No Shruti, reducing the proportion of women will not improve the lot of women. Yes, the “price” of women will go up, but the price will not be paid to women. It will be paid by men to fathers of women. You don’t have to theorise about this. We know what happens when the sex ratio declines. It has been happening in Punjab, where men have been alleviating the shortage of women by purchasing them from Bihar. Strangely, an increase in the price of women has not resulted in an increase in the quantity supplied. This is probably because the price of a woman will never go up so much that it pays for the 20 years of bringing her up, so all sales of women are distress sales.
Yes, there is a problem in the future if female foeticide does not stop. A world with fewer men than women is tolerable for both men and for women. A world with fewer women than men is not tolerable, neither for men nor for women.
But no, we shouldn’t try to use the police to stop the practice, simply because it will be futile. It is a simple matter for the doctor to find the sex of the child, and it is an even simpler matter for him to convey this fact to the parents. Back alley abortions are also trivial to perform. Unless you start policing every single clinic and the police are incorruptible, you aren’t going to be able to stop it.
The practice will however stop when people stop being dependent on their children to look after them. It will stop when people live on jobs rather than business or on land so that it is less important that someone continue after them. It will also stop when it becomes acceptable for daughters to take care of their parents or when it becomes acceptable for daughters to continue after their parents.
Proximately, it will stop when it becomes socially unacceptable to abort girls and when not aborting girls becomes a sign of modernity.
All this will happen in a generation, but till then, let us accept that there will be a problem regardless of what we do. There will be a generation when there will be more men than women in certain communities and there will be problems of social instability and violence. Just as glib calls to prevent this problem through laws will not work, glib assertions that demand and supply will take care of the problem will not work either.
Proximately, it will stop when it becomes socially unacceptable to abort girls and when not aborting girls becomes a sign of modernity.
Also, when modernity is valued.
Aadisht,
We are talking of the middle class here, for whom “modernity” is always valued. But their definition of modernity will not match mine or yours or one anothers.
To what extent? Even for the middle class, tradition and social standing might be valued even more than modernity.
Two decades back, outside of Punjab, women wearing the salwar kameez was considered a sign of modernity. Then it became women continuing to wear the salwar kameez after marriage. Now, wearing the salwar kameez is considered traditional, while wearing jeans is considered modern.
I am thinking of tradition and modernity as states of mind. Everyone has a specific mix of tradition and modernity that they are comfortable with. This mix might change a bit from generation to generation, it will change quite a bit for a person with age, but mostly, it is the markers of what constitutes tradition and what constitutes modernity that change. (In a check out line in the US, I once saw a middle aged woman deciding that the girl right behind her in the line would be right for her nephew who was looking out for a new girl friend, because she was “clean” – i.e. no tattoos or other piercings.. Also because she was petite and her nephew preferred petite girls, but I digress.)
Back to aborting foetuses. In my caste too, there was a preference for boys, but people would be horrified at the thought of aborting foetuses, because that is something uncivilized people like North Indians do and we Brahmins shouldn’t emulate them. Instead, the traditionalists used to keep having children till they had a boy. Somewhat more modern people who’d had two girls would try their luck once or twice more.. Then it became uncool to have more than two children, but the sadness at having only girls remained. Now even that is disappearing.
Ravi,
You’re back in form 🙂
Welcome back.
Does harassing brides for DVD player and plasma TV instead of Bajaj scooter and gold earrings count as modernity ?
By the definition I have used, yes.
Hi,
I am from Philippines and I like to comment about the preference of families for having boys in your culture…
As you know, same in our society old parents are also taken cared of by children… by children – where it doesn’t matter if its she/he and same as in taking over on properties/businesses.
We never deter the difference on gender, because same can do the obligation, its only a matter of being responsible and possessing a loving heart to value family. Maybe, it is modernity, acquiring social ideas on equality concept.