Nearly thirty percent of Indians live in poverty, and for women, this economic status creates a hostile life. The bride’s parents had to provide the dowry, which often bankrupted her. As such, female infanticide is a common and established practice. Girls who were not killed were effectively enslaved, forced to smash rocks or sell their bodies to make ends meet. But now the women are fighting back by forming associations that offer help with education, savings and loans.
All in the name of saving more girls by enabling more girls to function more effectively in society. For more than 15 years, NGOs have been fighting the killing of girls in non-urban areas of India. In 80 villages, they help women form groups that essentially patrol the homes where they are about to give birth. Traditional healers know many different ways to kill a baby: feeding it poisonous or very hot food, wrapping it in a soaked cloth and placing it under a cooling fan, smothering it with a pillow, or simply starving it.
People accepted the first girl, the second girl was to be murdered, and then the third child was a son. Women who only bear girls are believed to bring bad luck. The girl group tries to explain to everyone that this is not true. But the reality is on open display in schools. There are more boys than girls, and the ratio is the same across India. In some areas there are as few as 700 girls for every 1,000 boys. Many families don’t even send their daughters to school.
Daughters leave their parents’ home when they marry, and training probably won’t change that. These campaigns ended the killing of girls in many villages. But there are still individual cases.
