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Journalism of Courage
AHMEDABAD, Sept 20: With girls continuing to be considered the lesser sex, family planning is having a direct impact on the declining juvenile ratio in the State as no one seems to want girls in planned families, said UNICEF project director Geeta Athreya. She warned audiences that if the ratio of 934 females for 1,000 men, kept dropping over the next 20 years, a time would come when boys in the State would be at a loss for marriage partners.
Athreya was speaking at the launch of `Meena — The Girl Child Week’ in the National Institute of Design this morning. The seemingly routine function was brought alive by the presence of about 20 slum children in the 10 to 15 age group, brought there by St. Xavier’s Social Service Group. As one little girl after another took the mike to recount horrifying stories of neglect and discrimination, brought upon them because they happened to be born female, few in the audience could meet their eyes.
Gaping eye wounds because treatment was callously postponed, uneducated because they were burdened with the responsibility of entire households, responsibilities of younger siblings dumped on young shoulders because both parents were too busy trying to make ends meet, days that ought to have been spent in fun and frolic, passed cooking meals, selling wood, doing menial labour, were recounted with heart-wrenching humility.
Eleven-year-olds spoke of aborted dreams of becoming school teachers and seamstresses, which the children themselves felt would be difficult to pursue because younger brothers had to study and do well in life and girls had to grow up to marry and bear children.
No wonder then that real-life examples are borne out by callous facts: The sex ratio in Gujarat is 934 females for 1,000 males, which means that lakhs of girls and women are “missing”; it is estimated that 99 per cent of foeticide in the State concerns female foetuses; girls lose their lives due to lesser access to food and health care; compared to 60 per cent of boys aged 10 to 14 years, who complete primary education, only 49 per cent girls of the same age do so; while Indian legislation prohibits marriage of girls below the age of 18, the average age of female marriage is 17.4 years.
While Athreya called for registration of pregnant women, birth and death, a change in role models for men and women and a unified children’s code, Ila Bhat, chairperson, SEWA, put forth a proposal before the UNICEF and State Government to set up specialised schools in villages for imparting life education and vocational training to girls in the age group of 10 to 20 years.
Lighting a candle
Ahmedabad: A little girl with bright sparkling eyes and a fat pigtail accompanied by her Gujarat-speaking parrot will dance over television screens in the State this week as UNICEF takes its `Meena Initiative’ films to the most backward villages to create awareness about the situation of the girl child and list reasons why she deserves better.
Meena is a cartoon character, a 10-year-old girl living in an imaginary village in south east Asia, who was born after a series of consultation between UNICEF and Hanna Barbera Productions. There are 13 episodes of Meena, some of them translated in Gujarati which will be broadcast by Doordarshan between September 20 and 27, and also shown through projectors in the villages by field units of the Government. The aim is to sensitise people to gender discrimination at the community level.
