Gender Issues – KQ1.5 What are the causes and impacts of changing gender structure

LO: to examine issues to do with changing gender structures –

impacts

Discuss

Why in less developed societies the tradition is:

• to prefer boys to girls

• to treat women as second class citizens

Infanticide= In law, the killing of a child under 12 months old, and more generally, any killing of a newborn child. It is often seen as a method of population control, especially among hunter-gatherers and nomadic societies where it may be impossible for a mother to carry around more than one small child and still perform the tasks necessary for survival. In some societies, especially in India and China, more girls are killed than boys because of the higher value placed on male offspring. It is estimated that more than one million children worldwide are killed each year because they are born female.

Female infanticide in ChinaIn China it is important to have boys, as only boys can carry on the family name and honour the ancestors. This preference for male children has led to approximately 10,000 female infants being killed in China each year (1996). By the end of the century it is estimated that there will be an excess of 90 million unmarried men.

Female infanticide in IndiaInfanticide in India occurs mostly among poor, rural populations. Daughters are considered economic burdens because of the high cost of weddings and dowries, while sons provide income, and are seen as type of insurance by their parents. Research carried out at a Mumbai (formerly Bombay) hospital revealed in 1995 that for every aborted male, there were 1,000 aborted females.

In LEDCs culturally and economically boys are preferred to girls.

‘Lakshmi already had one daughter, so when she gave birth to a second girl, she killed her. For the three days of her second child's short life, Lakshmi admits, she refused to nurse her. To silence the infant's famished cries, the impoverished village woman squeezed the milky sap from an oleander shrub, mixed it with castor oil, and forced the poisonous potion down the newborn's throat. The baby bled from the nose, then died soon afterward. Female neighbors buried her in a small hole near Lakshmi's square thatched hut of sunbaked mud. They sympathized with Lakshmi, and in the same circumstances, some would probably have done what she did. For despite the risk of execution by hanging and about 16 months of a much-ballyhooed government scheme to assist families with daughters, in some hamlets of ... Tamil Nadu, murdering girls is still sometimes believed to be a wiser course than raising them. "A daughter is always liabilities. How can I bring up a second?" Lakshmi, 28, answered firmly when asked by a visitor how she could have taken her own child's life eight years ago. "Instead of her suffering the way I do, I thought it was better to get rid of her."

(All quotes from Dahlburg, "Where killing baby girls 'is no big sin'.")

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As countries develop how does this gender imbalance

shift?

What do you notice about the gender

imbalance in a UK population

pyramid?

Describe the

population

characteristics of this pyramid

Female Emancipation

• The term women's rights refers to freedoms and entitlements of women and girls of all ages. These rights may or may not be institutionalized, ignored or suppressed by law, local custom, and behavior in a particular society. These liberties are grouped together and differentiated from broader notions of human rights because they often differ from the freedoms inherently possessed by or recognized for men and boys, and because activists for this issue claim an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls

Designer babies and IVF

Homework• Due date: 6th January

1) Explain how female infanticide in India has led to an imbalance in the gender structure of its population. State the impacts of these changes (20)

CausesImpactsDefine female infanticideLocate India – background Say what gender imbalance is

What country would you recommend a single lady to go and live in to find a partner?

What country would you recommend a single man go and live in to find a partner?

Gender imbalance in India

• Fertility rates and wealth education and status of women