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Page 1: Female infanticide
Page 2: Female infanticide

introduction

Female infanticide is the deliberate killing of newborn female children or the termination of a female fetus through selective abortion.[a] The practice has been the cause of death for millions and is a major cause of concern in several nations such as China and India being cited by genocide scholar Adam Jones as notable examples. Jones argues that the "low status" in which women are viewed in patriarchal societies creates a bias against females.[2]

In 1978, anthropologist Laila Williamson in a summary of data she had collated on how widespread infanticide was among both tribal and developed, or "civilized" nations found that infanticide had occurred on every continent and was carried out by groups ranging from hunter gatherers to highly developed societies and that rather than this practice being an exception, it has been commonplace.[3] The practice has been well documented amongst the indigenous peoples of Australia, Northern Alaska and South Asia, and Barbara Miller argues the practice to be "almost universal". Miller contends that in regions where women are not employed in agriculture and regions in which dowries are the norm then female infanticide is commonplace,[4] and in 1871 in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin wrote that the practice was commonplace among the aboriginal tribes of Australia.[5]

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In 1990, Amartya Sen writing in the New York Review of Books estimated that there were 100 million fewer women in Asia than would be expected, and that this amount of “missing” women “tell[s] us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.” Initially Sen’s suggestion of gender bias was contested and it was suggested that hepatitis B was the cause of the alteration in the natural sex ratio. However it is now widely accepted that the numerical worldwide deficit in women is due to gender specific abortions, infanticide and neglect.[6]

In seventh-century Arabia before Islamic culture took root, female infanticide was widely practiced. This is attributed by scholars to the fact that women were deemed "property" within those societies. Others have speculated that to prevent their daughters from a life of misery the mothers would kill the child. With the arrival of Islamic rule the practice was made illegal, however Michelle Oberman believes "there is little reason to believe that call was heeded".[7]

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Americas

Among the Inuit of Northern Alaska and Canada, the practice of female infanticide was a common occurrence.[8] In researching smothering deaths by black slaves in the American South, which occurred nine times more frequently than in white families, Michael P. Johnson suggests that sudden infant death syndrome was in fact to blame (which, if it happened in white families, would be heavily underreported because of the social stigma attached).

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Europe

With the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity in 318 AD Constantine declared that the custom of patria potens was no longer law and infanticide was made illegal. However there are indications that infanticide was still in wide usage within early Christian society. Records from churches dating from the Middle Ages provide proof that gender specific infanticide was widespread. Further proof on how widespread infanticide was is seen in handbooks of penance, where the crime is listed with minor, or venial sins which describe overlying.[b] Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries the usual penance given for this action was three years with one year served on bread and water. The typical penance for the killing of an adult was just three years, with one of these on bread and water. Scholars believe that the leniency given towards those who committed infanticide to be indicative of how commonplace the practice was.[10]

In medieval Europe, the large discrepancies in the sex ratio have led to the suggestion of female infanticide with one estimate being 143 boys to 100 girls.[11][12] In medieval England overlaying—laying across a child and hence smothering it—was commonplace.[13]

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China

In China, the practice of female infanticide was not wholly condoned. Buddhism in particular was quite forceful in its condemnation of it. Buddhists wrote that the killing of young girls would bring bad karma; conversely, those who saved a young girl's life either through intervening or through presents of money or food would earn good karma, leading to a prosperous life, a long life and success for their sons. However the Buddhist belief in reincarnation meant that the death of an infant was not final, as the child would be reborn; this belief eased the guilt felt over female infanticide.[14]

The Confucian attitude towards female infanticide was conflicted. By placing value on age over youth, Confucian filial piety lessened the value of children. The Confucian emphasis on the family led to increasing dowries which in turn led to a girl being far more expensive to raise than a boy, causing families to feel they could not afford as many daughters. The Confucian custom of keeping the male within the family meant that the money spent on a daughter's upbringing along with the dowry would be lost when she married, and as such girls were called "money-losing merchandise". Conversely the Confucian belief of Ren led Confucian intellectuals to support the idea that female infanticide was wrong and that the practice would upset the balance between yin and yang.

