Читать книгу Artemis - Jean Shinoda Bolen - Страница 25

When Atalanta is born, her father expresses his anger and his rejection in a horrible way. Today, the birth of a girl can still be a cause of disappointment, resentment, or anger. In China, for instance, under the “one child per family” policy, girl babies may literally be abandoned in railroad stations and other public places where they will be found and taken to a state-run orphanage. In rural areas, where infanticide is more common, newborn girls may be drowned, smothered, or starved, the family claiming that they died “in childbirth” or shortly after. The same is true in parts of India.

In a 2011 newspaper article, “Girls Choose Better Names” (San Francisco Chronicle, October 23), Chaya Babu reported from Mumbai that 285 girls shed names like Nakusa or Nakushi, which mean “unwanted” in Hindi, and chose new names for a fresh start in life. The plight of girls in India came into focus as this year's census showed the nation's ratio for children under the age of six had dropped to 914 girls for every 1,000 boys. Such ratios indicate a higher death rate among girls due to abortion of female fetuses, female infanticide, or neglect of female children.

Normally between 103 and 106 boys are born for every 100 girls. The ratio has been stable enough to indicate a natural order across races and cultures, one that resulted in approximately the same number of young men and young women, taking into account that, genetically, males are slightly more vulnerable and slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls. The change in this natural order was dramatically illustrated on the cover of The Economist (March 6–12, 2010), which carried the word “Gendercide” printed in bright pink on a black background. Under this startling headline was the question: “What Happened to 100 Million Baby Girls?” The serious article within concluded that these girls had either been killed, aborted, or neglected to the point that they died. When girl babies are not valued and prenatal sex-determination is linked with declining fertility as well as the selective abortion of female fetuses, a disproportionate number of male children survive, skewing the ratio of boys to girls. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by 2020 there will be thirty to forty million more young men than young women in China because of the preference for boys. In India in 2001, there were forty-six districts with a sex ratio of over 125 boys to 100 girls.

It is not just a skewed birth rate that is reflected in there being fewer females in the world. There are also fewer girls and fewer women surviving than can be expected. Girls don't get the same healthcare and food as boys in impoverished countries. In India, girls from one to five years of age are 50 percent more likely to die from preventable causes than boys their age. Women die unnecessarily in childbirth due to inadequate medical care, or due to lack of contraception and choice. Pregnancy carries greater risks when the mother is very young or weakened by multiple pregnancies and poor nutrition. Then there are deaths of women from the collateral damage of armed conflict, especially when rape is used as a weapon, which is the case in many parts of Africa. And rape becomes an even more common and horrifying gender hazard when accompanied by mutilation and severe beatings, as it is in families and communities where the victim is blamed and may be turned out to live on the streets.

Experts have revised upward the estimate of missing girls from 100 million to 160 million. Jeni Klugman, Director of Gender and Development for the World Bank, called this “femicide” in a talk at the United Nations that drew from the World Development Report for 2012. According to this report, four million women go missing annually. These are obviously conclusions drawn from inadequate information, in the realm of what laymen call “guesstimates,” or “educated guesses.” But questioning numbers like these or doubting their accuracy sometimes allows us to ignore their human impact. When we turn people into inanimate statistics, we numb our emotional reaction to them. When we try to wrap our minds around such appalling numbers, we lose sight of their real meaning. One remedy is to think in smaller numbers. What if it were only a “mere” million, or only 100,000, or just 10,000? What if it were your daughter or yourself or your very young grandchild? It is important to be able to imagine being helpless, to imagine the horror of being abducted, beaten, and raped, or of being sold or turned by fear and pain into prostitution, as occurs in human trafficking.

When I go to panels and presentations that are given by UN NGOs (nongovernmental organizations recognized by the United Nations) or by the UN Commission on the Status of Women, they usually focus on women and girls during the meetings. At these events, women from every continent come together to address women's issues. Many of these organizations were founded by women who themselves had been victimized, but did not take on the role of victim. For others, this work feels like a vocation—a calling to help women who suffer in a number of ways, among them human trafficking, AIDS, or female genital mutilation (FMG). This barbaric, religiously sanctioned practice of cutting off a girl's clitoris and labia and sometimes sewing what remains together (except for space for menstrual blood to flow out) is intended as a way to prove the virginity of the girl or woman when taken in marriage, perhaps as one of many wives. This mutilation, of course, also assures that first penetration must tear through scar tissue, that intercourse can never be pleasurable, and that childbirth will be painful. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and feminist (or, her preference, “womanist”) Alice Walker has galvanized public opinion against FMG through her writing and film collaboration with Pratibha Parmar on Warrior Marks (1993). When Walker was interviewed, she confronted her critics with this ringing statement: “Torture is not culture!” repudiating the right to do this to little girls in the name of religion and culture.