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There’s a moment in the documentary film ‘It’s a Girl’ that is at once chilling and heart-rending.
A woman smiles nervously as she starts to describe the methods she used to kill her eight new-born baby daughters.
Then she puts her hand up to her own neck, to indicate strangulation – and it’s almost as though she were doing it to herself. Which, in a way, she was.
We soon learn that several other women in her community in rural Tamil Nadu admit to similar measures to provide their husbands with a son.
Such brutal customs are rare in India today, sociologists say, and confined to certain isolated communities.
A far greater number of baby girls die more slowly – from neglect. Hence the shocking statistic: an Indian girl aged between one and five is 75 per cent more likely to die than a boy. It’s the worst under-five gender differential in the world.
But far more common than letting girls die today is another form of sex discrimination – making sure that girls aren’t born at all.
Skewing the...
A woman smiles nervously as she starts to describe the methods she used to kill her eight new-born baby daughters.
Then she puts her hand up to her own neck, to indicate strangulation – and it’s almost as though she were doing it to herself. Which, in a way, she was.
We soon learn that several other women in her community in rural Tamil Nadu admit to similar measures to provide their husbands with a son.
Such brutal customs are rare in India today, sociologists say, and confined to certain isolated communities.
A far greater number of baby girls die more slowly – from neglect. Hence the shocking statistic: an Indian girl aged between one and five is 75 per cent more likely to die than a boy. It’s the worst under-five gender differential in the world.
But far more common than letting girls die today is another form of sex discrimination – making sure that girls aren’t born at all.
Skewing the...