Male child preference in Kashmir India marks continuing grave impacts for girls

 

Closing Kashmir’s ultrasound clinics

“Sixty-seven ultrasound clinics are now sealed [closed for business],” said Health Services Director Dr. Rehman in a public statement. The government has also put a 25000 Rs ($474 USD) reward up for any information or reports citing medical facilities, clinics or individuals involved in diagnosing or assisting in aborting sex-selective abortions.

As clinics have been placed under increasing scrutiny, there is also another new ‘medical nemesis’ contributing to the crisis for girls. Mobile ultrasound scanners are now commonly in use and cheaper to buy allowing more women  to quickly know the gender of an unborn child in the privacy of her home.

“The decline [of girls] in Kashmir is much worse than [in] Jammu which is tough to understand,” Chief Minister Omar Abdullah told the BBC in May 2011. “We need people to wake up to the long term implications for Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

In spite of recent gains in understanding the depth of the problem, Kashmir had an early wake-up-call about reduced girl births in 2007. This was a call the region chose largely to ignore at the time.

Ms. Gula Froz Jan, a law school professor at the University of Kashmir, came out in 2007 with a study indicating that a higher prevalence of female foetus deaths occurred than normally expected in the region. Her findings were initially dismissed because the study was considered ‘too small’ at the time by experts.

But the findings were vital to Jammu and Kashmir. What Professor Jan discovered was that out of the one hundred women she interviewed on the topic of sex-selection, ten of the women admitted to being involved in some form of prenatal gender screening. Two out of fifteen diagnostic centres also admitted to conducting sex determination tests for pregnant women.

Does most of the problem begin with discrimination?

Because Professor Jan was aware of numerous sex-selective procedures happening, she admits it was this awareness that made her begin the process involved in gathering the data for her study.

“I was aware of many such happenings in real life,” said Professor Jan about her knowledge of sex-selective procedures.

Ms. Hafiza Muzaffar, Secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir State Chapter of India’s National Commission for Women, a government sponsored organization created to protect women’s rights, feels that girl children are getting caught in-between  a long history of discrimination against women in India.

“The root cause of the problem is that a woman is being harassed after marriage,” stressed Secretary Muzaffar. “She (a woman) says why I should give birth to a girl when my daughter will get the same fate,” added Muzaffar.

But how does this affect the selective filtering of pregnancies in the Jammu and Kashmir region for those who find out they will be having girl children?

Seema was four months pregnant when she found out that she was carrying a girl. Even though the termination of the pregnancy was very risky Seema wanted to go ahead with it. Her husband, a medical doctor by profession, was not willing to go along with her choice to end her pregnancy but Seema had a procedure terminating her pregnancy in Jammu.

Reshma a mother of four girls was longing for a male heir. She shares that she felt that she had to abort three girls until her dream of having a male child came true.

Professor Dr. Bashir Ahmad Dabla, who teaches Sociology at the University of Kashmir, says a proper analysis on the sex-ratio in Kashmir can only be assessed after the most recent and final figures are released. But Dr. Dabla now also acknowledges that female foeticide, also known by many as infanticide, does play a role in what he calls “a dangerous trend.”

New 2011 census data in India shows that many districts across the region of Jammu and Kashmir have seen an “alarming” decline in girl births. District regions include Pulwama, Kupwara, Shopain, Budgam and Kugam. This is not the only indication that girls face severe discrimination though.

“The major reason for this is the basic thinking among the people (in) what we characterise as gender discrimination; they feel that both the sexes are not equal,” said Dr. Dabla. “While as the male’s role is considered as desirable and preferable, women’s role is considered damaging, because it takes from you[r] lot of financial and non-financial gain,” he continued.

Health officials like Dr. Rehman, as well as sociologists like Dr. Dabla, now say that government sanctions alone cannot weed out what Kashmir’s larger society considers to be ‘the menace of foeticide.’

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United Nations, New York, 14 June 2011 – Five United Nations agencies have banded together to call for urgently addressing gender-biased sex selection favouring boys, a common practice in many parts of South, East and Central Asia that they say fuels a culture of discrimination and violence. “Sex selection in favour of boys is a symptom of pervasive social, cultural, political and economic injustices against women, and a manifest violation of women’s human rights,” says a statement issued by the agencies, which have reviewed the evidence behind the causes, consequences and lessons learned regarding “son preference.” See the rest of this report by the UN News Centre.

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For more information on this topic:

• “Fact Sheet No.23, Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children,” OHCHR – United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 2007;
• “Does a Legal Ban on Sex-Selective Abortions Improve Child Sex Ratios? Evidence from a Policy Change in India,” University of California, Riverside, Department of Economics, April 2011;
• “Declining Child Sex-Ratio in India – A Review of Literature and Anointed Bibliography,” UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund , September 2008;
• “Research in Public Policy …where have all the young girls gone?,” ESRC – Economic and Social Research Council, June 2011.

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WNN – Women News Network news correspondent Nusrat Ara is based in Indian-Administered Kashmir. As a human rights journalist she graduated with a degree in Mass Communications and Journalism from the University of Kashmir in Srinagar. In addition to WNN, her work has also appeared in World Pulse, The Press Institute, theWIP – The Women’s International Perspective and Silent Heroes – Invisible Bridges, as well as local Kashmiri media publications. Ara has also worked to get stories on  global radio that has been distributed through numerous community and Pacifica sponsored radio stations. This includes Radio Free Europe through WINGS – Women’s International News Gathering Service.

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Additional sources for this story include the Ministry of Home Affairs India, UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund, ABC News, University of California, Riverside, UNICEF – The United Nations Children’s Fund, BBC News, OHCHR – UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the ESRC – Economic and Social Research Council.

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©2012 WNN – Women News Network
No part of this article release may be reproduced without prior permissions from WNN.

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