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“When I was pregnant I prayed for a daughter. My mother scolded me a lot saying ‘Why do you need a daughter? If you have a son, he will take away all your worries and solve your financial problems.’ This was her reaction.”
Thirty-year-old Maryam, from village Mithri of district Khairpur, still desperately wants to have a daughter. As strange as it may sound coming from an area condemned as backwards and patriarchal, she is not the only one. She is one of the many women living in these villages who cannot help but wish that they had a daughter. The desire for a daughter sounds strange due to the fact that son preference is very common in South Asian societies, especially in rural and low-income communities.
There are certain factors due to which a family gives importance to a son over daughters; the foremost being that the son is an heir, he carries the family name and inherits the property. Social norms and cultural practices attached to the male child in the patrilineal societies substantially reduce the worth of a female child. However, in the villages of rural Sindh, it is usually a daughter, not the son, who supports the family especially the mother through thick and thin until she is married off.
Young girls in rural Sindh are trained in household chores from a very young age, with the aim to assist the mother who has to carry out multiple tasks during the course of the day on a regular basis — from child rearing to cooking to fetching water to looking after the livestock. However, young girls not only help the mother with these chores like cleaning and cooking, they also take care of their younger siblings while the mother is busy in household tasks. All this help increases a woman’s dependence on the daughter whom they see as a tree providing them with a shade in a desert.
District Khairpur is famous for date palm industry. It not only provides work to the people living in the region but a large number of families come there during the summer and find work as the plucking, drying, processing is in progress. Not only in the fruiting season but otherwise as well the industry offers income generating opportunities for women who are unable to work outside their homes due to restricted mobility. Here too, young girls assist their mothers in making hand fans, mats, baskets, etc. from date palm leaves and branches.
In the absence of any regular handicraft industry the business shifts to the households or what is known as the informal sector. It is mostly the women who are engaged in making the handicrafts. Here too they are helped by their daughters in all possible ways. The work involves much time, effort and energy, yet young girls carry out this work from homes as it is convenient for them and does not involve any security issues. This work is very important for the poverty ridden families as it is a means of additional income and thus strengthens the women’s desire to have daughters who can assist them in their work. This may be contrary to the common practice where sons are preferred, but the reality cannot be ignored that the girl child is important as well.
Another woman Sakeena told me about the general trend in her village in the region: “A daughter is a great help when the times are bad. If I am not well, it is not my son who will look after me but my daughter. Poor families here want girls as they help their mothers in earning some money for the family through their informal work. Sons do as they please; they go out and return whenever they feel like, while the girls are always at home to assist the family."
A family’s economic status is strongly associated with the desire for a female child. People in the villages of Khairpur have low literacy rate which does not help them find formal jobs; therefore, the majority of people in these areas rely on manual labour or low-paid informal jobs which does not help them improve their standard of living.
In these circumstances it is difficult to even feed a big family; as a result women have to take up informal jobs to assist their husbands in making the ends meet and support from daughters is central in this process. While due to lack of employment opportunities male members cannot find regular jobs, these young girls work hard to make hand fans and mats to generate some income for the family’s survival.
Naseema, who lives in Husseinabad and runs her family with the help of her daughters, said, “My daughters make hand fans and mats with me. We meet all our family needs with the money we earn from our work.”
Unfortunately, despite all the support that the girl child provides to the family, she still has a lower status than the son. Even if parents, with financial crises, have to make a choice between the girl and the boy, they would give preference to the son. The reason behind this is the parents’ own future. The girl is married off and leaves the parents’ house while the son lives with them throughout their lives and is expected to take care of their needs. The son is considered an asset and social security in old age. This long-term interest, coupled with other cultural beliefs, makes the male child invaluable in a patrilineal and patriarchal society. Therefore, despite their desire for a daughter and the daughter’s contribution to the family, a woman without a son is considered useless and insignificant even if she has several daughters.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 18th, 2014