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India

In 1857, John Cave-Brown documented for the first time the practice of female infanticide among the Jats in the Punjab region. Data from the census during the colonial period and from 2001 propose that the Jat have practiced female infanticide for 150 years. In the Gujarat region, the first cited examples of discrepancies in the sex ratio among Lewa Patidars and Kanbis dates from 1847.[25][26]In 1789 during British colonial rule in India the British discovered that female infanticide in Uttar Pradesh was openly acknowledged. A letter from a magistrate who was stationed in the North West of India during this period spoke of the fact that for several hundred years no daughter had ever been raised in the strongholds of the Rajahs of Mynpoorie. In 1845 however the ruler at that time did keep a daughter alive after a district collector named Unwin intervened.[27] A review of scholarship has shown that the majority of female infanticides in India during the colonial period occurred for the most part in the North West, and that although not all groups carried out this practice it was widespread. In 1870, after an investigation by the colonial authorities the practice was made illegal.[28]In India, since 1974 amniocentesis has been used to determine the gender of a child before birth, and should the child be female then an abortion can be carried out.[29] According to women's rights activist Donna Fernandes, some practices are so deeply embedded within Indian culture it is "almost impossible to do away with them", and she has said that India is undergoing a type of "female genocide".[30] The United Nations has declared that India is the most deadly country for female children, and that in 2012 female children aged between 1 and 5 were 75 percent more likely to die as opposed to boys. The children's rights group CRY has estimated that of 12 million females born yearly in India 1 million will have died within their first year of life.[30] In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu during British rule, the practice of female infanticide in Tamil Nadu among the Kallars and the Todas was reported. More recently in June 1986 it was reported by India Today in a cover story Born to Die that female infanticide was still in use in Usilampatti in southern Tamil Nadu. The practice was mostly prevalent among the dominant caste of the region, Kallars.[

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Pakistan

In 2011, CNN reported that a relief agency called female infanticide "Pakistan's worst unfolding tragedy" and that of 10 newborns thrown into the dumps of Karachi, nine are female. The NGO Edhi Foundation recorded 1,200 infants dumped in 2010, which was a rise of 200 over 2009.[

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Reactions

The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) wrote in their 2005 report, Women in an Insecure World, that at a time when the number of casualties in war had fallen, a "secret genocide" was being carried out against women.[34] According to DCAF the demographic shortfall of women who have died for gender related issues is in the same range as the 191 million estimated dead from all conflicts in the twentieth century.[35] In 2012, the documentary It’s a girl: The three deadliest words in the world was released, and in one interview, an Indian women claimed she had killed eight of her daughters.[34]

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Footnotes

a.Jump up ^ "As defined by UNICEF female infanticide is defined as the abortion of a fetus because it is female or the killing of an infant by a relative because it is female. Infanticide has been practiced as a brutal method of family planning in societies where boy children are still valued, economically and socially, above girls. Anecdotal evidence suggests that outright infanticide, usually of newborn girls, takes place in some communities in Asia. Medical testing for sex selection, though officially outlawed, has become a booming business in China, India and the Republic of Korea."[1]

b.Jump up ^ "lying on top of the child and suffocating him or her"[10]

c.Jump up ^ "As soon as the little girls are born, they are plunged into the water in order to drown them or force is applied to their bodies in order to suffocate them or they are strangled with human hands. And something even more deplorable is that there are servants who place the girl in the chamber pot or in the basin used for the birth, which is still filled with water and blood and, shut away there, they die miserably. And what is even more monstrous is that if the mother is not cruel enough to take the life of her daughter, then her father-in-law, mother-in-law, or husband agitates her by their words to kill the girl."[16]

d.Jump up ^ "Infanticide through drowning and abandoning female babies is an evil custom left over from feudal times."[22]

e.Jump up ^ Although the Dowry Prohibition Act was passed in 1961 it had the consequence of young brides then being killed.[

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India loses 3 million girls in infanticide

In an alarming trend, girl child numbers in India have shown a sharper decline than the male children in the decade beginning 2001, leading to a skewed child sex ratio.

On the eve of the International Day of the Girl Child, government on Tuesday said that while the decade saw an overall drop in share of children to total population, nearly three million girls, one million more than boys, are “missing” in 2011 compared to 2001 and there are now 48 fewer girls per 1,000 boys than there were in 1981.

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“During 2001- 2011, the share of children to total population has declined and the decline was sharper for female children than male children in the age group 0—6 years,” said the study “Children in India 2012- A Statistical Appraisal” conducted by the Central Statistical Organisation.

“Though, the overall sex ratio of the country is showing a trend of improvement, the child sex ratio is showing a declining trend, which is a matter of concern,” the study said

According to the report, female child population in the age group of 0-6 years was 78.83 million in 2001 which declined to 75.84 million in 2011.

The population of girl child was 15.88 per cent of the total female population of 496.5 million in 2001, which declined to 12.9 per cent of total number of 586.47 million women in 2011.

