Unit 4 of the Online Briefing Program looks at the conditions of life for rural women in South Asia. It examines the link between the subjugation of women and the persistence of hunger.

In South Asia - like in many developing countries - society holds women responsible for all the key actions required to end hunger: family nutrition, health, education, food production and – increasingly – family income. Yet at the same time – through laws, custom and tradition – women are denied the resources, the information and freedom of action they need to carry out these responsibilities.  This situation holds hunger in place.

In the coming pages, we will travel through the life of a rural South Asian woman, from birth until widowhood. Her life is not an easy one - she is unwanted, disadvantaged, threatened by violence, overworked, and even outcast. In spite of these harsh conditions, she is a critical provider for her family and a key producer for her country.  

This lifetime may not apply to each and every rural woman in India and Bangladesh. Yet it does aim to candidly confront the situation of millions of Indian and Bangladeshi women, who are subjugated, marginalized and disempowered every day of their lives. It reflects the voices of rural South Asian women, as well as urban activists, many of whom have grappled with the extreme differences between their own upbringing, and the life of their rural sisters.

As investors around the world, our challenge is to confront the reality of life for the millions of subjugated women - our partners in ending hunger.  The actions that must be taken to end hunger in India and Bangladesh will be taken by these impoverished, malnourished, illiterate women themselves.  As we immerse ourselves in the coming pages, we can begin to appreciate the courage of the Indian and Bangladeshi women who are working to provide for their families and themselves. 

1. Unwanted before birth 

2. Disadvantaged as a baby girl  

3. Childhood of drudgery, 
   denied education: education and the persistence of hunger

4. Married and secluded as a girl

5. In poor health and uncared for in pregnancy

6. The cycle of malnutrition

7. Overworked and invisible producer

8. Outcast in widowhood

9. Threatened by violence throughout her life: violence and the persistence of hunger

10. Awakening to a new possibility

Oh, God, I beg of you,
I touch your feet time and again,
Next birth don't give me a daughter,
Give me Hell instead...
-Folk Song from Uttar Pradesh, India

A person has to have sinned in his past life to be born a woman.
–Ancient Indian Proverb

• A baby girl in South Asia is born into a family that had wished and prayed for a boy.

• For thousands of years, South Asian families have valued their sons more than daughters. They expect that sons will carry on the family name, and provide for the family economically.

• Daughters will eventually be married into their husband's family. They are never considered real members of their parents' family.

• As an Asian proverb says, "bringing up girls is like watering the neighbor’s garden." The money spent to raise and care for a daughter is often considered "wasted."

• As a result, a girl child receives unequal care and opportunities throughout her life.

• As we will see in the coming pages, the deeply rooted inequalities between women and men hold hunger in place in South Asia.

• The view of girls as a burden to the family is tightly connected to the traditional practice of dowry.

• Dowry is the money, land or other possessions that a woman must bring to her husband when she is married.

• Dowry is a cultural practice, without foundation in any major religion. Its roots can be traced back to the beginning of South Asian society. Experts say its practice "has reached shocking proportions" in the last fifty years in South Asia.

• Although giving dowry is formally illegal in both India and Bangladesh, it persists at all levels of society.

• In addition to dowry at the time of marriage, there are other ceremonies after marriage - including pregnancy and childbirth - when the daughter's family is expected to provide other monetary gifts.

• Payment of dowry is financially debilitating for many families. Dowry can be as much as five times a family's annual income. Many rural families are forced to sell land and go into debt to accommodate the dowry demands.

• A daughter thus represents a severe financial burden, which families seek to overcome at all costs.

• At the most drastic level, this means not even allowing a girl child to live.

South Asia is the only region in the world where there are more men than women - where the natural ratio of women to men is severely distorted.  This is due to the profound inequalities between women and men.

It's cruel. If you have a daughter, you are pitied and your social status is dismal. Better to have a son than to listen to all the taunts.
-Paramjit Kaur, anganwadi (nursery) worker

• In the late 1980s, Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Amartya Sen coined the term missing women to describe the great numbers of women in the world who are literally not alive due to family neglect and discrimination.

• Sen estimated that worldwide, there are 100 million missing women. More recent estimates suggest that there are 50 million missing women in India alone.

