Ghandi, Aung San Su Kiy and other arseholes

The problem I have with 'feminists' is that women are the only cause. There are many more 'divisions' before we even get there. I believe cresentmoon noted that earlier.

How about worrying for countries such as Africa where the female/male ratio is the other way. The men are all dead in war and therefore the nation as awhole suffers?

Sorry for spelling. Should not have pressed 'post' without checking!!

Whatmeworry "What does interest me is there is currently a lot of frothing (among western people of course) about how demeaning this sort of dowry - "bride price" is, but without understanding its function."

The function of the Bride-price for Islamic cultures was to give the Bride her own money separate from her husbands should she need it. Also note that in Islam, the laws are very specific and generally fair (as long as man does not interprete them in his favour) re. divorce and inheritance.

In Hinduism, religion is kept very separate from politiccs. Therefore it was very easy for India to adapt to the Britsh justice system. Infact, Hindu culture accepted Gays and Lesbians in the community, as part of the cultural fabric. It was the British who outlawed it and now there are calls to take away that 'law' that bans it.

Therefore it is only for financial reasons that Girls are not values in SOME families in India (To say this is all cultural and all Indians are misogynistic is like saying all western women are prostitues).

Honour killings (hate the name obvs) and blood feuds and have yet to find the name...

Albania is very "tribal." They have bride prices and honour stuff and Greeks (amaong others) pop over to Albania to buy wives...They have a syustem called (damn will have to look it up)

Now that you are all naked...

A lot of people have quoted numbers from the sub-continent here. Agree it is an aweful situation when girl babies are discarded or worse...(not sure what is worse in these circumstances actually). However, if you look at WHERE in India this is rife, it is again where literacy is not as high or possibly in big cities where these 'illiterates' may come to seak employment. If you look at the well of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the ratio of girl to boy are comparable to the West for Kerala for example (also note that Kerala was inherently communist for a while).
Why did this happen?

1. The dowary system is abused by greedy parents of boys.
2. The girls family want to give more dowery thinking that the in-laws will treat their girl better if they give a lot more money, which dominos in the rest of the community (x's parents gave a car so we must also keep up with the Jones and give 2 cars!)
3. The system is DIFFERENT to where men give money/goats etc to marry girls as this is looked upon or compared to a man giving money to a prostitute...

Now China,

Chinas ones child policy has not helped its ratios. Chinas being SIGNIFICANTLY worse than any other country. This stems not from the Dowery system but predominately that it is the boys who will carry the 'line' forward. Not the girls.

Atleast in countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the press is very free. There are also human rights organisations who are allowed to freely work. With education and cultural shift this phenomena should get routed out.

China however, there seems no recourse unless there is free-press and its concept of human rights changes.

Here is why I think things should drastically begin changing and already is in India/Nepal etc.

1. India has the fastest growing middle-class. People are not remaining in the same cities they were born in and generally not living in the same houses their great great grandfathers lived in. To enable a good standard of living, more and more families are becoming 2 income families. This means, the Dowary system, which in effect was the 'security' that belonged to the women if things did not work out is needed less and less.
2. There are many open discussions such as we are having happening all over India.
3. Inheritance laws already are the same as the west. Remember India inheritate along with the Railways, the British Justice system.

What about Albania? Why is this happening there?

Mr Gin That is fascinating. However, Christianity has more in common with Judaism and Islam than the 'Hinduism' based religions (Jainism, Buddhism etc)

Christianity yes of course, but another Gospel, that of Thomas ( also not in the bible ) gives a very different impression of what Christ was teaching and has been likened to Buddhism by some.

It talks about ( or rather Jesus does as it's all 'sayings' rather than narrative ) about enlightenment and the light within being the route to salvation. The Thomas gospel portrays Jesus not as a God, but as more the ubiquitous vehicle of spiritual inspiration and enlightenment.

Anyway. I'll shut up about Jesus now. :-)

Right, I will now move on to my views on the male/female debate... bare with me.

How did Cambodia for example get to have a very advanced Hindu civilisation a 1500 years ago? What about Bali which is predominately Hindu too? It is not just the Europeans who had boats and power. But it is only the Europeans who killed the natives or enslaved them.

Cresentmoon, I read it a long time ago too. I am aware some 'facts' are disputed but the overall gist is what I am getting to. That the Chinese had a far superior culture/technology/complex social/economic society. They did not try to colonise even India if you think about it. Right next door, lots of wealth and just as advanced. Why?

If you recall in the book, the Indian sailors were also involved in the Chinese 'fleets' that went 'around the world'. As someone else has said on this thread, colour, caste, creed did not matter as much as when the Europeans started to come into this. If you look at cultures of small ports etc (Say the strait of Melaka in Malaysia, there is still a whole mixture of cultures that live there. From Hindu sailors from Gujarat to African sailors from Zanzibar. Each co-existing. To this day.

