March 9, 2003

Why are there more men and fewer women in our part of the world? Why has the dowry become such a deep-rooted custom in the marriage of a girl? Nirmala Banerjee replies

EXPERTS have shown that a shortfall in the relative number of girls is by no means a natural phenomenon, but essentially a region- and culture-specific social construct. The sex ratio in the Indian child population actually starts tilting against girls almost immediately after the neo-natal period (from birth to 28 days). It then continues to fall throughout childhood till the age of nine or so. The natural pattern, however, is quite different; girl infants are born tougher than their male counterparts and diseases affecting infants and children are less likely to prove fatal in their case. To compensate for this natural imbalance, nature provides for a sex ratio at birth of about 105/106 boys to 100 girls.

This initial shortfall in the number of girls at birth starts being corrected almost immediately afterwards and the process continues throughout infancy and childhood. Since this rule holds good universally, it is logical to conclude that the Indian situation can come about only through a systematic neglect of girls from infancy. Mothers of girl children are given less nutrition while they are breast-feeding; girls are breast-fed for a shorter period; their illnesses during infancy and childhood are taken less seriously.

This kind of neglect — literally to death — of helpless female infants by their own families is certainly a form of violence in the domestic sphere. And, unlike other forms of domestic violence, here we do have a fairly unambiguous and objective measure of the changes that are taking place and their intensity over time.

Although discrimination against girls by their own families is not a new phenomenon in India, the recent fall in the child sex ratio is a cause of fresh concern both for researchers and policy-makers because of its increased intensity and wider spread than ever before. In the decades preceding independence, the overall Indian child sex ratio had favoured girls, as was to be expected in the high fertility/high child mortality demographic regime prevailing then. However, though India still exhibits a not dissimilar pattern of demography, the all-India child sex ratio has become increasingly adverse to girls; it first went down to 990 girls per 1000 boys in 1961. From then to 1991, the overall fall in these ratios has been much steeper than in the overall sex ratio...

 

The anti-girl child bias: then

The main factor behind this history of neglect or even infanticide of girls has always been the strong culture of son-preference in most Indian families. All over India, households tend to discriminate in favour of sons in their allocation, especially of those goods and facilities that are considered valuable, as for example, milk, good medical care and access to education.

In families with limited resources, this differential may extend even to basic necessities to the extent that it sometimes proves fatal for girls. For example, Leela Visaria’s fieldwork had shown that when a male child was ill, day labourer families would willingly sacrifice a day’s wage to take him to a clinic or a doctor, but not so for a girl child.

Over and above this widespread son preference, certain regions and castes were traditionally known to discourage members of their communities from bringing up too many girls. British officers in the nineteenth century and later the census reports till 1931, had noted that there was always an unnatural shortage of girls among the populations of certain regions and castes. Several authors have shown how particular groups at certain points in time had sought a higher status within their communities by practising an elaborate structure of hypergamous marriage which made the birth of a daughter particularly unwelcome among them.

Although the bias existed within the household, sanctions for the practice and the imperatives behind it were provided by the community and its social authorities. Households could ignore these sanctions only at the peril of losing their much-valued social status.

 

And now

The recent increase in the numbers of missing girls, however, is of a different character. Apart from the usual practice of neglecting the welfare of little girls, there are signs of a greater degree of deliberation and planning by individual families in determining their composition and the numbers of girls to be found in them... the girls who went missing were likely to be of higher birth orders and that this event was more likely to occur in families with educated mothers than in others. In other words, when people, especially middle class people, begin to control the sizes of their families, the births they set out to avoid are preferably those of girls.

The bulk of the excess in the deaths of girl children still occurs after the age of one and can be explained by the same practice of neglecting the health and nutrition of little girls. But it is plausible that the accelerated shortfall in the number of girls during the last decade was at least partly due to more planned decisions by families about how many children (and of which sex) to have. Already, there is some evidence that the sex ratio at birth has become more male dominated...

There have been many recent journalistic reports of poor families, especially in south India, practising female infanticide for this end. It is even more likely that many families have been using the new clinics providing amniocentesis tests, followed by the abortion of female fetuses, to attain their desired family size and composition ... With amniocentesis tests being widely available in most areas and abortions being legal and easily available, such an eventuality is very much within the realm of the possible...

These decisions are now being made by individual families purely on the basis of their own private calculations of costs and benefits; there is no pressure of community traditions, comparable to earlier times, that can share the blame. As such, they can rightly be regarded as cases of deliberate and wanton violence.

