Sunday, November 23, 2014

It's a girl

       In Asian communities the sheen of happiness is lower when the doctor's says its a girl compared to its a boy.What makes this strange phenomenon prevalent? Its sometimes strange to see educated and supposed high class people doing such differentiation.I am an only child for my parents, i have had cases where people nod their head in sadness "no boy" , at my age its very funny.Thankfully my parents are enlightened enough to not show me such feelings, imagine feeling unwanted in your own home!!
    Recently two relatives of mine had baby girls, one reacted with happiness another family reacted with indifference as it was girl.One was from a small town and another from the city and well educated.Now you will immediately think that it will be people from town who must have craved for the boy child, funnily enough it was them who reacted with joy.To debate my point i was just telling that we cannot think that people less educated will think in such manner.A senior project manager who is someone we know had a third child as his family wanted a boy as his first 2 kids were females.In the US they were asked if they wanted to abort the child, thankfully the guy was good enough to say No.Sometimes its quite saddening to see girl child abandoned after birth citing that we already have enough mouths to feed.
      Female foeticide is still a highly prevalent social problem in developing and Asian countries.These topics have already been discussed to death already.There is probably no more i can add on this topic.The gender determination test is easily available.People still mostly adopt boys if they have to.Until we don't change the grass root level thinking ,talking and ranting about it will just not solve this problem.
    If that is not enough, a country where you are constantly reminded "you are a girl" , be it during school, college , work etc..I see girls have to strive doubly hard to prove something as they have to overcome a subconscious barrier most of the times.The strange gender specific roles are already defined in our society.The marriage scenario is another such example.You see that girl can be from IIM or IIT, but the inevitable question of "can you cook and clean" never leaves her.I am not advocating that we change these, but its rare that we actually think about it.Many things we expect as how they are.