It is the European divide and rule policy around the world that has screwed up a lot of the world.

Recommended read: 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies

whatmeworryToo early, they didn't have the guns so had no disproportionate advantage. The Spanish and Portuguese were able to beat 100x their numbers with guns.

No, they did have weapons good enough to colonise. Remember that the Europeans/the west was still an un organised and un-civilised society when the Chinese were building large pagodas to rival the Gherkin in London 1000/2000 years ago. Remember the Egyptians had boats, men, supirior 'technology'. The fact is that there was nothing to be gained by invading the cave dwelling backward Europe!!!

designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable

IMO its just good old Tory minimal state policy dressed up in fluffy woo.

Its usually the most vulnerable who get hit first, though actually with the bailout I think this time round its those in the middle - that do have something but not a lot in reserve - that have been hit hardest (ie have lost the most, and will continue to do so)

Whatmeworry - ISWYM - giving women prooperty rights seems to be one of the first steps on the path to women's equality. Hopefully allowing women to inherit will raise their status within their own families.

i think the same pandoras box effect is around legalising euthanasia - in a culture which glorifies youth and considers old age an inconvenience or a burden, how do you know the extent of cultural or social pressures in a person's decision to seek it?

Its no coincidence that the whole right to die thing is exploding in the media just as we march up to a major problem in paying for old people.

It seems that the practice of girls going to live with their husband's family is at the core of this devaluing of girls; it makes your sons into a long-term investment and your daughters into a short-term one

In agricultural societies the sons stay on the family land to work it (inheritance rights), so their wives live with them. Its not a major issue if the settlements are small villages so the rest of the family is nearby (which is the case in most of the world), its more if there is wide dispersal.)

The issue is the inheritance, ie going down the male line. I'd bet it started due to something fairly simple, ie in thsoe pre law court/justice/police days, if you didn't have a male in the household to fight for it, you didn't keep it.

Personally I think the biggest thing one can do for women is allow them property ownership. I reckon that is more revolutionary than nearly anything else one can do in many developing countries..

It seems that the practice of girls going to live with their husband's family is at the core of this devaluing of girls; it makes your sons into a long-term investment and your daughters into a short-term one.

It must be really unsettling for the daughters. How is it different from the slave children of the US who knew that they could one day be sold off and sent away from their families? It also puts the new bride at the bottom of the hierarchy in her new family, where the existing women are trying to protect their own status in a system that none of them chose. Some horrendous things are done by the MILS to their new DILS.

Surely the practice is classic patriarchy, treating women and girls as objects that pass from one family to another, much like cattle?

yy beach, the whole culture is rooted in girls being worth less. If you are a rich family, you have to provide an enormous dowry to marry off the girls and dump their expense on the inlaws.

This is slowly slowly slowly changing among professional families where women work outside the home. Funny that.

"For eg in much of Africa, the dowry is paid to the family losing a daughter, so there is not quite so much economic incentive to have sons."

After reading HalfTheSky though that doesnt seem to have translated into African families (at least the ones studied in HTS) preferring girls over boys. Why is that?

It isn't just about poverty - it is cultural misogyny.

www.economist.com/node/15636231

In Punjab Monica Das Gupta of the World Bank discovered that second and third daughters of well-educated mothers were more than twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday as their brothers, regardless of their birth order. The discrepancy was far lower in poorer households. Ms Das Gupta argues that women do not necessarily use improvements in education and income to help daughters. Richer, well-educated families share their poorer neighbours? preference for sons and, because they tend to have smaller families, come under greater pressure to produce a son and heir if their first child is an unlooked-for daughter.

So modernisation and rising incomes make it easier and more desirable to select the sex of your children. And on top of that smaller families combine with greater wealth to reinforce the imperative to produce a son. When families are large, at least one male child will doubtless come along to maintain the family line. But if you have only one or two children, the birth of a daughter may be at a son?s expense. So, with rising incomes and falling fertility, more and more people live in the smaller, richer families that are under the most pressure to produce a son.

So girls are worth less. If you are a very very poor person who is only allowed one child, you can't afford to have a girl. Who will keep you in old age?

Thats about it, and I suspect these reproductive skews have gone on for millenia.

Its always interesting to see how the dowry works in the culture, as that is probably a good predictor. For eg in much of Africa, the dowry is paid to the family losing a daughter, so there is not quite so much economic incentive to have sons.

What does interest me is there is currently a lot of frothing (among western people of course) about how demeaning this sort of dowry - "bride price" is, but without understanding its function.