“In 1976, Dr.Diana Russell first testified about a crime she called femicide at the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women that was held in Brussels, Belgium” (paragraph 1). Femicide, she defined as the killing of women and girls due to their gender and she feels that this is no different from the killing of people for other biases such as for race, religion, ethnicity, or nationality. However, Dr. Russell argues that internationally and even among some women’s right groups, there has been an unwillingness to recognize the hatred that underlies femicides and that these femicides are usually “trivialized and depoliticized” (paragraph 2). Dr.Russell feels that femicides are “lethal hate crimes” in which need to be addressed and handled in the same manner as other hate crimes. In a recent report released by the UN-DESA covering global infant and mortality rates the report showed that India had a very high rate of mortality for female children between the ages of 1 and 5 and India has the highest rate of female child mortality among the 150 countries that were surveyed. For every 56 boys that die, 100 girls die. The reason for this high death rate of girls under five is due to the prevalence of domestic violence in homes that target females. Over the last two decades, over 1.8 million girls under age six had been killed in India. Infant girls have a 50% higher risk of dying than boys of the same age. However, another reason why little girls are dying is because of deliberate abuse and neglect particularly in regards to nutrition and lack of food. Families will deliberately starve daughters and feed the boys first, giving the sons preference. Also, if a girl falls ill, the family usually won’t want to spend money to get her the needed medical care. Ways of killing infant girls include drowning them in buckets of milk, feeding them salt, or burying them alive. Parents also will purposely give their daughters pneumonia or diarrhea so that they can kill their daughters without looking suspicious or get in trouble with the police. Thus, families vent their anger on their daughters for being born girls by torturing them and killing them.
The problem of women and female children being abused, treated unequally or even being killed in India can be considered as a social problem since it affects millions of women and children who live within the country, it is caused by social factors, and it is considered to be a social problem by many. The reason as to why this problem is occurring is because of the gender stratification that occurs between men and women. Gender stratification is a society’s unequal distribution of wealth, power, and privilege between men and women. Women have always throughout history and in many parts of the globe been treated less equal than men and India is no exception. As we had discussed in class, many parents do not want female children because they are a burden on the family. Sometimes parents have to worry about paying a dowry for their daughters to get married one day and once their daughters get married they are property of their husbands family. Therefore, the daughter can no longer support her parents anymore. Also, women make less money and therefore cannot help support their parents as much as a boy would be able to. Thus, in India, these can be considered as factors as to why many of these young girls are being killed. Boys are the ones who often get preference over girls as they are valued more within societies in general thus, creating gender inequalities and stratification. The problem of femicide in India is only an example of how unequal the female gender is in comparison to the male gender, even to the point of females being killed since they are not valued and are even seen as a burden. The social problem of poverty can play into this issue as well however, as many families in India are poor and with a daughter having the potential to bring more financial afflictions can only add to a family’s financial concerns. Therefore, the social problem of gender inequality can also tie into other social problems. Thus, the problem of femicide in India, is a problem that is rooted in the gender stratification and gender inequality that has existed for ages throughout the world and is rooted in India’s society as well; boys always having greater value and worth than girls.
http://womennewsnetwork.net/2012/02/07/india-girl-infants-murder-femicide/
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