• Biologically, girl babies are stronger. The world average for women to men is roughly 990 women for every 1,000 men. In some regions, such as Western Europe, there are as many as 1,063 women to every 1000 men.

• In South Asia, however, the numbers go against the biological norm. 

• In Bangladesh, for every 1000 men, there are only 945 women. In India, there are only 927 women. The upcoming 2001 census in India is expected to show a figure of only 900 women to every 1,000 men.

• In some regions of India, the sex ratio is even more greatly distorted. In part of the states of Bihar and Rajasthan, the female-male ratio is 600 to 1,000.

• Since Sen's study, experts have asserted that women are missing in South Asia not only due to neglect. In many cases, girls are missing because they are murdered at birth, or never allowed to be born.

• In South Asia, drastic measures are taken to eliminate girl children. This practice is most widely documented in India.

• Feticide: Between 3 -5 million female fetuses are aborted in India each year. In one study of a clinic in Bombay, 7999 out of 8000 aborted fetuses were female.

• Infanticide: The discrimination against women is so severe that girl children may be killed as soon as they are born. A recent survey in India reports 10,000 cases of female infanticide annually. Because of unreported cases, this figure is probably much higher in reality.

• Experts suggest that these practices contribute to the unnaturally high risk of death for young girls. In India, due to mistreatment and inequalities in health care and nutrition, the risk of dying between ages one and five is 43% higher for girls than for boys.

• For those of us not living in the conditions of hunger and severe gender discrimination, the murder of girl children can be extremely hard to understand.

• We can only begin to imagine the experience of a new mother in South Asia.

• She has been taught her whole life that she is inferior because she is a woman; that she is cursed for being female.

• She is mistreated verbally and physically by her family - and taunted by the members of her community - for giving birth to a girl child.

• She is frightened by the economic threat of a dowry which could leave her family deeply in debt.

• She is unwilling to let another generation of daughters suffer her own fate.

• Under conditions more challenging than any of us will face in our lives, she ends the life of her girl child.

• Without interventions in the way women are seen by society, and are taught to see themselves, the severe mistreatment of women will persist.

• The Hunger Project's South Asia Initiative is dedicated to getting to the heart of this issue and breaking this mindset.

Young girls are thought of, and often called, 'guests.' The meaning is clear: she will eventually leave her paternal home. Implicit is the thought that too much trouble will not be taken in her upbringing.
-Author and researcher Dr. Martha Chen speaking of Bangladeshi women

• In their infancy and childhood, girls do not receive the same treatment as their brothers.

• In India, as infants, girl children are breastfed for a shorter time period than their brothers. One explanation suggests that this enables mothers to try to become pregnant more quickly with a son.

• As older children, girls are discriminated against when it comes to access to food.

• Typically, adult men and male children are fed first in the family. Women eat only when the men have finished, and their mother-in-law has eaten. Whatever is left is divided between the mother and female children. Females always receive less, and poorer quality food.

• When girl children are sick, they are not given the same health care as males. A study in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India showed that three times as many boys as girls were brought to the local health center in a one-week period.

• The discrimination against girl children is closely linked to malnutrition and the persistence of hunger.

• 1/3 of the babies born in India and 1/2 of those born in Bangladesh are underweight at birth. This is in comparison to 1/6 of the babies born in Africa and 7% born in the US.

• For all children under the age of 5 years, 53% of the children in India and 56% of those in Bangladesh are malnourished and underweight.

• Because of unequal treatment, girls are more severely malnourished than boys.

• As we will see later in this unit, girls who are malnourished and unhealthy grow into women who are malnourished and unhealthy. These women give birth to malnourished and unhealthy children, and the cycle continues.

• At the most basic level, when girls' health suffers, future generations are at risk.

The reality of a girl child's existence is drudgery, both inside and outside the home.  

Childhood of work

• By the time a young girl has reached age 5, she assumes adult responsibilities, both inside and outside the household.

• Inside the home, she cares for her younger siblings, and for her mother, when her mother is sick or pregnant. 

• She fetches water, fuel and fodder, and makes dung cakes for fuel.  She cleans and arranges the home, including utensils and kitchen tasks. 

• In her "leisure time," she weaves or engages in other productive tasks.

• Outside the home, she does intense physical labor in the fields.  To generate income, she breaks stones and bricks. 

