Socio-cultural determinants of female foeticide

Abstract

The social, cultural, religious and psychological fibres of India are predominantly patriarchal contributing extensively to the secondary status of women. A popular stereotype is strong preference of a male child. The deficit of women in India's population has been documented ever since the first decennial enumeration of people was conducted in the British-occupied parts of India in the late 19^th century. Over the span of more than 100 years, the deficit of women has progressively increased as evident from the sex ratio of the population; the number of women per 1000 men more or less steadily declined from 972 in 1901 to 933 in 2001, The explanation for India's low sex ratio are the trends of increasing masculinization and discrimination against woman. Sex selective abortion is a matter of great concern. The social and demographic implications of sex selective abortions are grave. In much of South Asia, sons are preferred over daughters for a number of reasons such as economic, social and religious reasons including financial support, old age security, property inheritance, dowry, family lineage, prestige and power, birth and death rituals and beliefs about religious duties and salvation. There are several forces associated with female foeticide which need research. The present study on 217 subjects in equal number of males and females drawn from the population using the simple random technique was completed in Delhi in the age group of 15-40 years. There are some salient findings such as: (1) The role of family planning and the fear of not being able to earn the resources seem to play relatively a greater role than the common belief about the son preference. This finding needs further research to find out the relative position of known factors contributing to the growing issue of sex selecting abortion; (2) The detection of the sex of the foetus and illegal abortion (Sex Selective Abortion), are placed as two steps. It is not necessary that all going for sex detection would opt for illegal abortion but there is probability of a very close relation rather than a linear relationship between sex detection and illegal abortion. The distancebetween the two can be broadened if close monitoring and strict regulationof abortion law is carried out in the country with a strong partnership with the influencing people in the society; and (3) Socially sensitive measures seem to be more important than the legal measures. One alsogets the impression from the findings that the explanations broadly quoted in the literature to explain the issues of declining child sex ratio are narrow and biased. Many of them are based on assumptions and a general theoretical framework to explain the gender discrimination. Findings in this table provide a valuable contribution to the issue of child sex ratio, which of course need to be studied further on the largest sample using scientifically developed measures/tools/techniques.