 

Bride price and dowry

The immediate reason for this growing reluctance among families from diverse social groups to have and to bring up daughters is, of course, the fact that in all sections of Indian society there is now an increasing menace of dowry. Communities, which had long traditions of grooms paying a bride price to the girls’ fathers, have, within the space of a generation or two, switched to grooms collecting fat dowries. And the demands seem to be escalating. The real questions of course are: why have the families of girls been unable to resist these demands? Why indeed is the price of grooms going up? What developments in the economy have been responsible for this?

The issue can be seen from two angles: firstly, the transition from bride price to dowry and its spread, literally, to all corners of the country and to almost all communities. This has taken place remarkably fast over the last 25-30 years. For example, in the Barujivi community in West Bengal, even prosperous families two generations ago had to pay a bride price to the fathers of girls; in the same community the same families are now haunted by worries about the dowry demands they have to meet to get their daughters married. Similarly, the newly growing practice of grooms demanding a dowry is one of the main reasons for the increasing alienation of land from marginal farmers and sharecroppers in West Bengal. There is no systematic data about this, but reports suggest that the practice has now been accepted even among the Muslim and Christian communities. Some tribal communities may be the only exceptions.

Secondly, equally remarkably, there have been few organized social protests or resistance to the giving or taking of dowry. Only the urban women’s movement had mounted a campaign against it in the 1980s, and even then there had been voices within the movement in favour of dowry.

In sharp contrast, in the first half of the twentieth century there were many effective campaigns mounted by various communities and groups of young people against the giving or taking of dowry and against expensive marriage ceremonies. The contrast between that history and the meek acceptance of today seems to signify that there is in fact a growing hiatus between the market values of brides and grooms. Society has accepted that brides are the buyers in a seller’s market. What explains this increasing devaluation of women in society and the economy?

 

Marriage and economic development

Men enter into marriage when they feel that they or their family can take up the responsibility of maintaining additional members, with or without the contribution of the wife. In the past, for the majority of men, the issue was decided at the family level, depending on its need for womanpower and its capacity to support children. Therefore in households with some productive assets and a family occupation, most men were married fairly early and their wives formed a part of unpaid family labour doing women-specific tasks within the household economy.

Economic development and the fast growth of population have meant that an increasing number of men no longer have the security of a viable household occupation or a steady livelihood in a regular job. In rural areas the percentage of households with no land or with land holdings of less than one hectare has increased very fast...

Family-based occupations in household industry have also declined drastically between 1981 and 1991... In general, the share of casual workers in the male workforce is increasing, between 1983 and 1993/94, the shares of self-employed and regular service workers among rural males went down while that of casual workers increased significantly. In urban areas the switch was from regular to casual labour...

Not only have men moved into personalized and uncertain occupations, it is also reported that there is a significant increase in their long distance circular migration in search of work ... This is already a well-established practice in the green revolution areas of Punjab and Haryana where male migrants come from as far away as Bihar. Men with uncertain, transient and low income occupations are likely to postpone marriage till they can find more regular work.

All these developments are very much a part of the current Indian development pattern where a large section of the workforce cannot find a regular or fixed occupation. Members of the households of these workers make a precarious living by working in a combination of several seasonal, temporary or part-time jobs. This has made the traditional pattern of family life irrelevant and with it the skills that daughters were taught by their families. Household occupations, where they were of use, are no longer in demand or the value of women’s output in these occupations is not enough to persuade men to take up the responsibility of a family.

In most households where men work as casual labour, the women are still in the workforce and they too generally work as casual labour. There has been a significant increase in the share of casual labour among women workers in rural India. But two such uncertain incomes do not make a viable, stable income any longer. A pair of willing hands alone is no longer considered enough compensation for marrying a woman. Instead, since marriage is the one career where men are in demand and in a position to dictate terms, they have started to use it to improve their life-time income prospects by demanding a dowry.

Marriage is now contingent on a man getting a dowry because that is one way for him to buy his way into some means of earning a stable income; it gives a landless labourer a way of owning and cultivating land or it goes to pay a bribe for getting him a government job, or to buy a cycle or a tractor and turn it into a commercial vehicle, or to set up a shop. The reverse of this is that a family with more daughters than sons finds its assets shrinking in each generation. Since this economic reasoning is applicable to most parts of India and also to most communities, it possibly explains why today dowry and violence against the girl child have spread everywhere.

 

Excerpted with permission from

The Violence of Development: The Politics of Identity, Gender & Social Inequalities in India

Edited by Karin Kapadia

Kali for Women, K-92 Hauz Khas Enclave, New Delhi-110016. Tel: 91-11-6864497, 6964947.

Email: kaliw@del2.vsnl.net.in

ISBN 1-84277-207-4

526pp. Price not listed

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