Similarly the male children population has also declined from 85.01 million in 2001 to 82.95 per cent in 2011. During the period, 1991-2011, the child sex ratio declined from 945 to 914, whereas the overall sex ratio showed an improvement from 927 to 940.

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“Though the child sex ratio in rural India is 919 which is 17 points higher than that of urban India, the decline in Child Sex Ratio (0—6 years) during 2001—2011 in rural areas is more than three times as compared to the drop in urban India which is a matter of grave concern,” it added.

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A Brief History of Infanticide

In 1978, Laila Williamson, an anthropologist of the American Museum of Natural History, summarized the data she had collected on the prevalence of infanticide among tribal and civilized societies from a variety of sources in the scientific and historical literature. Her conclusion was startlingly blunt: Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunters and gatherers to high civilization, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule. There is ample historical evidence to document the incredible propensity of parents to murder their children under an assortment of stressful situations. In nineteenth century England, for example, infanticide was so rampant throughout the country that a debate over how to correct the problem was carried out in both the lay and medical press. An editorial in the respected medical journal Lancet noted that "to the shame of civilization it must be avowed that not a State has yet advanced to the degree of progress under which child-murder may be said to be a very uncommon crime. Infanticide has pervaded almost every society of mankind from the Golden Age of Greece to the splendor of the Persian Empire. While there are many diverse reasons for this wanton destruction, two of the most statistically important are poverty and population control. Since prehistoric times, the supply of food has been a constant check on human population growth. One way to control the lethal effects of starvation was to restrict the number of children allowed to survive to adulthood. Darwin believed that infanticide, "especially of female infants," was the most important restraint on the proliferation of early man. While female infanticide has at times been necessary for survival of the community-at-large, there have also been instances where it has been related to the general societal prejudice against females which characterizes most male-dominated cultures.

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Evidence in Arabia

Sexism was particularly prominent in Arabia before the time of Mohammed (570?-632 AD). The Persian world was a very paternalistic society, and females were generally seen as an undesirable burden to a family struggling to survive. A common proverb held that it was "a generous deed to bury a female child." Nevertheless, the Koran, which collected the writings of Mohammed, introduced reforms that included the prohibition of female infanticide. Mohammed outlined the wrongfulness of infanticide in various sections of his holy scripture.

He asked, with censure ' for example, how would a father account for his actions, "When the female child that had been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she was put to death?"

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Evidence in Judaism and Christianity

While we also find discrimination in the treatment of women within the Western religions of Judaism and Christianity, there were safeguards in both practices to prevent social acceptance of infanticide by its adherents. The Jews were clearly against the taking of human life, and generally forbade the killing of any newborn infant. Maimonides (1135 - 1204 AD), the renowned Jewish philosopher and physician, pointed out that a single man was first created in Genesis, "to teach us that if any man destroys a single life in the world, scriptures imputes it to him as though he has destroyed the whole world." Each life, each spark of being, was a gift of God and only the Holy Father could extinguish its flame. Infanticide was therefore rare and never socially accepted by the Jews.

That some early Christian parents did indeed expose unwanted female infants to the elements was evident in the writings of the Church Fathers who were concerned over future acts of incest. Saint Justin Martyr (114-166 AD) cautioned that it was wicked to expose children for, "almost all those who are exposed are raised to prostitution." He then added a warning against consorting with prostitutes because it was thereby possible that one would be guilty of having intercourse with his own child. Clement of Alexandria (150-211 AD) similarly advised of this danger. For the most part, however, as with the Jews, this criminal act was not accepted by Christian Society, and infanticide remained a clearly impious and illegal act.

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Evidence in India and China

Despite the clear theistic prohibitions against child-murder by the three major Western religions, female infanticide has been for centuries a prominent and socially acceptable event in two related areas of the world: India and China. Even today, the extent of the problem is measured in frightening proportions: "at least 60 million females in Asia are missing and feared dead, victims of nothing more than their sex. Worldwide, research suggests, the number of missing females may top 100 million. "

The data is truly astounding, Estimates indicate that 30.5 million females are "missing" from China, 22.8 million in India, 3.1 million in Pakistan, 1.6 million in Bangladesh, 1.7 million in West Asia, 600,000 in Egypt, and 200,000 in Nepal.

