Fighting Female Foeticide: Stories From A Typical Day At Work

The story below is a real life experience of the author during a session on female foeticide in a village in Haryana.

This is the first of  two stories: one from a day at work in a village, and another from her own life in a city, both revolving around female foeticide & preference for sons – making it clear that the issue has nothing to do with urban-rural settings.

“They will keep on asking me to reproduce till they get a son for the family.”

—x———-x———–

In 2005, during a project in my undergrad school, I did a secondary research project on the issue of Female Foeticide and Son Preference in India. In 2011-12, I was traveling from one village to another in Haryana, conducting sessions with men and women to create awareness, answer queries, and to try changing mindsets of the people on the issue of the girl child, female foeticide, and son preference.

In these years, I had worked with a few organizations on the issue, assisted my sister on her project relating to the same, done behavior change campaigns, and developed innovative communication tools for the same. Yet, I stood there,  facing the dilemma of why, how, and when. 

The Scenario

At the meeting to raise questions

During one of my visits, I traveled into a small village of one of the states with a terrible Male-Female Sex Ratio. I am comfortable interacting with a group of not more than 35-50 people. A small group like that is more interactive, can be handled much more easily, with a better flow of communication- especially on such crucial social issues.

When I reached the venue, I saw a crowd of 200 men and women sitting, divided by the aisle. On one side, sat the men with their turbans. On the other, were the women with their veils crossing their chin. Now this was a little complicated scenario for me. I knew that both categories of my participants appreciated this brutal form of killing and violation of the right to be born; favoring males as the carriers of traditions and family name.

 I knew that both categories of my participants appreciated this brutal form of killing and violation of the right to be born; favoring males as the carriers of traditions and family name.

The Root

The problem of patriarchy, son preference, and women being ignored has deep linkages with every cause I ever took up in the villages with respect to women’s rights and gender issues (violence, education, nutrition, dowry, child marriage etc). The problem was that not only men but even the women followed the so-called traditional methods, thereby creating more disparity.

The problem was also the lack of communication between the men and women, on any social issue. I learnt one thing from this: in order to solve any problem with respect to rights of Women (economic, social, or political ) we need to engage and bring on the same level both the genders of the communities – to discuss and understand.

The problem was also the lack of communication between the men and women, on any social issue.

So there I was, happy to realize that this was one of the most amazing opportunities I could ever have, to make the two interact. I knew the risks were huge. I could be shamed, accused, or worse – thrown out of the village for trying to break the age old systems of functioning and change  the lack of communication between the two genders. But, I realized it was worth the risk.

The Act

As I stood there, I realized that to get the best of reactions, it was important for me to startle my audience with something controversial. And I started with my story. The story of my ancestral home, where son preference was a very commonly accepted norm. I started sharing what I saw as a young daughter to how I became a woman. And as I did this, I threw in my series of snapshots and films I always worked with when interacting in the communities.

I stood there, with a microphone in my hand, amongst the crowd of men and women, asking them why, how, and when. The same questions that I had been carrying with me even after so many years of working on the issue.

Now I had known a few answers all this while. Who will light the pyre of the parents? A son is the gateway to Moksha! A daughter is a source of misery! Who will carry forward the family name and lineage? Who will feed the parents in their old age? Take care of the women?! Why go through dowry? Safety of women? Who will be the man?

The reason I stood there with those questions every time was because I knew I would end up getting a new set of answers, every single time.

The Reactions

One elderly woman turned to me and shouted out loud, saying that I have gone mad to think that its okay to not have a son. This is how she explained the cycle (translated from Haryanvi):

“The world needs men. If a son is born in the family, he takes care of the family, carries the name forward, helps earn money, and feed the members, is safe and does not need to be taken care of (body-wise). He gives dowry for the family’s daughters, takes care of the future rituals (chhuchhak, bhaat etc), protects the family lineage, gives more sons to the house, stays with the parents, lights the pyre and helps achieve moksha (salvation)…

What will we do if we do not have son to do all this? These days the younger generation is having fewer kids. We tell them to not get the foetus aborted, but what is the solution if they want a son? They have to get it cleaned before it turns older (abortion). And now tell me, why should we not promote female foeticide?”

“…And now tell me, why should we not promote female foeticide?”

An old man agreed to the above stated ‘facts’, but also explained how they never pushed the women to have only sons. Every woman agreed that they had gone through so much torture in their lives that having a son meant high social status in the family as she was the carrier.

