It's a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World

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It's a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World is a 2012 documentary film which explores the practice of female infanticide. [1] It was directed by Evan Grae Davis [2] and focused primarily on India and China.[ citation needed ] The United Nations has estimated that up to 200 million females are "missing" today, most of whom would have lived in India and China. [3] The film took four years to shoot. [4]

Contents

The documentary opens in India, the scene is of a woman standing in a field, who is explaining that she had killed eight of her newborns by strangulation as they were female. [3] Davis had initially set out to create a documentary on sex trafficking and on women being exploited. Having listened to the story from the Indian woman, Davis switched direction, scrapping his first idea, and instead created a documentary with the sole focus being gendercide. Davis focused on China and female infanticide in India, as cultural norms, combined with such cultural practices as India's dowry system and China's one-child policy, have an important role in the practice. [3]

Evan Grae Davis has worked for the Harvest Media Ministry, an organization that makes pro-life videos for church groups. [5]

Filming and production

In the documentary, Davis interviewed social workers, women in rural communities and activists. He found that the primary cause for the practice was poverty, but also that the cultural norms which lead to a male being more highly valued than a female played an important factor. In these societies the males are the providers for the family, and daughters have to be married off with a dowry which many cannot afford. This in turn leads to a "culture of death". Forced abortion in China is common, with one part of the documentary being on women who have to flee from periodic sweeps by police enforcing the one child law. Because of the shortage of women, human trafficking has risen sharply in China, and one interview in the documentary is of a woman whose daughter was kidnapped and then sold as a slave. [6]

Davis has said that it was exceptionally difficult in China to get women to go on film. He did, however, meet a factory worker named Li Fang who was willing to share her story. After the police discovered she was pregnant for a third time, they raided her home. She and her husband had to flee their village and she gave birth in secret. Their daughter is deemed "illegal", and therefore cannot get education or health care, or work legally. [7]

In India, Davis interviewed pediatrician Dr. Mitu Khurana. When she found she was pregnant she was forced to undergo an ultrasound by her husband and mother-in-law. As with the dowry system, testing for gender is illegal in India with the application of parental sex discernment in 1994, as the method was being used for sex-selective abortion.  When the ultrasound showed Khurana was pregnant with twin girls, her husband and mother in law asked her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused, and as a result her husband threw her down the stairs and then locked her up. She managed to get away, and had her children two months early. She has since campaigned to have her husband, as well as the doctor who carried out the illegal ultrasound arrested, but charges have never been brought. [7]

It is estimated that there are 37 million more males than females in China. The documentary also looks into the ever-increasing rate of female suicide in China, it explores the connection between suicide and the low value placed on females due to cultural norms. The Chinese government has recently said it would begin to phase out the one child policy, which may help reduce female infanticide in China. However, according to the documentary, cultural values also need to change so that families are as happy having a daughter as they are having a son. [8]

Screenings

The documentary has been screened at Amnesty International's seventh Amnesty Reel Awareness Film Festival in Toronto, and at the European Parliament in Brussels. [7] Human rights journalist Ram Mashru, who worked with Davis to raise awareness of the issue, took part in a Q&A after two student societies at the University of Oxford, Lawyers Without Borders and Women for Women International, screened the documentary at the Saskatchewan Theatre in Exeter College, Oxford. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Infanticide is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose being the prevention of resources being spent on weak or disabled offspring. Unwanted infants were usually abandoned to die of exposure, but in some societies they were deliberately killed. Infanticide is broadly illegal, but in some places the practice is tolerated, or the prohibition is not strictly enforced.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sex-selective abortion</span> Pregnancy termination based on predicted sex

Sex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the infant. The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common where male children are valued over female children, especially in parts of East Asia and South Asia, as well as in the Caucasus, Western Balkans, and to a lesser extent North America. Based on the third National Family and Health Survey, results showed that if both partners, mother and father, or just the father, preferred male children, sex-selective abortion was more common. In cases where only the mother prefers sons, this is likely to result in sex-selective neglect in which the child is not likely to survive past infancy.

A dowry is a payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride price and dower. While bride price or bride service is a payment by the groom, or his family, to the bride, or her family, dowry is the wealth transferred from the bride, or her family, to the groom, or his family. Similarly, dower is the property settled on the bride herself, by the groom at the time of marriage, and which remains under her ownership and control.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daughter</span> Female offspring

A daughter is a female offspring; a girl or a woman in relation to her parents. Daughterhood is the state of being someone's daughter. The male counterpart is a son. Analogously the name is used in several areas to show relations between groups or elements. From biological perspective, a daughter is a first degree relative. The word daughter also has several other connotations attached to it, one of these being used in reference to a female descendant or consanguinity. It can also be used as a term of endearment coming from an elder.

Female infanticide is the deliberate killing of newborn female children. Female infanticide is prevalent in several nations such as China, India and Pakistan. It has been argued that the low status in which women are viewed in patriarchal societies creates a bias against females. The modern practice of gender-selective abortion is also used to regulate gender ratios.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in India</span> Overview of the status of women in India

The status of women in India has been subject to many changes over the time of recorded India's history. Their position in society deteriorated early in India's ancient period, especially in the Indo-Aryan speaking regions, and their subordination continued to be reified well into India's early modern period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide</span> Murder of women or girls because of their gender

Femicide or feminicide is a term for the hate crime of systematically killing women, girls, or females in general because of their gender and/or sex. In 1976, the feminist author Diana E. H. Russell first defined the term as "the killing of females by males because they are female." Femicides are more often perpetrated by men against women. This is most likely due to unequal power between men and women as well as harmful gender roles, stereotypes, or social norms. Though femicide is not purely male-perpetrated but can be female-perpetrated as well.

