The late soul singer James Brown crooned “It’s a man’s world but it wouldn’t be nothing without a woman or a girl” and damn right he was too. The song incidentally is a firm favourite of mine. Why else would God create woman if he thought men were self-sufficient? Human’s these days seem to think otherwise however, how else can one describe the gender selection practices that are still being carried out in certain parts of the world today predominantly in Asia.
It was reported recently that China will have 30 million more men than women by 2020. China’s one child policy is well publicised and indeed they had a good reason for introducing the law when they did. Having said that it must be extremely difficult to have the state dictate how many children one can have. Disastrously this has led to the awful practice of gender selection as culturally the male child is valued over the female in China. Consequently this has led to fetuses being aborted if the gender is female and ultimately the forthcoming problem of gender imbalance. One could then question, didn’t anyone see this coming? How do they intend to procreate in the future if they completely rid themselves of the female of species? Why do some cultures persist in their thinking the male child holds more value?
In india another country in which gender selection is widely practiced, the reason often cited is the high bride price that has to be paid when a woman gets married. For poor families, having a female child could lead to financial ruin and so instead they avoid having them in the first place. There’s an easy enough resolution to that you and I would think, do away with the bride price! Again it’s boils down to that cultural thing. One would hope our thinking should be progressing as the years go by and not regressing or remaining stagnant? isn’t it about time we looked at practices carried out and branded “culture” and do away with all the counter productive and sometimes downright evil practices such as this?
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