Slowly, as the discussion garnered more comments and reactions, I saw a chattering crowd of men and women debating on why and why not. A lot of the women with daughters agreed with me, and a lot accused me of trying to change “how it has been”. I stood there smiling internally because I had initiated a major conversation that had been missing from the community, which had accepted female foeticide as the norm.

As I made them see the future of a land without women, a land with a high crime rate, a land where women handled every task that the old lady had mentioned, a lot of the protesters went silent. I had no clue how and what it was going to lead to (the session was a part of a project) but I was hopeful that I had initiated at least a thought which was missing from the majority of the crowd.

A picture of the future  is important. What happens if we keep on going like this? When people realize that it’s not healthy to go on like we are going, the fear increases and chances are many that it will change to a “something should be done” attitude. When a picture of “no women in next 5 years if you keep on killing girls” was shown, people started realizing the value of girls, daughters, wives, mothers.

The Cycle of Change

While a baby cannot be born just with an egg of the mother and needs the sperm of the father, similar is the case with rearing the child. I have seen that in rural areas in India, if a woman works, she takes part in the decision making of the house in the smallest and biggest matters, she has an opinion on the children’s future, and that opinion is heard and valued.

It is important for women in rural areas to realize that the need to change is now, and education is very important. Not just schooling but also awareness and capacity building – which can help develop the logical self, in defining and deciding what is right and what is wrong.

It is important for women in rural areas to realize that the need to change is now, and education is very important. Not just schooling but also awareness and capacity building.

It’s a researched fact that Education has led to understanding and realization of choices, which has further led to economic empowerment and sharing of responsibilities. We can say that the community heritage is a reason too, but education is a founding backbone of the process.

The implementation of policies along with training at the grassroots is crucial, too. Unless people see the reason why change is required strongly, people wont change. And for that to happen, in India atleast, a multi-pronged approach with both Behaviour Change Campaigns and policy level implementations is required.

The Behaviour Change Campaigns need to be community specific/state specific with exhaustive research (using methods like Positive Deviance) to be used to define Why and How and Whom (W’s) of the campaign with participation by the people, for the people. A simple campaign on the Community radios running in the villages can create a change in many homes.

Community Media, and Mass media need to collaborate on common guidelines-based messages that should percolate the homes through edutainment based methods (TV shows, radio programs), in a very subtle way in order to make it a casual process, avoiding rebellion by elders.

I believe and I think it is crucial that the idea should move beyond just saying and towards more doing.  We need strategic methods with constant evaluation in order to stay on track.

That day, at the end of the session, a young woman working with the police came to me. She explained her story as the other young girls hopped around. I saw hope, I saw challenges, I saw passion to make things work. I realized, I cannot give up on the society so easily. I also realized that things can be worked around, but the start has to be made now.

There are a few deviant stories around where girls have been born despite all challenges and have managed to turn into inspiring stories for other to learn from. The challenge is to find these stories and convert them into a norm instead of being an exception.

The cycle of oppression that women go through in their lifetime needs to change. I came back from the session, hopeful and positive for many more deviant stories for us all to learn from. This was not, after all, just another day at work.

This article was originally published at womens web. 

Women, Contraception & Issues of Access-Usage-Rights

She was all of 22 year old. Four daughters already, two abortions done, I thought I should ask her how it felt to have been pregnant literally all the time since she had been married off. But before I could, her tear-filled eyes looked at me, her lips tried to (fake a) smile, and she said, “This is what women are born for after all. Isn’t it?” I had no answer.

It wasn’t literally that I had none. Somehow I could have used all my textbook based knowledge and my dose of empathy to make her understand that she was worth more than that. That she was powerful. That she was more than a baby-producing machine. That she had rights. But suddenly at that moment, I was completely numb. I had nothing to say. I realized how every system, every policy, every initiative, every organization had failed at that very moment for me.

Do I sound a little hopeless? I had to be. I had no other choice that moment. This issue was more complicated than it looked. What were the problems? Was it Patriarchy and Women’s Status? Or was it access to contraception? Decision making? Or Maternal Health Care? Male-heir desperation? What was it?

On my way back, her strong words kept on resonating in my mind and all I could feel was a sudden rush, an uncontrollable feeling of hatred towards society. People call me emotional with respect to my work. They say I should be more practical. But wasn’t the first reason I joined such a work force that I wanted my emotions to become a passion? I had a hundred thoughts and as the sun started setting, the cold breeze seemed to hit me harder than it usually did.

