I just watched a documentary entitled "It's a Girl" about gendercide in India and China. I felt that this would make for an interesting post as we've discussed gender inequalities in class before....
This documentary showed how people in India and China do not value women as much as other societies do. This isn't just a small trend....Millions of infants are being either aborted, killed after birth, or abandoned because they are female.
In India, women will often smother their daughters immediately after birth by placing a wet cloth over their faces to stop the breathing. In the documentary, a woman who had killed several of her daughters this way was interviewed about her stance on the killing of her children. She actually didn't see anything wrong with it and felt no guilt because she thought it was more humane to do so than allow her daughter to grow up underprivileged and suffering. Some people will allow their daughters to grow up but they don't receive as good of an education as what their sons would (if any at all). In some cases, women want to keep their daughters but are beaten to death by their husbands because they wanted a boy and a girl is pretty much useless to them. Women are expensive to have, according to societal values in India. Their dowry makes them expensive to raise and marry off. In addition to that, they are not seen as providers like men are. So little is done to protect women because they have little monetary value in their society.
Most of us are familiar with the one child policy in China. The documentary discussed how the one child policy is only for couples who conceive a boy first. If they conceive a girl, they can try once more for a boy but after that they can no longer legally have children. So what happens to the children born illegally? They spend all of their life hiding. They cannot attend school, they cannot obtain a passport to leave the country, they will never have documentation of their existence, they will never work a job legally, and are likely to end up homeless. In many cases, these children don't make it to adulthood without being abducted by the Chinese government.
Because of the one child policy, many couples choose to abort or abandon their daughters. This leaves millions of children without a home or a family to love them. Even the families who choose to keep their daughters will sometimes pay the price too. Because women are becoming "scarce" in China, men have trouble finding a partner as easily now. So, child trafficking is a major concern in China - especially with little girls. They abduct the girls to sell to someone else to raise and then marry the daughters off. In the documentary, a woman who had lost her toddler daughter through this was interviewed. It is a scary reality for little girls and parents of little girls in China. The woman's daughter was playing on the porch and then suddenly disappeared. The parents hired a team of private investigators to find their daughter upon making the realization that she had been kidnapped. It took several years but the daughter was eventually found in a nearby home safe and sound. But for many parents, the outcome is not so good. Few end up finding their children.
In China (and many other countries), there are millions of children waiting to find good, loving homes. Orphanages are packed and the children there receive very little attention because of that. I actually got to see a Chinese orphanage that housed 750+ children in 2008. My sister, Addie, was adopted from China at the age of 2. She lived in that orphanage for awhile. It was nothing like we saw in the pictures. In the photos we were sent of her, she was smiling and sitting on a playground. When we got there, we saw the playground but it looked like the kids were not allowed to play on it. The cribs of the babies were bare with no blankets, toys, or mattress. Many of them were crying but no one came for them. A toddler was trained to go around to the babies and hand them bottles filled with water instead of formula. The nannies didn't do this because they didn't have time. In addition to that, they weren't trained or didn't care about holding the children properly. One nanny grabbed an infant by her arm and lifted her out of her crib. I nearly spoke out but was told by my parents to remain quiet to protect Addie. Being in the orphanage was a surreal experience for me. Seeing hundreds of children with no one their to care for them hurt my heart. As happy as I was to have Addie as my sister, it hurt to leave all of these sweet children behind.
Gendercide is the systematic killing of people based on their gender. This has affected so many lives in both India and China. And the millions of girls who survived aren't in a good place either. I don't know what there is to do at this point to directly make an impact but I find this trend to be extremely upsetting.
It is a great post, Leah! Your story about children in the orphanage reminds me of many cases in Indonesia where children were adopted by syndicates from the orphanage to be exploited for economic purpose. Some of them were sold to foreigner families illegally and most of them are “forced” to be beggars, buskers, or pickpockets. The syndicates use children (toddlers and kids) to attract people’s attention, make them feel a pity, and give them their charity. The syndicates usually use an abandoned place (e.g. abandoned warehouse) in the suburb to place those children, they provide them foods, drive them to some busy intersections every morning, and pick them up after midnight. The syndicates also attract some women who are homeless to join them to work in the streets and pretend to be mothers of those children. They need to work hard to obtain certain amount of money per day. Failure to fulfill this duty, they will be subject of violence.
ReplyDeleteIt is a problematic situation. The number of street children in Indonesia has been increased considerably in recent years, while the government could not find solution to alleviate the issue. The increasing number of newborn babies found in the streets even makes it worse because it raises those babies will be end at the orphanage and to the hands of the syndicates. An issue that is tied up with this problem is the taboo within the society when unmarried girls or women face unwanted pregnant in which they try to dispose of their babies. I know there many other issues that are related with this problem of street children syndicates. But, I wonder whether or not we could consider those children as homeless people? Considering that even though they do have a roof to protect them, but there is absence of their “real” home and needs as children.
Seeing children, especially infants, in those living conditions sounds tragic, but still sounds like an very enlightening experience. It is indeed interesting to examine how other cultures view issues such as sexual segregation, abortion, orphaned children, and homelessness. The citizens of China probably don't think that their actions towards the birthing of girls and the abandonment of orphans are as harsh of an punishment as we do in the United States, possibly because of their immense population density or their historical cultural norms. The denial of these forgotten offspring attending school or having any form of social identity, other than an outsider, is an unfortunate existence. However, sadly enough, even American children suffer this fate more often than our nation should ever have. Growing up in inner Cincinnati, I saw very strong examples of the dichotomy between the privileged kids going to school from their house in a nice neighborhood, and those kids sitting around on the street in the slums, looking for cars to break into. While this may not speak of all children worldwide who lack opportunities, there is still a correlation between them of how their socio-environmental upbringing shapes the general quality of life they will endure.
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