Bride burning is a form of domestic violence practiced in countries located on or around the Indian subcontinent. A form of dowry death, bride-burning occurs when a woman is murdered by her husband or his family for her family's refusal to pay additional dowry. The wife is typically doused with kerosene, gasoline, or other flammable liquid, and set alight, leading to death by burning. Kerosene is often used as the cooking fuel for small petrol stoves, some of which are dangerous, so it allows the claim that the crime was an accident. It is most common in India and has been a major problem there since at least 1993.

Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific gender. The term is related to the general concepts of assault and murder against victims due to their gender, with violence against men and women being problems dealt with by human rights efforts. Gendercide shares similarities with the term 'genocide' in inflicting mass murders; however, gendercide targets solely one gender, being men or women. Politico-military frameworks have historically inflicted militant-governed divisions between femicide and androcide; gender-selective policies increase violence on gendered populations due to their socioeconomic significance. Certain cultural and religious sentiments have also contributed to multiple instances of gendercide across the globe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminism in India</span> History of the feminist movement in India

Feminism in India is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and opportunities for women in India. It is the pursuit of women's rights within the society of India. Like their feminist counterparts all over the world, feminists in India seek gender equality: the right to work for equality in wages, the right to equal access to health and education, and equal political rights. Indian feminists also have fought against culture-specific issues within India's patriarchal society, such as inheritance laws.

Gender inequality in India refers to health, education, economic and political inequalities between men and women in India. Various international gender inequality indices rank India differently on each of these factors, as well as on a composite basis, and these indices are controversial.

Rita Banerji (1967) is an author, photographer and gender activist from India. Her non-fiction book Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies was published in 2008. She is the founder of the 50 Million Missing online campaign to raise awareness of female gendercide in India.

Female foeticide in India is the abortion of a female foetus outside of legal methods. A research by Pew Research Center based on Union government data indicates foeticide of at least 9 million females in the years 2000-2019. The research found that 86.7% of these foeticides were by Hindus, followed by Sikhs with 4.9%, and Muslims with 6.6%. The research also indicated an overall decline in preference for sons in the time period.

China has a history of female infanticide which spans 2,000 years. When Christian missionaries arrived in China in the late sixteenth century, they witnessed newborns being thrown into rivers or onto rubbish piles. In the seventeenth century Matteo Ricci documented that the practice occurred in several of China's provinces and said that the primary reason for the practice was poverty. The practice continued into the 19th century and declined precipitously during the Communist era, but has reemerged as an issue since the introduction of the one-child policy in the early 1980s. The 2020 census showed a male-to-female ratio of 105.07 to 100 for mainland China, a record low since the People's Republic of China began conducting censuses. Every year in China and India alone, there are close to two million instances of some form of female infanticide.

Female infanticide in India has a history spanning centuries. Poverty, the dowry system, births to unmarried women, deformed infants, famine, lack of support services, and maternal illnesses such as postpartum depression are among the causes that have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of female infanticide in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Female infanticide in Pakistan</span> Deliberate killing of female newborns in Pakistan

Female infanticide in Pakistan had been a common practice. But it is no longer a common practice due to steps taken by local polices and Governments and Ordinances.

Violence against women in Tamil Nadu includes molestation, abduction, dowry-related violence, and domestic violence. The police recorded 1,130 cases during the first seven months in 2013, compared to 860 for the corresponding period in 2012. In Usilampatti Taluk, around 6,000 female children were killed in a span of 2 years during 1987–88, accounting to the single largest instance of recorded female infanticide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violence against women in India</span> Public health issue of violent acts against women

Violence against women in India refers to physical or sexual violence committed against a woman, typically by a man. Common forms of violence against women in India include acts such as domestic abuse, sexual assault, and murder. In order to be considered violence against women, the act must be committed solely because the victim is female. Most typically, these acts are committed by men as a result of the long-standing gender inequalities present in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mala Sen</span> Indian-British writer and human rights activist 1947–2011)

Mala Sen was a Bengali-Indian-British writer and human rights activist. As an activist, she was known for her civil rights activism and race relations work in London during the 1960s and 1970s, as part of the British Asian and British Black Panthers movements, and later her women's rights activism in India. As a writer, she was known for her book India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi, which led to the acclaimed 1994 film Bandit Queen. After researching the oppression of women in rural India, she also published Death by Fire in 2001.

Mitu Khurana was a pediatrician from Delhi, India. She was an activist against female feticide in India. Her case became well known when she took legal action against her husband and his family on accusations of performing an ultrasound to reveal the sex of their children without her consent, pressuring her to abort their two daughters once sex was known, and domestic violence after she refused to consider sex-selective abortion.

References

  1. ↑ Mashru 2012.
  2. ↑ Rajpal 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 Lu 2013.
  4. ↑ Virk 2012.
  5. ↑ "Why Are Pro-Choice Groups Embracing This Pro-Life Movie?". 6 May 2013.
  6. ↑ Harmon 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 Izri 2012.
  8. ↑ DeLugan 2013, p. 649-650.
  9. ↑ Mashru 2013.

Bibliography

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