- India (50%),
- Nepal (60%)
- Niger (76%)
Over 80 million girls in developing countries will be married before their 18th birthday.
Girls are infected by HIV/AIDS in disproportionately high rates – three quarters of the 15-24 year-olds infected with HIV, are young women and girls.
Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young women aged 15 to 19.
Arranged Marriages - Mass Early Marriage - One example:
Rajasthan, India - The custom survives of giving very small children away in marriage. On the auspicious day of Akha Teej, the mass solemnisation of marriages between young boys and girls is performed. From the parents’ point of view, this is the tried and tested way of organising the passing on of property and wealth within the family. A small but significant proportion of the children involved are under 10, and some are mere toddlers of two and three years old.The girls then go on to live with their husbands when they reach puberty.
2. Abortion by gender selection:
In India, a study of 1.1 million households came to the conclusion that: “Based on conservative assumptions, the practice accounts for about 0.5 million missing female births yearly.” It continues: “Anecdotal evidence suggests that access to ultrasound is fairly widespread, even in rural areas, and although prenatal sex determination has been illegal since 1994 the law is often ignored.” Over the past two decades, this “translates into the abortion of some 10 million female foetuses.”
The practice is more common among educated families than poor households. In one clinic in India, a woman waits for an abortion. She has two daughters aged 11 and seven years, and has had nine abortions in the hope of having a son. “Dr Geeta gives everyone a son. I hope she will give me one as well,” she says fervently. When asked the reason for her desperation, her voice cracks, “I want a son as we have a big business. I want what my husband has built from ‘scratch’ to go to his own blood. I can’t think of adoption. My daughters will marry and go away; our son would stay and look after the family. 3. Nutrition: In India, under-nutrition is the underlying cause for about 50 per cent of the 2.1 million deaths of children under five each year. The numbers of girls and boys under five who are underweight is similar in all regions except South Asia, where 47 per cent of girls are underweight compared to 44 per cent of boys. In India, 60 to 70 per cent of adolescent girls are anaemic. 4. Uneven domestic house workload: Surveys in six states in India showed that women typically spend 35 hours a week on household tasks and caring for children. Men only spend four hours in these tasks. In many countries, a girl begins her domestic duties at a very young age; duties that a boy is simply not expected to undertake. These are often arduous, fetching or carrying water from many miles away, pounding rice or maize, sweeping, cleaning, looking after siblings from early morning until late at night. In South Asia, women and girls spend three to five hours more than men in a week on activities such as fetching wood and carrying water, and between 20 and 30 hours a week more on housework. Another study of a number of countries in the South, including Kenya, South Africa, Pakistan and India found that “girls spend much more time than boys on non-economic work, and these differences become substantial among those who are not enrolled in school”. It also noted that: “Young men in urban Pakistan and urban India and in rural Kenya appear to spend little time performing domestic chores whether or not they are in school.” This domestic labour on the part of girls and young women is often not counted as ‘work’ – and yet in the 1990s a study in Australia suggested that the value of such ‘domestic’ work is equivalent to 58 percent of GDP. 5. Education Even once they have arrived at school, girls face problems that may be the cause of high dropout rates. The situation is often worse in rural areas than in urban ones: for example, a study in India found that 41.3 per cent of rural girls in the 10-14 age group dropped out of school, compared to 16.6 per cent in urban areas. This is especially significant as India is 70% rural still. 6. Unequal Earning Capacity: The International Labour Organisation reports that telecentres and fax booths have created a quarter of a million jobs in India in the last four years alone, a huge proportion of which have gone to women. However, although many women are software programmers, very few are in hardware design. Nor are many involved at policy level; mostly they are involved at quite a low level. Income to estimated male earned income, 1991-2003, selected countries Source: UNDP Human Development Report, 2006 Canada 0.63 Chile 0.39 China 0.64 Côte d’Ivoire 0.32 Indonesia 0.45 India 0.31 Japan 0.44 Kuwait 0.37 Lebanon 0.31 Russia 0.62 South Africa 0.45 Sweden 0.81 Uganda 0.70 Thailand 0.59 US 0.62 UK 0.65 7. Violance against women Nearly 50% of sexual assaults worldwide are against girls aged 15 years or younger. Those living in the conflict zones are particularly at risk. Worldwide it is a problem..but in India it is interesting to see evidence of it also is influenced by caste. One five-year study in four Indian states found that 23 per cent of female Dalits interviewed had been raped, 43 per cent had experienced domestic violence, 47 per cent sexual harassment, 55 per cent physical assault and 62 per cent verbal abuse. Of all the cases studied only 0.6 per cent ever made it to court, due to obstruction by the police (who often harbour caste prejudices themselves) or by the dominant castes. Many Dalits simply accept that no-one is going to help them and don’t even attempt to seek justice. “Violence against children, especially girls, has crossed all limits... People feel that a girl is meant to be used – either as a doormat, a maid, a birth-giving machine or as a source of physical pleasure. Something CONCRETE seriously needs to be done to change the current scenario because now a girl does not feel safe even in her own house, let alone the streets.” Girl, 16, India
No comments:
Post a Comment