• This work harms girls' health and physical growth.

• One study estimates that 30% of women's work burden in India is shared by girls in the age group of 6-11 years.  

• Girls constitute 70% of child workers in the weaving industry, and 63% in the matchmaking industry in India.

• In Bangladesh in 1992, the majority of the 50,000 - 75,000 children employed in the garment industry were girls.

Even though they [girls] are clever they have no chance to go to school. They are forced to go to work at an early age, and there is also child marriage.
-Indian man 

• Because of her intense labor load, playing - and education - are the unthinkable. 

• Extreme differences in level of education between girls and boys persist.

• In India, the secondary school enrollment ratio is 59 for boys and 39 for girls. In Bangladesh, it is 28 for boys and only 14 for girls.

• When resources are limited, parents invest in their boys. An average Bangladeshi family will spend 68% of their total educational expenses on males and only 32% on females.

• For many parents, educating girls is also a matter of safety. Schools that are far from home, lack sanitation facilities for girls, and lack female teachers are thought to be unsafe for girls. There are cases of rape or assault of girls on the way to school.

When girls are educated, there are enormous social benefits.  The lack of education holds hunger in place.

Educating a man is educating an individual, while educating a woman is educating a family.

-Mahatma Gandhi

• When girls are educated, the benefits to themselves - and society - are large and widespread.

• The discrimination against girl children is closely linked to malnutrition and the persistence of hunger.

• 1/3 of the babies born in India and 1/2 of those born in Bangladesh are underweight at birth. This is in comparison to 1/6 of the babies born in Africa and 7% born in the US.

• For all children under the age of 5 years, 53% of the children in India and 56% of those in Bangladesh are malnourished and underweight.

• Because of unequal treatment, girls are more severely malnourished than boys.

• As we will see later in this unit, girls who are malnourished and unhealthy grow into women who are malnourished and unhealthy. These women give birth to malnourished and unhealthy children, and the cycle continues.

• At the most basic level, when girls' health suffers, future generations are at risk.

With the addition of a girl to the household, the in-laws get a laborer, someone who will feed the cattle and clear the house, a servant who comes free of cost.
-Ratan Katyani, social worker in Jaipur, India

When a family's eldest daughter is married, her younger sisters may also be married off at the same time to save expense.     (Photo by Sondeep Shankar)

Of course, we know that marrying children is against the law, but it's only a paper law.
- Govind Singh Patel, village elder in Rajasthan

• Both Bangladesh and India have long traditions of early child marriage, despite laws which prohibit it.

• According to tradition, an unmarried daughter who is beyond puberty is felt to be an embarrassment to the family.

• Early marriage robs a girl of the opportunity for full physical, emotional, and psychological development.

• Decades of research show that child marriages contribute to countless social problems: soaring birth rates, poverty and malnutrition, high illiteracy and infant mortality, and low life expectancy.

• In India, child marriages are most deeply rooted in the northern states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.

• In Rajasthan, a 1993 government survey showed that 56% of women had married before age 15. Of these, 3% married before they were 5 and another 14% before they were 10.

• In Bangladesh in 1991, 3% of girls aged 10-14 and 49.6% of those aged 15-19 were married.

• Because of early marriage, girls bear children before they are physically and emotionally ready.

• 64% of girls aged 17-19 in India, and 58% of girls below age 19 in Bangladesh, are pregnant or already are mothers, despite severe health risks.

• 37% of births in India occur within two years of the previous birth. This endangers both the health of the mother and the survival of the infant and older siblings.

A good woman regards her husband as her god…A good woman leaves her husband’s home only for the cremation grounds. –traditional Indian saying

To go out by the front door or back door of the house is forbidden for me. I can't go to my family's house. Everyone else here is used to it. But to me it is intolerable because I was not brought up in this environment. Therefore, sometimes the house seems to me like a jail.
-Young woman from Bogra, Bangladesh 

• Due to conservative traditions, many rural women are secluded inside the home. This usually includes the family's hut and the agricultural land just outside.

• Customarily, the home is considered "the woman's space," while the outside world is considered "the man's space."

• Researchers explain that the support and protection of males are the basis of a tolerable life for rural women.