Issues of Family Planning go way beyond the number of babies. It encompasses the awareness of contraception, rights to make that choice on using one, it entails the issues of maternal and child care, it entails patriarchy and control over bodies, it involves issues of infection, HIV and Violence Against Women. It’s much more than contraception and incentives to get vasectomy or birth control. While the whole system in the country is working towards making people have  control over the production of babies, the lack of empathy has resulted in a flawed policy system where what we have reached today is a point on which we as citizens and humans are better off killing female fetuses and ignoring maternal health.

The fact remains that while an educated strong working urban woman is moving towards using contraception for her own sake, in an average Indian household (let’s not even discuss rural here) a woman still struggles to discuss contraceptive measures to be used by males. She will pop an i-pill or hormonal contraceptive pill rather than ask her husband to use condoms. Condoms have male ego attached to them.

So, when I asked that woman from a very economically progressive yet patriarchal town of a very rich state in India about her view on condoms and birth control, the blank look on her face made me wonder where we are all going wrong, in our struggle to make the country control the over-production of babies.

Questions remain: Will a woman show that she knows her contraceptives well? Will she tell her male counterparts that she is bothered about her health and so should he be? Will she go ahead and buy condoms for him to use? Will she be respected for her interest in use of condoms for birth control and also infections? Will a man value his partner’s opinion on contraception, let her choose what she wants rather than ego-stabbing his opinions on her? Will Contraception become more than a man’s decision and a choice that both take together? The point is that while men on the one hand expect to rule the woman, force her to do what he wants in bed, expecting an average Indian man to make balanced choices keeping his female counterpart in mind is going a little too far right now.

All this takes me back to my Physiology lessons where we did a project on Contraception in my B.Sc days and we explored the various methods and means, did we understand the theory and practicality to use them? The issues of negotiating, of decision making and of rights vs access are something that still remain untaught to women and men out there. Indians don’t appreciate talking about bedrooms publicly but somewhere the urgent need of the hour is to start talking about things as crucial as contraception, sex education, menstruation and pregnancy-childbirth-menopause.

Her eyes still haunt me when I see women like her around. And till date, I don’t have any answer to give to any woman who comes and asks me what to do to stop her husband from asking her to pull out baby boys from her uterus. I can never forget those eyes. Not until I find an answer, a solution.

This Post was originally published at Women's Web: http://www.womensweb.in/2014/01/women-contraception-usage-rights-india/

Why a SON always matters? Well, Almost always!

Picture this: A North Indian Delhi based Brahmin family, the eldest son of the 7 children and his three daughters. Does it ring a bell in your head? A typical Indian scenario since decades has been that the son needs to have a son to carry the family heritage, family name ahead and when a situation like this arises, you can imagine the plight of the woman who gave birth to these three girls, the plight of the eldest son who is constantly reminded of how terrible it is that he doesn’t have a son and how cursed he is to have three daughters.

This is a story of my life. I am the second daughter of the three in this situation. This is also a story of my parents, my dad the eldest son in the family of 7 children (4 brothers, 3 sisters). This is a story of my family, relatives around who constantly remind my parents how unhappy they are (which they never see). And, over and all this is a story of those hundreds of women and men I meet on streets, corners and villages in India who show me the pity face as they come to know that we are three sisters.

My dad, the eldest son of the house has always been the one who looked after the needs of the other children since childhood. He started a job pretty early because he was told that he has to be the help when his sisters marry, when his brothers need to establish themselves. Born in a family of a railway clerk and a housewife hailing from Haryana, settled in Delhi, my father stepped into the employment sector as soon as he graduated. He often tells me how he used to do petty tasks in small shops even when he was in school just to get petty cash for his expenses, afterall a railways job for my grandfather couldn’t feed 7 kids. I really respect my grandfather for making those 7 children stand on their feet and live a prosperous life today, but the whole ideology of having 7 kids without the resources to feed them sounds crazy to me. Anyhow, so yes, my dad got into a job, changed jobs often, got married and yes, started his own business. From a small pigeon hole rented place in a small lane in Delhi, the journey he has taken to reach to a industry and export market in scientific instruments has been inspiring. Well, we can discuss that story some other time. For right now, lets join the dots.

