Girls Child Education in India

Martin Luther King Jr. was a brilliant man who preached non-violence to his followers during the fight of equality in deeply

Yet in America, it is quite different. As stated by Paul Hockings, the Indian culture believes that a woman must obey the men in their lives in a certain order. For instance, a woman should obey her father first, next her husband, and finally her son. The head male of the family, whether it is the father, husband, or son is in charge of the entire family. The head male is also important in arranging marriages. The head male of the family, has to compensate or receive compensation at the time of a child’s marriage. In the Indian culture, the primary purpose of a marriage is to bring families together. It is usually not done out of love or romance. If a marriage is not approved or arranged by the parents involved, then the act is frowned upon. In America, marriages are not typically arranged and people do not receive compensation during a

All over the globe, violence and discrimination against women and girls violates their human rights and severely compromised their perception of equality. Culture, false beliefs and ancient traditions, such as early marriage, the nuclear family, gender-based discrimination, which lead to violence against women and femicide, destroyed young girls ' mental and physical wellbeing and self-esteem by supporting the ideas that gender-based discrimination and inequality is acceptable in our societies.

“The preference for male children is further emphasized by the finding that parents are more likely to continue having children if they have only girls than if they have only boys. Reasons given by women for their preference for sons are to please their husbands, to carry on the family name, and to be a companion to the husband.” (Witt, n.p.) There are also many more pieces of important evidence.

All of those disadvantages for women in modern society are affecting young girls, and it is hard to raise daughters in today’s culture. We as a country should not just let this inequality continue. Men and women should be treated equally and it is important for parents to raise their kids to make the future less

There is a lot of historical and cultural context to this. To show respect to your families, children will live with their parents even well after the age of 30. While it is ridiculed here, it is pretty customary in many parts of Asia. Even if a man finds a wife, they will still most likely move back in with the husband’s family. From the wife’s parents’ side, they do not view their daughter as an asset. This is because she is going off to live with her husband’s family, so they do not benefit from it. As well as this, daughters take their husbands last names. Therefore, families prefer to have boys over girls because they are able to carry the family on.

Up until now, there has always been a preference for sons. The yearning to give birth to a male heir has been so overwhelming that in South Korea, many women who failed to bear sons were treated poorly and even abused. Women have committed suicide or have been murdered for not being able to bear sons. Men have tied off their left testicle in hopes of producing male heirs. People have even

This joint family, like any social organization, must face problems such as acceptable division of work, relationships and specific family roles. These familial relationships are managed on the basis of a secular hierarchical principle. In fact, all Indians owe respect and obedience to the head of the family, who usually is the father or the oldest man of the family community. In The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder by Nanda and Gregg, it is explained that, “females [are] placed under the perpetual guardianship of first their fathers and elder brothers, then their husbands.” (Nanda & Gregg 22) Thus, all the spending decisions, studies and profession, or marriage, are exclusively the responsibility of the father after the possible discussions with the other men of the family. Age and sex are the basic principles of this hierarchical system. The eldest sons enjoy greater unchallenged authority than their cadets. Of course men have more authority than women, but older married women have an important role within the family. In fact, the authority of a woman depends on the rank of her husband inside the group. Traditionally, the wife of the patriarch rules over domestic affairs and has considerable power over the other women in the community, especially her daughters- in-law.

Parent understand that their girls are a burden and their sons are a gift, and this is what their sons and daughters grow up believing. The dowry placed on girls plays greatly into the sex-selected abortion rate in India. Boys are plainly and simply a better financial investment. Boys will not cost the parents money for marriage, in fact, with a marriage, they are guaranteed to make the parents money. Parents forced with the decision to have a girl and deal with the financial consequences, or abort and hope and pray for better luck in the gender of their child next time around. Quite often they chose the

Why is it that most parents want to have a son born first rather than a daughter? Along with that question raises other questions concerning sexism and the incline of families preferring males to females and why. In the figure to the left we see that there are two gender symbols, one for male and one for female. The female’s gender symbol appears to have an X through it while the males symbol has a check mark in it. This is a visual representation of how the world is gender-stereotyping women in general and choosing the male gender over female due to personal reasons of the father and mother. There could be reasons such as a father seeing the males as dominant figures thus wanting to start out his family on a strong foot. Another example could be a father wanting the son he always dreamed of having that he could play baseball and football with and wrestle in the mud with. Or maybe he wants to give his son the type of life that he never had growing up as a child. These sorts of things are the stereotyped gender roles of males throughout history and the types of sons that fathers wish to have (Malpani, “Preconception Gender Selection”). Why is it that parents don’t want to start families with females? A study of 101 consecutive elective

India’s statistics are similar. According to the BBC “In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls. Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China. Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children. But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide”.

The low status of women and girls is due to cultural beliefs and the material cost they represent to their families. Vanaja Dhruvarajan says that there is a belief regarding the nature of men and women: "Men are ritually pure, physically strong, and emotionally mature; women, on the other hand, are ritually pollutable, physically weak, and lack strong willpower" (30). Because of these

     This patriarchal role of males in the Indian family allows for all the power to be placed on the father of the household. This power can be abused which I would assume happens with the children in these families. The oldest male child has the authority to boss around his other siblings, and in the death of his father he then becomes the leader of the household. This could lead to many harsh or unfair ruling by older siblings or by other members of society. This would lead for the younger sibling to have to adjust greatly as they grow into adulthood. These rules that govern Indian household are often strict and are always final. This is accepted by all.

Every year, more than a million girls in the developing world are married as children, denied their right to educations,health and opportunities, and even

Education is one of the most important things for a society to prosper and be safe which forms the character and intelligence of the individuals around the world. Education makes one able to understand what is happening in the world logically and clearly. Education enables individuals to put their potential to use and make a difference in the future. It is essential for individuals to be educated in a way that they will expand their knowledge vastly. An ideal educational model is very difficult to achieve, and is often argued over by people in society.