• Women can only venture outside if they are given permission and accompanied by a male family member.

• The restrictions on women's movement limit their participation in community life and their ability to take actions that create the end of hunger.

• Hunger persists when woman are denied access to health and education facilities, and when they cannot meet freely with other women in the community to discuss their concerns.

• Women in India and Bangladesh have less access to health services and facilities than men.

• Women are denied treatment unless they are severely ill.

• In one survey, for every 3 men who use health services, only one woman does so. Health clinics are often not open at times that are convenient for women.

• Social norms mean that women are hesitant to discuss health problems. By the time anyone notices that they are in life-threateningly poor health, it is too late.

• When women are pregnant - and need special health care - this is still denied to them.

• Pregnant women get no extra food, and continue doing strenuous work throughout their pregnancies. This has harsh consequences for their health and their children's health.

• 88% of pregnant women in India, and 58% in Bangladesh are anemic.

• In India, nearly 3/4 of all births take place at home. 2/3 of all births are not attended to by trained medical personnel.

• In Bangladesh, only 25% of pregnant women receive antenatal care. Only 14% of births are attended to by someone with formal training.

• The result of ill health and unsanitary conditions in motherhood is sometimes death.

• In India, between 437-570 women die in every 100,000 live births. In Bangladesh, maternal mortality estimates range between 440 and 850.  Maternal mortality in Bangladesh accounts for one-third of all deaths to adults.

• In India, one woman dies every 5 minutes from pregnancy-related complications that claim 121,000 lives every year. The average Indian woman is almost 100 times more likely to die of a maternity-related cause than her counterparts in the industrial world.

Ill-health and malnutrition of women is critically linked to the persistence of hunger. When women are malnourished, their children are malnourished.

The exceptionally high rates of malnutrition in South Asia are rooted deep in the soil of inequality between men and women. 
–UNICEF 1996, The Asian Enigma

• Experts agree that the health and well-being of a mother throughout her life is directly related to the health and well-being of her child. When a woman is unhealthy and malnourished – from her own infancy through to motherhood - her baby will be unhealthy and malnourished.

• Social conditions in South Asia dictate that women and girls eat last and eat least in the family.

• Because of their poor diet, many women suffer from severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which expose them to serious health risks, including increased susceptibility to diseases, and maternal and infant death.

• In India, a woman may consume 1,000 fewer calories per day than her husband, sons, father and brothers.

• In Bangladesh, the calorie intake of women is 29% less than that of men.

• In Bangladesh, 77% of pregnant women from middle-income households and more than 95% of those from low income households weigh less than the standard of 50 kilograms (110 pounds).

• As a result of poor health and nutrition, 60% of women of childbearing age in South Asia are themselves underweight and malnourished.  By contrast, the proportion of malnourished women in sub-Saharan Africa is only 20%.

• In Bangladesh, when women are pregnant and breastfeeding, malnutrition rises to more than 70%. 

• By the time babies are born, 1/2 of the babies born in Bangladesh, and 1/3 of those born in India are underweight at birth. This compares to 1/6 of those born in Africa and 7% born in the United States.

• For children under the age of five, 53% in India and 56% in Bangladesh are malnourished and underweight. Girls are more severely malnourished than boys.

• Put starkly, India and Bangladesh suffer the lowest birthweights, and highest malnutrition in the world, because women there are the most severely subjugated, marginalized and disempowered.

• The effects of this condition on the well-being of people and society are shocking.

• When children are born malnourished and underweight, they suffer throughout their lives. Low birth weight babies are at severe risk in all areas of personal development, including health and mental capacity.

• They become less resistant to disease. It impairs their psychological and mental development. They have a lifetime of disabilities, a lower capacity of learning, lower productivity and lower intelligence.

• Malnutrition puts society at risk. In 1990, researchers studied the impact of four types of malnutrition and undernutrition worldwide. They calculated that the annual loss in productivity due to low birthweight babies amounted to a loss of 46 million years of productive, disability-free lives.

• The vitamin and mineral deficiencies that are suffered by these babies is equivalent to losing 5% of GNP. This loss of health and productivity is estimated to have cost Bangladesh and India together 18 billion dollars in 1995.

My field is in the hills, it takes so much weeding. For how many years will we die from toil?

