No country for women

To be killed before you are born is inexplicable. For the 10 million girl children who were brutally killed due to selective abortions [after pre-natal screening between 2001 and 2011], the first blow landed before they were born. ABC News did an expose last year where it claimed that a staggering 40 million women have gone 'missing'. The result? The sex ratio has dipped to 918 girls for every 1000 males in 2011 from 927 girls in 2001.
For the girls who make the cut, it's not over, gendercide awaits. India has among the highest rates of girl children being killing after birth in the world (by women who can't afford pre-natal screening). It's a girl; three words that sound the death knell. After carrying their babies for nine months, mothers or midwives will put an end to the 'burden' by slamming their heads against the wall, burying them alive or stuffing a wet cloth in their mouths. Survive this and malnourishment follows, felling more. Around 2.5 million children die in India every year, that's one in five deaths globally, with girls being 50 per cent more likely to die. Dowry is cited as the main reason for boys being preferred to girls.
One of the biggest challenges of being a woman is the feeling that they are burden to the family and must be quickly unloaded to any suitor. Minors being married before they are physically and emotionally mature is the norm. According to a UNICEF report 'State of the world's children 2012: children in an urban world' almost 22 per cent of women have children before they turn 18! Only 41 per of them initiated early breastfeeding, which is crucial for mental and physical nourishment resulting in 48 per cent of children under the age of five being stunted.
The unfortunate part is that selective abortions, gendercide and high infant mortality rates for girls below five are a widely reported phenomena, and the government has tried to address these issues. But, discrimination and a nation obsessed with male children for hundreds of years will not be easy to set right. This is not just in villages where illiteracy is widespread and discrimination runs generations deep. Urban, well-educated families also behave in the same fashion. One of Delhi's districts has a sex ratio of just 836 females per 1,000 males.
Being a girl child in India must be a constant looking over the shoulder and crawl through the trenches. While literacy rates are abysmally low for men and women, the fairer sex is worse off. According to a UNICEF report the national literacy rate of girls over seven years is 54 per cent against 75 per cent for boys. Girls in the Northern states are worse off, between 33 to 50 per cent.