China: Female Infanticide
As soon as the baby girl was born, my mother-in-law kicked it with her toe and said, 'Who wants this?' She wrapped it in a wet towel and left it on the floor. My husband's sister, weak after the delivery, just wept. It died within a few hours." (Arvamudan, 1999)
Female infanticide has been present within some societies for centuries. It continues to represent a social justice concern because the occurrence of female infanticide has historically led to and accounts for millions of gender-selective deaths throughout the world. A feminist perspective of social justice can be utilized to best explain the occurrence of this problem. On the basis of a feminist perspective, female infanticide is a form of violence directed at and used against females, representing one of many different forms of such violence, deeply rooted in sex inequality. As such, female infanticide represents an act of social injustice…...
Chittister, J. (1986). Divinely ordained? Religious creation myths and the relation of militarism to sexism. In Winds of Change: Women Challenge Church, Kansis City: Sheed & Ward, 89-107;
Jeffrey, T. (2002). U.S. commission ignores China's holocaust for little girls. Human Events, 58 (37), 4-9.
National Conference of Catholic Bishops (1986). Economic justice for all: Catholic social teachings and the U.S. economy. Washington, DC: U.S. National Catholic Conference.
Infanticide in China
In 2007, the United Nations Population Fund published a study that argued there were 60 million "missing" girls in Asia, a direct result of female infanticide (Karabin, 2007). Infanticide, by definition, is the unlawful killing of very young children, and in some cultures this practice is conducted against female babies in particular. The result is that countries like China have a serious population imbalance, with many more males than females (BBC, 2012). This paper will examine the issue of female infanticide in China, its causes and what potential solutions there might be to this serious problem.
Confucianism
Lee (1981) notes that female infanticide has long been practiced in China. riting just after the introduction of the one-child policy in China, Lee notes that "this form of discrimination against women…persisted in varying degrees over hundreds of years." She outlines the techniques used to commit the crime: "drowning in 'baby-ponds', immersion in…...
Infanticide in Australia
Infanticide is the act or practice of killing newborns or infants. It has been committed or performed in every continent and in every level of culture from the poorest hunters and gatherers to the richest and most advanced classes of people and from the time of our ancestors to modern age (Milner 1998). The act or practice has been so rampant that there is enough evidence on record to show that it has been more the rule than an exception and this evidence reflects that parents themselves kill their infants under distressing and stressful situations. The practice or act was so frequent in England in the 19th century that both the medical and the private communities had to think of ways to control the crime (Milner) described by medical practitioners as savage in a contradiction to human progress.
But infanticide is not a modern creation. It was committed or…...
After all, it remains within the female's best interest to mate with a newly dominant male, even if he has killer her infant. Ultimately, this is because the female, having lost her offspring, needs to remain reproductively competitive and to mate with a male. Additionally, if she mates with a non-dominant male, who has not killed her offspring, she runs the risk of the dominant male repeating his actions. Accordingly, she is obligated to mate with the dominant male in order to decrease the risk that her infant will be killed again. It may also be the case that the mothers who are victims of infanticide are physically incapable of preventing the guilty males from mating with them because of the differences in size between the sexes.
In human societies, however, we see less infanticide perpetrated by males relative to our population. There are many reasons for this: there are…...
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Works Cited
Janson, Charles H. And Carel P. Van Schaik. Infanticide by Males and Its Implications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
The religion of Islam is very misunderstood and pervasively skewed within its true meaning and original intent by extremists in the Islamic society. Never did the prophet intend that the abuses and oppression which today's Muslim women suffer should occur. It is the conclusion of this writer that extremists exist in all religions and these are those who garner the most attention and receive the most press however, those who are moderate and who adhere to the true beliefs and meaning of the Islamic religions receive little attention and little press and even littler in the way of chances to convey the truth of this religion to the world. The abuses and oppression will continue however, it is hopeful that the ignorance surrounding the Muslim religion will eventually lose out to better dissemination of information and to more intelligent reporting backed by diligent investigation of the facts.
The methods of committing neonaticide, infanticide, and filicide are as diverse as the women who commit the tragic crime. According to ouge-Maillart, Jousset, Gaudin, Bouju, and Penneau (2005), strangulation, head trauma, drowning, and suffocation were the four most frequent methods of filicide. However, in these researchers' study, some mothers used what they deem to be 'more active' methods. Five children died after being struck by their mothers' fists. Two women in the study used a firearm to shoot their children. Two died after being hit with a heavy object, by their mother -- one a monkey wrench the other a stone. One woman slit her 13-year-old's throat. In one case, a 3-year-old boy died by defenestration -- being thrown out of the window. Lastly, a 10-month-old died of starvation and dehydration, after being deprived of food and water for 10 days.