…to fetch, to carry, to cook, to wash…year after year a submissive silent slave sold to life for nothing.

-Indian women

• South Asian Indian women have crushing workloads, yet their work goes unrecognized and unsupported.

• Women have dual responsibility for household and farm production.

• They work twice as long as men for only a fraction of the income.

• A study in the Indian Himalayas showed that a pair of bullocks works 1064 hours, a man 1212 hours and a woman 3485 hours in a year on a one-hectare farm.

• Women are generally not allowed to use agricultural implements, meaning that they perform more arduous tasks such as transplantation and weeding with their hands.

• Most women do not own the land they work, nor do they have equal access to agricultural extension services.

• Women's work is underestimated in official statistics.

• According to the 1991 Indian Census, 73% of rural women were not economically active. But a survey by the Ministry of Planning in 1987/88 showed that - of rural women classified as "not economically active" - 60% of rural women collected firewood, fodder, or foodstuffs, maintained kitchen gardens or fruit trees, or raised poultry or cattle. 

• 52% of rural women prepared cow dung cakes for fuel, and 63% of rural women collected water from outside the premises.

• In Bangladesh, labor force participation of women was 10% according to the Labor Force Survey of 1985/86. In 1989, the Labor Force Survey's questionnaire included specific activities such as threshing , food-processing and poultry-rearing. Then, the economic activity rate rose to 63%.

South Asian women are critical producers for their families, communities, and countries.  Without their contributions, South Asia's productivity would be lost.

• Women in South Asia are not often acknowledged for the incredible productive contributions they make to their families and their countries. 

• India is the world's #1 producer of commodities such as tea, jute, fruit, spices, and cattle. It is #2 in the world in rice, wheat, vegetable, and milk production.  

• Women are a critical link in much of this work. In India, women provide one-half of the labor in rice cultivation.

• Women contribute 46% of the total farm labor in Bangladesh, and between 55% to 66% in India. These figures are much higher in certain regions.

    In Bangladesh, women: 

• grow 73% of the vegetables and spices

• do 98% of poultry farming and 48% of cattle farming

• do 89% of the husking, drying and boiling

• do 86% of processing and preservation

• Women generate income for their families, and contribute substantially to economic production.

• In India, women account for 93% of total employment in dairy production. Yet, they only comprise 14% of dairy cooperative membership.

• In India, indoor jobs like feeding and cleaning livestock are done by women in 90% of families.

• Women work in small business ventures like fish-farming, nurseries, sewing, and handicrafts, basket, broom, and rope making; silk cocoon rearing; oil extraction; and bamboo works.

• In Bangladesh, women comprise 53% of the total employees in cottage industry, and 17% in large scale industry.

• Bangladeshi women comprise between 80-90% of the workforce in the garment industry – Bangladesh’s largest export industry. However, their supervisors are all men.

• Women have primary responsibility for household work, and caring and providing for their families.

• Women may cook for more than 3 hours per day with a biomass stove - made up of wood, dung and crop residues. The smoke they inhale is equivalent to smoking 20 packs of cigarettes per day. It causes eye and respiratory problems, bronchitis and lung cancer.

• Cooking for her entails tedious tasks such as 
  collecting fire-wood, dung and water; cleaning rice; and grinding spices.

• Women are primarily responsible for collecting fuel and fodder. In some regions of India, women spend four to five hours a day collecting household fuel.

• Women are traditionally responsible for collecting and providing water. Indian women may spend four hours per day carrying water, which can weigh as much as 18-25 kilograms (40-55 pounds).

 

9. Outcast in Widowhood

As widows, women suffer some of the most severe subjugation of their whole lives. Widowed women are harassed, abused, and denied land and livelihood.

'Keep your eyes downcast. You are a widow, now.' My mother-in-law ordered me. 'You have eaten up my son, so you must suffer.'

Widow from Bihar, India

When my husband died, my neighbors wanted my land. When I go to the bazaar, they steal what few crops I have.

-Bangladeshi woman

• When her husband dies, a woman is stripped of her only place in society.

• Because of child marriages, and marriages to older men, many widows are still young women.

• In Bangladesh in 1981, nearly 12% of all females aged 10 years and over were widowed, as compared to only 1.2% of men. This is in part due to the age differences between husbands and wives, and the incidences of remarriage for widowers.

