'Majority Indian girls face discrimination'

A study on 5,981 girls reveals that 48% expressed their wish to be boys, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 10, 2007, 11:57:58 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The Indian girl child faces such discrimination that nearly half of the girls wish that they were boys, say a new study on child abuse.

Of the 5,981 girls interviewed for the National Study on Child Abuse released on Monday about 48.4 per cent expressed their wish to be boys. Why not? For years, they have faced humiliation from their parents and family members and found boys being treated better than them in all respects including the food served to them by their parents. But, the study didn't look into specific reasons for such a feeling. It attributed overall gender discrimination as a possible cause.

The study also tried to find the amount of time the girls give for taking care of the siblings. It was found that about 25 per cent of girls devote at least two hours for this job resulting in deprivation of education and opportunities.

The study also pointed out that 70.57 per cent of the girls reported neglect by the family members, thus causing emotional abuse. About 85 per cent of girls from UP, 79 per cent from Gujarat and 79 per cent from Madhya Pradesh reported emotional abuse by the family members.

Among the girls in young adults, the perception of emotional abuse was higher than the girls in the lower age group and a majority of them took offence in taking care of their siblings at the cost of education.

The report makes it clear that the parents are the biggest perpetrators of emotional abuse on the child with over 70 per cent of the children saying so. The worst form of emotional abuse was negative comparison with another child, felt one-third of the 12,477 respondents. Overall, only 48 per cent reported any sort of emotional abuse.

The Women and Child Development ministry, however, had a pertinent point to make that in India there is no clarity on what constitutes emotional abuse and what impact it can have on the child's psyche. "This area requires detailed study for better understanding of children," the report stated.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.