Krischer, Stone, Sevecke, and Steinmeyer's (2007) study uncovered…...
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References
Atwood, T. (Feb 2008). Comment: National Council for Adoption's response to the Texas Safe Haven Study. Child Maltreatment, 13(1). pp. 96-97.
Craig, M. (Feb 2004). Perinatal risk factors for neonaticide and infant homicide. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 97. pp. 57-61.
Friedman, S., Horwitz, S., & Resnick, P. (2005) Child murder by mothers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162. pp. 1578-1587.
Kauppi, A. Kumpulainen, K. Vanamo, T. Merikanto, J and Karkola K. (2008)Maternal depression and filicide. Archives of Women's Mental Health, 11. pp. 201-206.
Later legal concessions including the permission to have a second child if the first one is a girl) reflect some official recognition of these problems.
Sen's observations and the realities of second-class (or worse) status for girls and women in China raise several kinds of serious human rights issues. The first is the right to determine the size of one's family, a right that the Chinese government, for nearly three decades now, has steadily denied Chinese couples. Good economic rationales may lie behind this government decision; still, it nevertheless denies Chinese couples a basic human right that couples in other parts of the world (although not all: Sanjay Gandhi's involuntary sterilization program in post-1947 India, and the Eugenics Society's involuntary sterilizations of poor minority women in post-World War II America come to mind as other examples) have to determine family size.
Secondly (although it is debatable, depending on one's religious and/or…...
Shakespeare's Sister," and Maxine Hong Kingston's story, "No Name oman," reveal the theme of silencing women within literature, resurrection by the female author, while the lives of the authors' provide a dramatic contrast to the suppression of women depicted in their works. Ultimately, female writers like Hong Kingston are the fulfillment of oolf's dream for Shakespeare's sister, and represent the death of the tradition of silencing women's voices within the estern world.
The Silencing of omen Depicted in oolf and Hong Kingston
oolf's essay, "Shakespeare's Sister" is a clear portrait of the silencing of women by larger society. ithin "Shakespeare's Sister," Virginia oolf describes the fictional life of Judith, the sister of Shakespeare. She begins this analysis by noting the lack of women's presence in either history books or within literature. rites oolf, "what I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves again, is that nothing is known about women…...
Advanced technology played a big role in infanticide as it allowed couples to check the gender of the child before it was born. Ultrasounds helped couples check the sex of their child and allow them to make a decision on abortion easier. Infanticide managed to unbalance the sex ratio in china as there were far too many males and not so many females. Women do not have a big role to play in determining the gender of their children as the husbands are the ones who make the decisions. There have been cases where a husband has beaten his wife to abort her child. Then are cases where the wife has to go into hiding so that people won't be able to know if she is pregnant. This helps a lot if they are expecting a girl and they need to abort it. There have been a lot of…...
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Bibliography
Greenhalgh, Susan. June 2003. "Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy," Population and Development Review 29-Page.165
Hardee, Karen. (2004) Family Planning and Women's Lives in Rural China, International Family Planning Perspectives. Volume: 30 Issue
Johnson, Kay Ann. (2004)Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son. Yeong and Yeong Book Company
Faison, Seth. (2004) South of the Clouds: exploring the hidden realms of China, St. Martin's Press
Kabul is a cosmopolitan center and demonstrates a willingness to modernize but outside Kabul old traditions remain strong and there is little interest in these rural areas for any change.
III. Social Factors
The rural nature of Afghan society cannot be over-emphasized. The population of the country is estimated at 24 million but it is highly fragmented into a variety of ethnic groups that are further broken down into tribal groups. This tribal fragmentation has been encouraged by the countries bordering Afghanistan that have, in order to promote their own political agendas, disturbed any efforts by the Afghan central government from uniting these tribes. hat has developed is a system of ethnically-based rivalries supported by localized Islamic religious sects.
Tribal traditions inside Afghanistan tend to be more powerful than either Islamic theology or political philosophy and these traditions can be harsh toward women (Rohde). Gender roles under tribal traditions are based upon…...
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Works Cited
Bickers, Robert. The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914. New York: Penguin Global, 2011.
Cleary, Thomas. The Essential Confucius: The Heart of Confucius' Teachings in Authentic I Ching Order. New York: Book Sales, 2000.
Countries and Their Cultures. Afghanistan. 2011. 4 May 2011 .
Ellis, Deborah. Women of the Afghan War. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2000.
