The Causes Of Female Feticide Sociology Essay

Female feticide is a process of aborting female fetuses after about 18 weeks of gestation or we can say that killing or murdering a female child with in womb of mother. Female feticide is a violation of human right; the female children in the wombs are not only denied the right to live but are robbed to their right to born. More than a hundred millions women are missing because their parents wanted a son. There is no question that female feticide is not just unethical but it downright cruel as well.

Ten years back where to alter the gender composition of children is also the crudest i.e., female infanticide. The method relies on the set of procedure to kill girls within the few days after their birth. At this time there is no awareness about such technology to determine the sex the child before birth. But this practice distress the women who are widowed or single pregnancy and they also go for suicide. With the increase in practice of female infanticide government imposed strict actions against it. Thereby it reduces but with the technology it is converted into the new form, today what we call is female feticide.

Causes

The root of this problem was started by government itself in 1970s, when there is problem for increasing population, they said the people that don’t give birth to so many to get the one boy child then “government asked them what you want a boy child?” we will give u only one or two boy child. After that in the government hospitals new technologies are introduced to check sex of the child, but this was opposed by some social activities then government banned these activities but at that time people were aware of the technology and doctors also, so doctors open their private clinics and made their occupation. After that ultrasound machine came and these activities spread like virus.

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Today there are many methods to select the sex of the child prior to birth such as sperm sorting (sperms that is sorted by sex and then used in artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization) and pre implantation genetic diagnosis. Sex determination has also undergone constant progress, one of the latest method is “fetal DNA testing” in which blood of the pregnant mother is known to contain the DNA of her baby after six weeks of gestation, a sample of this blood can be tested to identify the sex of embryo. But this wasn’t the main reason the main reason is the people mentality and this society.

In our society many people think that boy child will bring happiness and status in their life, where girl child only bring the tensions about their studies and then give to her to the other family with lot of money. Today in the 21st century where the world coming with new ideas and thoughts and everyone is given equal freedom and mentality of the people changed but still these kinds of pointless thoughts that girl is miserable for us, she bring nothing but only sorrow in people minds are awful. They changed their dressing style, living style, living standard but they don’t know that life is the very precious which can’t compared with anything and they don’t have right to the anyone life. I think there are two main reasons that most of the people think in this society,

Education: why one should spend so much money on the schools and colleges because she has to go another family and what is benefit of her knowledge to us, even if she start earning then we don’t get any money from her.

Dowry system: which is going on from past 50 years but today it became worse, people demand so much money that girl family can’t fulfill it, and even there are some cases where bride is tortured to get money from her family. This system is more rigid in the northern India.

Gender discrimination: The bias against females in India is grounded in cultural, economic and religious roots. Sons are expected to work in the fields; they provide greater income and look after parents in old age. In this way, sons are considered as a type of insurance. In addition, in a patriarchal society, sons are responsible for “preservation” of the family name. Also, as per Hindu belief, lighting the funeral pyre by a son is considered necessary for salvation of the spirit. This strong preference for sons which results in a life-endangering deprivation of daughters is not considered abhorrent culturally and socially. 

Despite making pre-natal sex determination is penal offence, doctors and parents alike rampantly violet this law. Even after the regular raids by the government in the private clinics and the hospitals and imposing a huge fine these kind of cruel things are still prevailing in the society.

In India, where many measures taken by the government like empowerment of the women, free education to girl child, reservation in parliament, women rights and other progressive initiative, do not make sense when we look at the cases of female feticide. There are only 940 females for every 1000 males in India according to the 2011 census.

Effects

Female feticide has very long term effects in the human diversity such as declination in the sex ratio. The child sex ratio is calculated as the number of girls per 1000 boys in the 0-6 year’s age group and has consistently declined from 976 girls per 1000 boys in 1961 to 945 in 1991 and 914 in the 2011 census. Even in India, the child sex ratio is not uniform across states. States like Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat and union territory of Chandigarh, the ratio has declined to less than 900 girls per 1000 boys. Haryana child sex ratio 830 and Punjab child sex ratio 846 are worst hit by the child sex ratio. In India’s capital Delhi, the sex ratio has declined from 915 in 1991 to 866 in 2011.

If this ratio is used to decline at this rate, then those days are not far when there is no bride. People will move from here to there into the parts of the country looking for the girls, then there will be market for the girls that pay and take the girl and this leads to the more social deprivation of the girls.

Strategies to curb female feticide

Although there are many facilities are given by the government and steps taken to improve the status of the women in the society. They are provided with greater opportunities in education, employment and in matter of governance that is their seats are reserved in the school, colleges and even the parliament. They are provided with almost free education, loans with zero percent interest and many other things that make the parents less burdened. As there are many laws against the female feticide such as huge fine, cancellation of license and many jail terms but they are not implemented in a good way because there are number of private clinics in the every corner of the city to be searched and moreover our take these things lightly for example in Korea, government cancelled all the license of doctors permanently and put them into jails the who are indulged in these activities, as a result there is significant increase in girls to boys sex ratio with in the year. Therefore first and foremost steps are strict actions against doctors and keep monitoring the advanced machines which are used by various doctors.

Most of people think that this kind of practice is more among the villagers or the one who are not educated but they are wrong. These are more in the large cities and the people who are well educated.

Intensive information, Education and Communication campaigns for raising awareness: the government launched so many programs one of them is “Save the Girl Child Campaign” which have main objectives to highlight the achievements of the young girls. To achieve the long-term vision efforts are made to create an environment where sons and daughter are equally valued. There is a need of mass media in promoting a positive image of women. School and colleges should be the target audience. Various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played an active role in this area. However the root causes of gender bias need to be tackled first and then steps towards women empowerment must be strengthened.

Women empowerment: Education is the powerful tool for women to improve self-image, acceptance of family planning and their empowerment. NGOs may be encouraged to promote formation of self-help groups, provide non-formal education for adult females, create employment opportunities for women as well as provide counseling and support services to newly married and pregnant women to discourage them from undergoing sex-selective abortion.

Role of medical colleges and professional bodies: there are many medical practitioners who joined campaigns against the misuse of these technologies, but some of them are supporters of sex-selective abortions emphasizing that it is the family’s personal decision to determine the sex of their children. Hence the role of medical colleges and professional bodies such as Indian Medical Association (IMA), Federation of Obstetric and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI) and association of radiologists, in countering this burning issue needs to be given due importance. This may include

Realizing the medical students regarding the adverse ratio while stressing upon the ethical issues involved in female feticide.

Conduct regular workshops to reiterate the importance of this problem in the country.

Organize awareness campaigns infield practice areas.

India has yet a long way to go in her fight against pre-birth elimination of females. Time is quickly ticking away. A shortage of girls would lead to a shortage of eligible brides thus making the girl a “scarce commodity”. According to UNFPA projection, by the year 2025 a significant share of men above 30 would still be single, and that many will never be able to marry at all. Men in the states of Haryana and Punjab are already experiencing a nearly 20% deficit of marriageable women.  A concerted effort by the medical fraternity, the law, political leaders, NGOs, media, teachers and the community itself is the need of the hour.