Discrimination At Birth And Infant And Child Mortality Rates

Several scholars have linked birthrate decline to female education. Educated women, they reason, generally prefer smaller families, allowing them to pursue their own interests while investing more resources and time in each child. As it turns out, the map of female literacy in India does exhibit striking similarities with the map of fertility.

This particular article addresses the issue of female feticide and sex-selection abortions in Canada. Mrozek tends to focus on the Indian culture as it is a rather common practice in Indian custom. Indo-Canadians sometimes choose to abort their babies if they find out they are having a girl. Other times they can be coerced into it by elder relatives

In this short video and article on the topic of gendercide, reporter Elizabeth Vargas travels to India to found out from the people of India personally why there is such a shortage of females. She discovered that although aborting a fetus of a female child is illegal because of the shortage of females, families still continue to abort them because they don't want the burden that the baby girls brings. Vargas also discovered that illegal sex determination clinics can be found just about on every street. Men and their families also the wives to have sex determination tests and abort the baby if it’s female.

"Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbors’ garden.” That quote from a Hindu proverb.is referring to is how in some cultures when a daughter is old enough to be married, she leaves that family and joins her husbands'. So, raising a daughter in those cultures is seen as helping another family. Unlike females when a son is born he will stay and take care of the parents as they age. This son preference can lead to some countries committing gendercide. The act of gendercide is the mass killing of people because of their sex. Gendercide is a horrid trend that is due to the son preferences of many countries. Parents in Countries such as china and India have been killing there daughters. In India 25 percent of girls die before they can reach puberty. Also, 200 million women are missing because of being killed at a young age. There are many cultural causes of gendercide. The first is that boy babies are valued far more then female babies. Male children can carry on the family name, take care the parents when they get old and are less "expensive" to raise. In India there is a dowry system where in order for a woman to be married, the bride’s family must give gifts of money, land, livestock or other expensive items. This can put I strain on poorer families who cannot afford to pay a dowry or richer families who do not want to spend that type of money. So , when they have a girl child they either get an abortion or kill the child to save money. There was a Indian mother that

Diversity means to value and respect the differences and individuality of people. This means to embrace the differences between people and to treat a person’s race, culture, religious beliefs, age, sexual orientation, gender, physical and mental characteristics etc. with respect.

India’s statistics are similar. According to the BBC “In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls. Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China. Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children. But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide”.

Furthermore, we do see gendercide occurring few years after a baby girl is born. In some places, female infanticide is frequently occurring in the early years of the unwanted child. In regions of India, a fair amount of girl does not live past puberty because of child abuse and neglecting. There is also an imbalance in infant mortality rate of boys and girls.

A third Hindu text says that if the woman aborts her child she will lose her place in the caste system. Hinduism believes that it is a public duty of a woman to have children so the family will continue and there will be new members to the society. Woman will terminate their pregnancy if they are having a girl. Girls have no opportunities for economic support and there are few jobs for woman. This is why this religion has a preference for boys and why woman prefer to have sons. This view and religious belief pressure can lead to an attempt to stop the birth of a girl this is called female foeticide. Since they condemn the act of abortion, women will do other things to terminate the pregnancy. (Murti and Mary ) (Hinduism and abortion)

Female infanticide has been accepted for centuries in many countries, and is more prominent in India and China than in any other countries around the world. It is illegal in India, however it is reported by Unicef that up to 50 million girls and women are “missing” in India as a result of systemic sex discrimination.

People in India show a strong preference to not spend time raising girls. The sex birth ratio in India is one of the worst having 112 boys for every 100 girls born. Gill and Mitra-Kahn believe the reason for this lack of girls is due to

As science advances, it is becoming very common for parents from all over the world to select their babies gender by abortion. However, this trend is unacceptable and detrimental to the natural balance of things, society and the future of humanity.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, illuminates the essential rights that all children have. According to the Convention, each child has the privilege of education, it is the state 's obligation to guarantee that essential education is free and necessary, to allow distinctive types of secondary training, including general and professional training and to make them open to each child and to make advanced education accessible (United Nations, 1990). But as indicated by UNICEF, an expected 93 million kids on the planet don 't get the chance to go to school, the majority whom are girls. A large part of these children are poor and their families can 't stand to send them to school. They should work to help their families survive. Others, for the most part, young girls don 't go to school since they need to help at home. However, without an education, children and families are forced to lead an existence in poverty (UNICEF, 2015).

Education is considered as the critical software for development as it shapes the destiny for every society. Currently the initiative is driven by the Millennium Development Goals and the goals of Education for All. The MDG’s with direct reference to women education are Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education and Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women. This means that everybody in the society should be given a chance to attend school, women included (Anne Syomwene , 2015)

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.

Bajpai, Sachs and Volavka (2005) studied the confronts to meet the MDGs in India. The authors revealed that India would attain some of eight goals like reducing extreme poverty and would miss many of others like reducing hunger, reducing infant mortality rate, achieving environmental sustainability. Indian population living in severe poverty has been diminishing sharply since economic reforms started in 1991. The headcount poverty rate in 2015 would be less than half of the rate in 1990, as called for by the Millennium Development Goals. The proportion of children in India who are continually malnourished remains very high. India is far behind in the goal to realize universal primary school enrolment. In 1999-2000, the net primary enrollment rate was only 52.5 percent. It is a long way off from the goal of 100 percent enrollment by 2015. Primary completion rates increased slightly between 1993 and 2000, from 58.7 percent to 61.4 percent. But dropout rates are clearly still very high. Gender disparity in schooling differs across India. It is highest in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, where gross primary enrollment rates are about two-thirds for females than for males. Development on the targets to reduce child and infant mortality has been made in India. The country is not likely to meet the goal of reducing these rates by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 if decreases remain at their present rate. India is suffering from deteriorating crises of water, soils, and