Islamic women are now restricted from most activities, and their rights have been steadily decreasing. Her social and political as well as economic rights are all being violated everyday by unscrupulous men who have corrupted the very religion to their own advantage, and today, especially in most Arab countries, woman has become 'Awarah', or the very subject of concealment, wherein her public presence is banned; where even her very voice, must not be heard in public. (Women's Position, ole, and ights in Islam)
In India, there are only 960 women to 1000 men, a figure that when compared to the rest of the world, especially developed countries, which shows 105 women to 100 men, due to better health care for women, is quite miserable. It is in India that women are often considered to be burdens on their families, and the main reason for this is the 'dowry system', wherein…...
Nor could a man repudiate the oath made by any of his female relatives." (Azeem, 1995)
VI. The ROLE of the MOTHER
Part two of the work entitled: "Women in Islam vs. Women in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition: The Myth and the Reality" states that in relation to 'mothers' from the viewpoint of the Old Testament, there are several commandments concerning the necessity for kind and considerate treatment of parents and a condemnation for those who dishonor their parents. In Islam, the mother holds a very special place and as described by the Prophet Muhammad as follows: "A man asked the Prophet: 'Whom should I honor most?' The Prophet replied: 'Your mother'. 'And who comes next?' asked the man. The Prophet replied: 'Your mother'. 'And who comes next?' asked the man. The Prophet replied: 'Your mother!'. 'And who comes next?' asked the man. The Prophet replied: 'Your father'" (ukhari and Muslim; as…...
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Bibliography
Hughson, G., Johnston, S.A., Bisman, D. (nd) Understanding the Three Abrahamic Faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Dunedin Jewish, Christian and Muslim Community Liaison Group.
gender selection ETHICS
History attests to the fact that couples from oyal families down to rural peasants have shown preference for a male child leading to numerous problems for the girl child and creating a sex ratio imbalance in some traditional societies. When preference for a male child is more pronounced and obvious, any method that can allow a couple to choose the gender of their unborn child is likely to create tremendous potential for gender discrimination and sex-ratio imbalance. Sex-selection or gender-selection as it is commonly known as is one such method that threatens to put female children at risk of being outnumbered by their male counterparts. The pre-conception gender selection techniques along with some other means of choosing the gender of the unborn child has come under severe criticism because of the ethical issues they raise. We must understand that while preference for a specific sex is limited or…...
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References
Clark Liana R. 1985. "Sex Preselection: The Advent of the Made-to-Order Child." The Pharos, Fall, pp. 2-7
Elizabeth Mathiot-Moen-author; Annette Burfoot - editor Encyclopedia of Reproductive Technologies Publisher: Westview Press. Boulder, CO. 1999.
Fletcher John C. 1980."Ethics and Amniocentesis for Fetal Sex Identification." Hastings Center Report 10: 15-18.
Gargan Edward A. 1991. "Ultrasonic Tests Skew Ratio of Births in India." New York Times, June 13.
The United States and China as today's political and economic world leaders still suffer from the consequences of gender inequality and inequity. Combined economic, sociological and historical factors hamper and resist the achievement of equality between the sexes. Man's dominance for thousands of years will be strenuous to eliminate or minimize. It will not be an easy achievement but, nonetheless, an ideal objective for which every man and every woman on earth should pursue unrelentingly. #
ILIOGRAPHY
East Asia Environment & Social Development Unit (2002). China country gender review. World ank. Retrieved on February 15, 1020 from http://www.worldbank.org.cn/English/content/gender-en.pdf
Gaddis, R. (2010). Gender Equality in the United States. Associated Content:
Associated Content, Inc. Retrieved on February 20, 2010 from http://www.associatedcontent.com/pop_print.shtml
Haussman, R. et al. (2009). The global gender gap report. World Economic Forum:
Weforum.org. Retrieved on February 15, 2010 from http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/report2009.pdf
Jordans, F. (2006). U.S. slips in gender equality survey. Associated Press; Diverse
Lastly, the gender gap has meant that males need to engage in more intense competition for females. As a result, money has become a more important means of attracting females (ei, 2009). These different factors combined to push more rural Chinese into the cities in search of better work. This in turn kept the cost of labor down, fueling intense economic growth that kept the unemployment rate in urban areas down. Even with the recent economic downturn, official unemployment rates for urban China were at just 4.2% for the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 4.0% in the previous quarter (Xinhua, 2009). These official figures have never fluctuated too much, although they were significantly higher in the late 1970s when economic modernization began, between 5-6% (Giles et al., 2004). It should be noted that the official unemployment rates belie the reality of China's economy, which features tens of millions…...
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Works Cited:
Hesketh, Therese; Lu, Li & Xing, Zhu Wei. (2005). The Effect of China's One-Child Policy after 25 Years. New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 353, No. 11, pp.1171-1176. Retrieved July 19, 2009 from http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/11/1171
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