India was a country where the birth of a girl child was considered as the arrival of the goddess into the household. A country where women were respected and revered I am not sure when and where this country took the wrong turn and started considering this very gender that they revered as a shame and a disgrace. The birth of a baby girl led to the parents to be stigmatized in the society.
Empowerment of women and a change in this outlook against women would happen only through education, it is often seen that the illiterate women folk in the village are the ones who scheme against their daughter –in- laws and see to it that they are blamed and tortured in case their grandchildren turn out to be girls building up resentment in the minds of the coming generation against the girl child. If the literacy rate among women goes up then naturally the literacy rate as a whole would go up and this stigmatization against women would come down as a literate women would not want their kids to be illetrate and women who has knowledge would not stigmatize against the girl child.
Literacy would help in correcting the wrong notion of girl child being a burden to the family and not being useful in contributing to the family’s income. We can see that educated women are achieving great heights in every field they enter today. Now a day’s women who are well educated and getting employed are given the same pay as their counter parts. The reality that women too can earn as much as their counterparts if well educated would bring down the discrimination meted out to them and thus helps in the progress of the country.
All those who read this would say that this does not happen now and is a truth of the past, but I think no, still in those far flung villages in our country they still have this stigma attached against the girl child. Though I would say that over the years there has been a definite change in the outlook and there is still progress happening in this direction but for this to happen at a faster rate we need to see to it that the girl child is also educated along with the boys.
Good write up on Infanticide. i wont agree though with the view that providing education alone will change the outlook of people.Lots of educated people(mostly middle class ppl) still prefer male child, why? they get disappointed if the kid has dark complexion. This has something to do with the attitude of the society at large.There's no guarantee that providing education can bring that change in heart.
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