Even living in one of the big red states in the U.S. South, I feel buffered from some of the blatant indicators that women and minorities are still viewed as expendable around the world.
In today's Chronicle, this article refers to female feticide still being practiced in parts of India (and one can safely assume many other nations):
Abortion is legal in India, though it is against the law to abort a fetus because of its sex. Female feticide is still practiced in parts of the country, where an infant girl is valued considerably less than a boy...the government announced on Sunday that it would establish a "cradle scheme" to adopt girls in an effort to curb female feticide. "If you don't want a girl child, leave her to us," Renuka Chowdhury, minister for women and child development...And this YouTube video link that my daughter sent to me. A young woman, Kiri Davis, reenacts the experiment that was
...the social science research cited in the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. The symbol and lightning rod for that research were the doll experiments conducted by Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie that tested perceptions of race. (from NPR)Of course I read articles about honor killings in Muslim cultures and domestic abuse worldwide and feel revulsion and disbelief that such practices are tolerated. Yet sometimes a snippet of news hits home with fresh poignancy.
1 comment:
The joke's on those who would place one child's worth/life above another's based upon sex alone.
In China, where population control has been going on for a while, limiting the number of children a couple can produce. Their culture prizes boy children above girls, consequently many girls are killed as newborns in the hopes that the next child will be a boy.
The irony is that there is now a wife shortage in China, especially in the rural areas. In the cities, people are exposed to more cosmopolitan ideas and women are able to have careers, so the "worth" of a baby girl is more than in the countryside.
So now there are a buncha grubby farmer boys who want to get married, but there aren't enough girls. So what do they do? Why, go to the city to try to get a bride! Ladies, think of it: what a catch! You can give up your career and hitch up with some grubby farmer guy, move to the farm and become his servant. Hooray!
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