'Celebrating' the girl child?

Today is October 11, 2012: The International Day of the Girl Child. A plea, rather than a celebration, against the backdrop of ever-increasing atrocities against women and the girl child. An expression of shame for being a society where sons are perceived as assets for being members of the physically stronger, financially and socially empowered sex and daughters as financial liabilities and a potential source of social embarrassment and shame for their parents. For being a bestial society where women, being disadvantaged solely in terms of sheer brute force, are perceived as fair game for myriad forms of molestation, be it against their dignity in the form of catcalls and ‘eve-teasing’ as they walk down a street or in a marketplace; or against their bodies and souls in the form of physical/ sexual abuse, both marital and non-marital; or against their self-esteem in the form of mental and emotional violence: in homes, in educational institutions, in workplaces. For being a nation where the states with the highest levels of prosperity are also ones the most ludicrously skewed sex ratios. For being a country where the affluent practice sex selection in conception of babies and sex conversion of their girl children. For being a people who worship the Mother Goddess and simultaneously murder their daughters before birth and brutalize, humiliate, degrade, subjugate or commoditize them if they manage to be born. For being a country of bigots and zealots who quote Manu and Tulsidas, shorn of their contexts, to form Khaps that bolster their fragile sense of superiority and give them a platform to validate and legitimize their power plays through abuse of women. SCENARIO I: A highly educated professional from a 'good family' is physically abused by her 'better half' because she went for a cup of coffee with colleagues from office and his mom had to have her evening tea made by the domestic help. SCENARIO II: A wealthy business tycoon's trophy wife is not 'allowed' the time or space to recover fully from a hysterectomy because he needs his picture perfect hostess within a week of her surgery (those designer labels and jewels are, after all, investment, and his business socializing cannot wait upon the vagaries of something as trivial as her health!). SCENARIO III: A perfectly sane, healthy, capable and self-supporting woman lies about visiting her parents or personal friends to avoid irrational showdowns at 'home'. SCENARIO IV: A highly qualified professional, who runs her home, works full-time at a high-profile job, and handles the wherewithal of raising her children single-handedly, is put down and constantly criticized by a spouse still steeped in the age-old myths about male superiority, whose fragile ago is bruised by her lack of dependence on him (which he would have resented, in any case). SCENARIO V: A hitherto hardworking, responsible dhobi (washerman) takes to drink when his wife delivers their fourth girl child: the astrologer had assured him it would be a son, otherwise he would have had the damn thing aborted! The old ladies in the families he works for bless him as he helps them up from chairs or runs small errands for them: “May the next one be a son”. SCENARIO VI: A group of girls coming home from the school bus stop are accosted by a stranger who ‘flashes’ at them and calls out obscenities. They dare not mention this to their parents out of consideration for their trauma and fear of paranoid parental supervision. They carry large safety pins and their grandmothers’ knitting needles to ‘dissuade’ anyone who gets ideas about coming closer. Then, one day, four out of the five happen to be absent from school and the one who was present falls prey to the flasher and his cronies, who perceive the fact of her walking alone on the street as an invitation. SCENARIO VII: A middle class professional is at the end of his tether because he has two professionally qualifies, good-looking, well-earning daughters of ‘marriageable age’ and the ‘going rate’ for halfway ‘decent’ grooms in his community is way beyond his reach. He wishes his daughters had been more ‘proactive’ and found partners for themselves. Odium from the community would have died out in time, after all! SCENARIO VIII: The middle class parents of a girl married into a middle class family have lost their sleep and appetite because they know their daughter is miserable. She is constantly subjugated, derided and physically abused by her marital family. However, they are not in a position to do anything. They are financially unable to feed the avarice of her in-laws to induce them to let up on her. They have another daughter to be married off, so, bringing the first one back home from that hell hole is out of the question as well. They simply can’t afford it. Besides, what respectable family will consent to accept the younger one if the elder sister leaves her marital home? Further, even after the younger one is married off, how can they bring their abused daughter home? Their sons would not be willing to have a married sister foisted on them for life! The abused daughter holds on to life till her younger sister is married off. Three months later she hangs herself to escape her miserable existence. SCENARIO IX: Two daughters-in-law in an extremely wealthy family are mentally and emotionally abused on the occasion of every festival as the ‘gifts’ from their parents are held up to ridicule and scorn. The girls’ parents get regular anxiety attacks weeks before every festival and celebration, trying to live up to expectations from their daughters’ families, which, of course, can never be met. It is a game of one-upmanship, after all. It is their due for having birthed sons, and those who have been cursed with daughters (no doubt, as a result of sins committed in previous births) deserve to be put down and penalized! SCENARIO X: Just a few days ago, a highly educated, professional young woman in my neighbourhood watches fondly as her nine year old brat vandalizes an elderly neighbour’s lovingly cultivated plants. As a friend and I request her to stop her son, she turns and rends us: “You won’t understand, because you don’t have a son. Daughters listen when you tell them something. Sons are different. You need to let them do exactly as they please. These are only plants, after all!” It would seem that those who wish to avoid the ‘burden’ of the girl child have reason, after all! How many people would see a ravening beast heading their way and not try to side-step it? How many would actually choose to lock horns with it? And violence against women and the aversion for the girl child it is not really about men as aggressors and women as victim at all. Members of a society behave in ways that society rewards them for. In that sense, it is more about unacceptable societal mindsets springing from patriarchal systems that defined such roles for women as to place them in a position of subjugation as the contexts changed. Is this perhaps why women in our society suffer from low self-esteem and spend a large part of their lives apologizing for being women? But we need to realize that times have changed. The contexts of societal systems have changed. It is high time our mindsets too changed in tandem. Along with the need for men to be sensitized, there is also need for women to come to a realization of their own strength and potential; to empower themselves on the mental and emotional levels. Else, conformity to the anachronistic expectations of traditional patriarchal societal norms will, as always, set the tone for our daughters' conditioning and psychological patterns that would haunt them all the lives.