So yes, he gets married, has three daughters over a span of 9 years with one miscarriage (a boy) before the third daughter arrived. And now, its been 30 years since his marriage and 23 since the miscarriage but till date all my grandmother loathes about is the fact how the 7 month fetus wasn’t born in this world is a sign of how unfortunate my parents are. We are three sisters, raised with the best of everything. My friends often call me names: “the pampered one”, “the daughter of a millionaire (while we aren’t one really, but still)”, the “lucky one” etc. And though I hate it many times, I really love it when I look at majority of my immediate relatives who think that God wasn’t kind on my parents. We are a family of educated (atleast literate), working, prosperous individuals settled in Delhi since more than 60 years. And well, that is exactly why they look crazy to me when they talk sons and moksha linkages.

We as daughters never felt that we have an incomplete family. We have our shares of arguments and regular day to day fights but we respect our parents, our mother for bringing that change in our homes, for making girls matter. I have seen my father from rags to riches. From the day (as my mother describes) when I was about to be born and he didn’t had to money to take my mother to a doctor to the day today where I find myself sneezing and going to a doctor. We have been cared of, pampered but taught the ways of life to be dealt ourselves. I am (like my sisters) one who loves indulging in fashion and food and style as much as I enjoy working with women & children in the extreme situations in India, sitting down with them, understanding realities and helping build partnerships in development from the communities. For me, both give my life a high, strong enough that it can challenge the high anyone feels after having any drug.

So, well educated, best of facilities, freedom and yes, the courage to fight our own battles, we as daughters have never felt that we are being discriminated with respect to our gender. Well, of course being in India, our parents are constantly worried about our safety but the fact remains that when I look at girls in Indian villages and towns, and I look at myself, I find a gap which to me is filled as I look at my relatives and families around. So, yes, my grandparents don’t love us. They do show that they feel for us, but when it is to choose between me (loving caring and respecting granddaughter) and my uncle’s son (brat, careless and disrespecting grandson), you know who they pick. As a child, it used to break my heart but as I grew and realized how it has been and it will be, I started to understand how I wont let it be in the next generation. My parents, pioneered the change in our home and yes, I believe I will be the one (we sisters) carrying the torch ahead.

We all hear stories of gender discrimination starting with children (even before birth) in families, but the important thing is to not let them be jus stories, but make them path breaking reasons for change. My uncle tells my dad that he should not expand his business because he has no son. Well, I have always been a part of his business and we three have told him “the day you want to retire, let us know and we will take it from there”, but in our families, that doesn’t count. “You are a daughter, who goes to others house, who cant do this business”, my grandmother often comments. Of the many comments, this one has always been a fuel to my anger, but yes earlier it used to help me blast and now it helps me strengthen my enthusiasm to not let it happen ahead of me, when I have children.

My buas and chachas (paternal aunts and uncles), nana and nani (maternal grandparents) etc all are a party to this You Must Have a Son Disorder. My parents tell me how when my mom got her sterilization done after the third daughter was born (which was not for a son desire, but we can discuss that later), both my grandmothers (paternal and maternal) had not spoken to them for a long time. Eldest son and no male heir?? Are you insane? Was the reaction they got. Today, when they look at us, they tell us how happy they are because we are trying to tell the world a story of how girls are at par, how gender is not how one should be measured and how, they never cared and they never still do what the people say.

A typical reaction I always get from women in Indian villages is this: “oh my god, oho! You don’t have a brother? That’s really sad.” And yes, it amuses me to the core. I mean, just imagine me sitting with 20 women and discussing gender disparity and discrimination issues in a village in Haryana and the first question they ask me during rapport formation is this. I do take it as a starting point to my discussion but then, this is a story of every village every place I travel to in India. And yes, though I am strong enough to challenge the mindset, I feel helpless when I think of those thousands and thousands of girls who are the future flag bearers and who are being moulded in this mentality.

While I was on my journey abroad for many months, I remember the day I was about to travel. My grandparents had called me to tell me how they feel proud of me. They told me this: “You are like a son to the house”! hahh! Was my reaction as I chuckled and remarked, “Please don’t call me a son, I am a daughter and yes, I am proud of the fact that my parents respect it. I am a daughter, not a son”!

Our society suffers from chambering syndrome. The girl who explores, travels, gets best of education and is a flag bearer becomes a BOY like! We sisters, all in the same system often laugh our lungs out thinking of the times we face it in our homes, leave aside the world. My eldest sister has a baby girl and as she reinforces how she wont let gender impact her child, I often think of the hard times she will face but am hopeful that one day she will achieve what she wants.