India: an increase in the births of girls without changing mentalities
The number of girl births has increased slightly, but attitudes are still struggling to change in India.
© INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / AFP
Text by: Sébastien Farcis Follow
4 min
India is the country with the most unequal gender ratio in the world with China.
Many fewer girls than boys have been born in recent years, owing to the widespread practice of abortion of female fetuses.
However, the government announces that this trend has improved over the past six years.
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From our correspondent in New Delhi,
934 girls were born for every 1,000 boys last year, up from 911 six years ago.
So that's an increase of almost 2%.
A significant improvement, if we are to believe the figures from a government report.
The latter claims that this progress was made thanks to its specific program for the protection and education of young girls, launched in 2015 in the northern half of India.
In this very patriarchal region, families prefer to abort female fetuses so as not to have to raise a daughter, and to pay her dowry when she gets married.
A contrasted situation according to the States
To counter these prejudices, the authorities first carried out a communication campaign and then they established a stricter control of the clinics which carry out the ultrasounds of pregnant women, this so that the doctors do not reveal the gender of the fetus to the families.
And it seems to work, because in the majority of districts where this program is in place, there have been more births of girls.
But the battle is far from won, as entire states, often unaffected by this program, continue to see the gender ratio drop: Himachal Pradesh, for example, a mountain state in northern India, has seen the gender ratio drop 62 points in 5 years: last year, only 875 girls per 1,000 boys were born.
The same goes for Maharashtra, the state where Bombay is located, which has seen this situation worsen.
We realize that the progress announced is fragile, especially as, as social workers say, families in northern India have not changed their mentalities - they continue to do everything to
have a boy rather than a girl
.
Moreover, this practice is also developing in the rest of the country.
Regressions with the pandemic
The pandemic has also made the lives of young girls more difficult.
Most schools are still closed in India, due to fear of Covid-19 contagion.
And the lessons are therefore conducted online, which is precarious, as most families only have a computer or smartphone and will give it to their boy rather than their daughter.
This has consequences, explains Dr. Ranjana Kumari, feminist activist at the head of the
Center for Social Research
in New Delhi: “A
lot of girls did not have access to technology to attend classes, so they dropped out of school. school, and were married by their parents.
And this year we have seen an increase in underage marriages.
"
The pandemic has diverted the authorities' attention from these problems - social workers are therefore demanding that the government integrate the gender dimension in the fight against Covid-19, so as not to add social problems to this health crisis.
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