Girls and Women

14 October

I was tempted to title this “Where are the Girls?” On Monday the paper reported that Rajasthan had a gender ratio among 0-6 year old children of 863 girls to 1000 boys. (Googling didn’t produce the article, so these figures are roughly right.) The article noted that this year in Rajasthan 12 infant girls had been found tossed in dry wells. Although sex selection/selective abortions are illegal our guide noted that couples can go out of country to find doctors who will assure the birth of a son. He said that all births in hospitals are recorded so that the state can identify “missing” girls.

Girls may be seen as burden, especially by rural families – the demand for dowries still exists and traditionally upon marriage the girl goes to live with her husband’s family. Today we visited a temple and where a group of older women was chanting. Our guide commented that the daughters-in-law were home making chapatis while their mothers-in-law came to the temple.

The picture taken in a market in Udaipur captures my image of Rajasthan, i.e., knots of men in the market place. Women, other than school girls and tourists, are more likely to be alone or with one other woman. As we drove from Pushkar to Udaipur we saw scores of women in the fields or walking along the road often balancing a load of hay on their head. In the small towns many women had their sari covering their face. Traditionally married women cover their face – only their husband can see their face. This custom seems to be inconsistently followed; the ratio of covered to uncovered faces was largest in the small towns.

Today we went to an art gallery and it was the first time we saw a female employee at a local business. (The Ramada in Jaipur and the Sheraton in Agra both had female employees.) Our guide in Jaipur mentioned that his wife stayed at home, because she was from the country and had not gone to school. And our guide was a young man!

We saw very few women in Udaipur who covered their faces. We are in Rajasthan for too few days to make generalizations but women in Udaipur may have more opportunities than in the areas we have visited thus far – more school girls, fewer women who covered their faces, and more women on motor bikes.

This morning’s paper reported that a 20 year old woman had been strangled by her parents for refusing to marry the man they chose and was involved with a man of lower status. The police were charging the parents wit murder, but life for women especially in rural areas still seems grim.