureate Amartya Sen has calculated that 100 million women are missing from world today.  He argues that overall there are more women than men as women live longer than men. But in areas where there exist deep rooted gender inequality, the sex ratio is absolutely skewed.

More women are missing from world today. The reason is because they are women. one reason for this is that girls do not get adequate healthcare and food as boys. In India, girls within the age group of 1 to 5 years are 50% more likely to die than boys, and the reason is that girls are only taken for medical care when the illness is “serious”.

Statistics shows that in 20th century more girls and women have gone missing than men who died in all the battles of the century. Interestingly, the routine gendercide has killed more women than the number of people killed in the genocide of 20th century.

Gender  discrimination is one of the least important problem that women face today. Women are the modern slaves who are caught in brothels, and regularly beaten and sedated and fed just enough to live. ILO figures show, 12.3 million women are engaged in forced labor and usually in sexual servitude. India is one such country which has more modern slaves than any other country.

The question is what is more important – free trade, global warming, or the safety of women? What can be done to make the girls and women in our society safe? Discrimination, equality, wage differential etc. are utopian words for women who struggle for their basic physiological and safety needs. Its time that hollow words should be replaced by concrete action.