Belly,

'I am b%ggered if I know why you think we are better for ignoring these issues.'

Thought that leads to no action is pointless.

You cant be bothered even pontificating any kind of action in the first place (while I have BTW), but instead think it's enough for you to shake your head and go woe is them. Well, they cant even hear you. And you wonder why I take the piss.

Hi Belly,

Wealth is a prime source of social status; moreover it can be converted into power and prestige. If men make a greater economic contribution to the family and society than women, then men are likely to have superior social status in both. Conversely, if the economic contribution of women increases relative to that of men, than the inequalities between the sexes should diminish.

There are various ideologies that justify social inequality of various kinds. The ideology of sexism is endorsed to some extent by religion. For example, the sacred text of Islam, the Koran, declares:

"Men are superior to women on account of the qualities in which God
has given them pre-eminence."

In fundamentalist Islamic countries, such teachings are used to justify the virtual exclusion of women from high political, economic, or religious statuses. In fact, fundamentalist Islamic nations, make women almost invisible in public: women may not appear without veils, may not drive cars, may not work in the same office with men, and don't have the right to vote.

The Judeo-Christian religious tradition also seems to value men above women. According to the Genesis story, God made man in His own image, with women as a subsequent and secondary act of creation. The ancient
Israelites were a strongly patriarchal people, and even today a male
orthodox Jew is expected to say this prayer every morning:

"Blessed art thou, oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, that I was not born a gentile. Blessed art thou, oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, that I was not born a slave. Blessed art thou, oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, that I was not born a woman."

This bias, was transmitted to Christianity through the later teachings of Saint Paul, who saw the inferior role of women as part of a divinely ordained natural order:

"A man...is the image of God and reflects God's glory; but woman is the reflection of man's glory...Man was not created for the sake of woman, but woman was created for the sake of man." (I Corinthians:
11:7-9).

cont'd...

Houei,
You missed this bit of the article.

'In Indian culture, the preference for boys over girls is well known.

Getting rid of baby girls is a practice that is so widespread in some parts of India that it has skewed dramatically the ratio of males to females'.

Seeing the scanning for gender is illegal, as is abortions for gender, in India few would have the means or the money to get it done.

Google infanticide, wikipedia and the UNHIEC claims there are 50 million females missing in India. India disputes this.

In China there are 40 million missing females. Most by abortions.

The point of all this is that females are not valued equally with males in many cultures, which Belly is saying and rightly bringing this to our attention.

Incidently, the article also says that, according to calculations, there are 1500 missing baby girls in the UK that were born to Indian mothers. Now there is a question. Could culture have anything to do with it?

“What does this thinking achieve Jewls? Make you a bit grumpy so you don't enjoy the time with your own? Sounds pretty silly to me.”

My own are legally adults now so I’m done. Yay made it! Joe says I’m not done but I’m trying to completely ignore that.

I have to admit to feeling rather removed from worrying about children overseas when I know what is happening to children here.

Any discussion about children, that people aren’t being paid to participate in, helps me feel less alone. :)

I don’t get grumpy - sad often, sick sometimes, enraged occasionally, completely devastated now and again... Imagine what the kids are feeling if a mere witness feels these things?

cont'd ...

Even today many denominations reserve their priesthoods or equivalent positions for men - although, as women gain greater equality elsewhere in society, they are achieving higher statuses in religion also.

The sexist belief in the superiority of men pervades many areas of social life. Both men and women tend to incorporate prevailing stereotypes about femininity and masculinity into their self-concepts, and these understandings shape their personalities and the way they relate to one another.

As we know from history - women have learned to hide, reveal, or distort their bodies, in accordance with the prevailing male notions of how women should appear. In traditional China, men admired tiny female feet - so girls' feet were permanently deformed through footbinding, a painful practice that left them barely able to walk.

In some West African tribes where men admire very plump women, young girls deliberately fatten themselves into obesity in order to attract a husband. Among some North Afric an people women have for generations submitted to brutal surgery to remove their clitoris - supposedly to reduce their sexual appetites and thus keep them faithful to their husbands. In North America, and many Western countries, where large, firm breasts have been admired for most of the century, millions of women have had their breasts surgically reshaped or enlarged.

Now that men's ideal for womanhood is shifting to a leaner and more athletic look, dieting has become a female obsession, with over a third of Western women considering themselves too fat. Every year, in fact, millions of women starve themselves to the point of anorexia, no less compulsively than some of their West African counterparts gorge themselves to plumpness.

Men, in contrast are rarely expected to shape their bodies to conform to women's notions of how they should look - for men rely rather on their power, wealth, or prestige to attract the opposite sex.

As long as people continue to take the status quo for granted, it will persist. But if they come to see the situation as socially created -and unjust - they will begin to demand change.

Gender imbalance is already rife in India and one outstanding example can be found on Bombay's (officially Mumbai) electric suburban train network.
"Eve Teasing' is the local euphemism for girls and women being groped on trains, and on the streets, however the trains provide better opportunities.

'Eve Teasing' is probably the real reason that every suburban train has 'Ladies Only' carriages and the 'Railway Employees Only' trains (Workers Specials) are not an exception.
There are men in India who will never marry because of the imbalance that already exists and it will only get worse.