The
When looking at Child Mortality data, India doesn't draw special attention. Firmly in the middle of the pack, India has a relatively low mortality rate compared to its peers in Asia and Africa.
In early infancy,
girls have a biological advantage against many causes of death
.
[1] These universal biological factors
mean that girls tend to have a higher chance of living to the age of
five than boys; globally in 2019, a 96.45% and 96.02% survival rate
for boys and girls respectively.
Yet India dramatically bucks away from this trend, the divergence between male and female mortality rates 4.3 standard deviations from the mean. It is the only country where the female infant mortality rate is higher than the male.
While other countries have had infant mortality rates that privilege boys, none have remained consistently high as India.
The trajectory of India’s infant mortality gender disparity, saw a worsening in the 1990’s from an already low historic baseline. It reached its worst point in 2003, at a time when global gender disparity was increasing. This is unlike the rest of the world, where historic gender disparities in infant mortality recovered by 1980 at the latest.
The metric of Male to Female Infant Survival Rates, outside of natural causes, are affected by:
"What do you think this girl will face? She can't run around with a pair of shorts like a boy can, she has to cover herself. I have to protect her. I have to manufacture her dowry from God knows where. ... She has nothing but suffering ahead of her ... It's not going to change. So tell me, am I mad, or what is wrong with my killing this child?"
Kumari, from Marking Bodies, Reproducing Violence [2]
The quote above reveals how many separate factors contribute to the continuation of female infanticide, to the point where having a girl is unthinkable. While some contributing factors are shared by other countries, the exaggerated extent of the practice within India is contingent on the social and economic enforcement of patriarchy, that has been supported by technological advances.
The Gender Inequality Index is constructed using metrics of Female Reproductive health, and rates of female education, political participation, and work in comparison to men. While there exists a correlation between gender inequality, the specific cultural manifestations of patriarchy within India are responsible for its higher Female Infant Mortality.
The dowry system requires the family of the bride to transfer assets
and goods to the family of the groom; unique to South Asia. While
banned in India, it remains a pervasive phenomenon
[3], that since Indian Independence has continued to expand its presence
and grow in the amount demanded. This cost, in combination to wedding
expenses taken on by the bride side
often adds up to their life savings
[4] - hence detrimental for poor
families.
The system of hypergamy, requiring women to marry into higher castes,
has enforced female infanticide for those of higher castes.
Additionally, the Hindu belief that Only a son can light the funeral
pyre of his parents
[2], demand having a son in the family – leading to an estimated 30% of
Indian families resorting to sex-selection to ensure their last birth
is a son [5].
The Sex Ratio at Birth metric is affected by Sex-Selective Abortion, rather than Infanticide. The negative correlation between the two is the result of sex-selective abortion replacing the historical precedent for Infanticide.
In the 1980’s, Amniocentesis and Ultrasound technologies allowed for the identification of gender before birth. In the case of South Korea, this led to an increase in sex-selective abortions, causing the Sex Ratio at birth to be heavily male sided, while not being reflected in Infant mortality data. In India however, the lack of medical services in rural areas and for the urban poor have maintained Infanticide as a sex selection method.
The same period saw the displacement of the traditional work of rural
women with capital, making
women's occupations increasingly impermanent and casualized
[6]. Additionally, land reform redistributed land to male heads of the
family, thereby alienating women from the means of production.
Together, women become liabilities
[7], deepening the loss of women's agency and importance of the dowry.
Solutions to the disparity require means to dismantle systems of
oppression and incentivise girls' lives. Solutions need to address the
ingrained social norms that uniquely continue inequality - counteract
the dowry system, provide women and girls with greater agency and power.
Such as the prevention of ultrasound gender identification, banning
of the dowry, have no impact due to their lack of enforcement.
Policies that don’t challenge the status quo, like the
1992 Cradle Babies Program - a scheme for parents to give
up their unwanted infants to government health centres -
Schemes such as the 2008 Dhanalakshmi Scheme, which
provided cash payments to the families of girls that carry out
necessary tasks (birth registration, immunization, completion of
primary school, etc.). These policies have seen more progressive
attitudes of beneficiary parents, and enhance the agency and
position of girls.
The 2006 Care for Girls Campaign in China, assisted with a
decline in male-dominated sex ratio at birth. It is a composite
solution: consisting of small loans for daughter only families,
while also providing health examinations, education, and training
that provide an economic incentive to having a daughter. NGOs within
India mirror these programs providing
Legalistic Solutions
have had limited success … as parents have simply adopted
different methods of killing baby girls
[8].
Cash Transfer based Solutions
Education based Solutions
counselling to expectant mothers, monetary incentives and
childcare support, health education
[8], which have been important drivers of improving female infant
mortality rates.
Looking at trends from the last 30 years, we can forecast future developments. It depicts a rapid correction of Infant Mortality Rates, Due to the historic gender disparity of infant mortality, and recent success of current programs. It is predicted that, if current trends continue:
This prediction anticipates the continued reduction of the life expectancy gap in previous years, a task made more difficult the closer to the median is reached. Such continuous change may require the abolition of the dowry system, and the dismantling of the ingrained social roles and status of Women in India.