How safe is India for women? Part 2.

I concluded my first post on this topic with the question: how is the position of girls and women here in general? Where could e.g. all those rapes come from?

Well, I think it starts even before (or right at) birth: female foeticide is big in India.

Over the last 10 years 3 million girls have 'disappeared'. Three million!!!!!
These baby girls are murdered at birth, sometimes  just left at the side of the road, to be ripped apart alive by stray dogs. Or they are sold, left, prostituted and so on.

The dutch tv journalist Jelle Brandt Corstius adresses these topics in some episodes of his fantastic series "Van Bihar tot Bangalore". He talks to locals and let's them share their stories.

Ofcourse India is evolving and changing. And there are social movements to create awareness and change regarding e.g.  female foeticide.

"Mandal" means something like "neighborhood committee".

These initiatives give hope for the future.

Still I also read interviews with Rajasthani villages where they are proud to say that no baby girl has been born (meaning: survived birth) since one hundred years.

As with everything in India: differences in believes, development, wealth, culture and so on are really, really huge. 
I have met girls, women and men who's ideas about women are no different then mine. 
But there is still a lot of development and change to be done! Maybe in 25 to 50 years from now things will be different on a bigger scale?

In case you wonder why they don't want baby girls? 
That has to do with the phenomena of 'dowry'. At marriage it is the family of the girl that has to pay the family of the boy. For poor families sometimes almost leading to bankruptcy. 

There is also the phenomena of 'sati' (burning -alive- of the widow). Although nowadays forbidden in the literal sense, figuratively speaking, the life of a woman is still over, when her husband dies, e.g. in Rajasthan.
To be continued.....