It is clear that the onerous costs involved with the raising of a girl, end eventually providing her an appropriate marriage dowry, was the single most important factor in allowing social acceptance of the murder at birth in India. In China, economics also played a significant role since it is a poor country with one of the lowest rates of agricultural output per acre of arable land in the world. With an extremely high infant and child mortality rate, because of sparse food supply and medical care, a married couple needed to raise three sons in order to ensure the survival of one into adulthood. Females were only consumers and a serious financial burden to a poor family. They were therefore often killed at birth

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Infanticide in Modem TimesColonial America

The colonists brought infanticide to America from England while at the same time finding that the Indians practiced it as well. As was the case in Germany extreme discipline characterized family life in puritanical colonial America and parents were given extensive liberty to punish their children, even to the point of death. In 1646 the General Court of Massachusetts Bay had enacted a law where "a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient years and understanding, " would be brought before the Magistrates in court and "such a son shall be put to death." "Stubborn child laws" were also enacted in Connecticut in 1650, Rhode Island in 1668, and New Hampshire in 1679.

How ingrained was the attitude of rigid parental control over the discipline of children can be evidenced by a comparison to concern over animal welfare. Henry Bergh founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in 1866.4 After first completing his campaign to improve the plight of cats and dogs, Burgh brought by special warrant to the Supreme Court of New York, the case of Mary Ellen who claimed that the child's custodians had beaten her cruelly and that she should be brought under the protection of the court.

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Modern America

"In 1966, the United States had 10,920 murders, and one out of every twenty-two was a child killed by a parent."Despite our predilection for considering modern civilization "advanced," the crime of infanticide has continued to pervade most contemporary cultures. The major difference between the nature of infanticide in the twentieth century, when compared to the rest of recorded history, however, is due to the impact of one modern medical advancement: the widespread availability of safe, and legal, means of abortion. The ability to easily terminate a pregnancy, and thereby eliminate an unwanted child before it is born, has had a profound effect on the prevalence of infanticide. The human species has killed almost 10% - 15% of all children born. The majority of these murders have been associated with reasons of necessity at least in the minds of the infanticide parent - or with untoward reactions against an unwanted birth. With little ability to abort an unwanted pregnancy safely, troubled parents have had little choice but to wait until full-term delivery before disposing of the conception.Of approximately 6.4 million pregnancies in the United States in 1988, 3.6 million were unintended and therefore subject to dangerous consequences. 1.6 million of those unwanted pregnancies resulted in abortion. In Britain, more than 160,000 legal abortions, or terminations of pregnancy, were carried out each year during this same period of time. The Family Planning Association in Russia says that there are more than 3 million abortions performed each year, more than double the number of births. In France, there are almost one million abortions each year, equal to the number of births. This means that over five million pregnancies were aborted in the Western world alone each year, and if the births of those children would not have been prevented, it is very likely that many of those infants would have been victims of infanticidal rage.Morally right or wrong - a case of murder or manifestation of a woman's right to choose - the fact remains that the frequent use of abortion has eased the necessity for killing an infant after its birth.

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Statistical Analysis - United States

Statistically, the United States ranks high on the list of countries whose inhabitants kill their children. For infants under the age of one year, the American homicide rate is 11th in the world, while for ages one through four it is 1st and for ages five through fourteen it is fourth. From 1968 to 1975, infanticide of all ages accounted for almost 3.2% of all reported homicides in the United States.

The 1980's followed similar trends. Whereby overall homicide rates were decreasing in the United States, the rate at which parents were killing their children was increasing, In 1983, over six hundred children were reported killed by their parents, and from 1982-1987, approximately 1.1% of all homicides were children under the age of one year of age. When the homicide of a child was committed by a parent, it was the younger age child who was in the greater danger of being killed, while if the killer was a non-parent, then the victim was generally older.

The characterization of the type of parent that is likely to kill their child has changed little over the years. As far back as the middle ages, the children of the poor "Were by far the most common victims of the parental negligence and despair." Today, infanticide is still most commonly seen in areas of severe poverty.

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And just as infanticide was described as a crime that was committed by the mother in medieval times, such a likelihood remains true today. Although men are more likely to murder in general, statistical review of prosecutions show that infanticide is usually committed by the mother. When mothers killed their children, however, the victim was usually a newborn baby or younger infant. Some research shows that for murders of children over the age of one year in the United States, white fathers were the perpetrators 10% more often than white mothers, and black fathers 50% more than black mothers.

Other risk factors can include young maternal age, low level of education and employment, and signs of psychopathology, such as alcoholism, drug abuse or other criminal behavior. The most common method of killing children over the ages has been head trauma, strangulation and drowning. Most of the murders today are committed with the use of the mother's hands, either by strangulation or physical punishment.

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By: the student of THE DOON GLOBAL SCHOOL

ADITI SHARMA

GRADE:8 “A”

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THANK YOU