• At the time of the 1991 Indian Census, widows numbered 33 million, 8% of the total female population. Among women over 50, the proportion of widows is as high as 65%.

• If a widow has adult sons, she may have some measure of security. But if she is childless or has only daughters, she usually faces multiple problems, including isolation, harassment, denial of land, and even death.

• Although modern laws give women inheritance rights, in practice, a widow’s land is often seized by her husband’s relatives.

• In India, The Hindu Succession Act 1969 made women eligible to inherit equally with men.

• Yet, the inheritance rights of the majority of Indian rural widows are governed by actual practice. In a 1994 study, 30% of widows reported serious conflicts over inheritance, land, property, and residence.

• These conflicts often ended in violence. Brothers-in-laws may harass, persecute, beat, torture, and even arrange the murder of a widow.

• Under Islamic Law, widows are entitled to inherit at least 1/8th of the dead husband's property and land. In practice, this share is frequently 'managed' and then taken by the brothers-in-law.

• In a 1995 Bangladeshi survey on property inheritance, only 25% of widows had received their rightful share in the inheritance from a deceased father, and only 32% from their husbands. No Hindu widows living in Bangladesh in the same survey had received property from either their parents or their husbands.

• Even if a widow is left with land, she is not permitted to cultivate it without male management.

Violence is designed to keep women suppressed in the family and society. It starts from childhood and is part of the way parents bring up their daughters, for instance, always telling them 'Don't speak loudly.' According to the prevailing social customs, if a woman is the victim of violence, she is blamed rather than sympathized with.

-Bangladeshi man

You should not beat your wife, but if the food is not ready, if the rotis are not hot, what choice do you have?

-Male, Jat, Uttar Pradesh

• Women in South Asia are denied fundamental opportunities: to health care, education, nutritious food, and the chance to have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

• The system that denies women their humanity and self-hood in South Asia is kept in place by violence and the ever-present threat of violence.

• Fear of physical and sexual violence keeps young girl children out of school. It prevents women from participating in community decision making.

• Violence increases the chances that a mother will die in childbirth, or that her baby will be malnourished. It gives rise to long-term physical and mental health problems, and sometimes leads to murder or suicide.

• Charlotte Bunch, director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, has said, "Long after slavery was abolished in most of the world, many societies still treat women like chattel: Their shackles are poor education, economic dependence, limited political power, limited access to fertility control, harsh social conventions and inequality in the eyes of law. Violence is a key instrument used to keep these shackles on."

• Without a drastic change in the status of women at all levels of society, violence against women - and hunger in South Asia - will persist.

Women have been taught to believe that suffering and maltreatment are 'normal' and 'a woman's fate'  The religion, films, her elders and her mother's experiences consistently tell her that if she is unhappy, nothing can be done, and that it is her own fault.

-Study on bride burning in India

• Before birth, a girl child in South Asia risks being one of as many as 5 million girls in India who are aborted by sex-selective abortion. If her mother is beaten, the unborn child can be harmed in the womb, born underweight, miscarried or stillborn.

• As an infant, she may be one of 10,000 girl children in India who are murdered by female infanticide every year.

• In girlhood, she may suffer physical, sexual, or psychological abuse at the hands of her elders. A study in Bangalore, India showed that 15% of school-age and college girls interviewed had experienced some form of sexual abuse. In 750 cases of family violence in Bangladesh, male relatives account for all but 29 cases of violence.

• In adolescence, she is the victim of so-called "courtship violence" by discouraged male suitors. In India, she is one of 25,000 women who are murdered or maimed in dowry disputes each year. In Bangladesh, she is one of 200 women who are murdered each year by sulfuric acid attacks.

• As a wife, it is likely that she is battered in the home. In a UNICEF review of 21 studies of violence in South Asia, over 70% of women in at least one study in India and Bangladesh reported that they were physically abused by their husbands. Nearly 50% of all murders of females in Bangladesh can be attributed to domestic violence.

• In widowhood and old age, she maybe subject to psychological and physical abuse, including homicide. A 1992 study of widows from four squatter sites in Dhaka found that 70% of younger widows are victims of sexual attacks.

• Throughout her life, depression and suicide are two predictable outcomes for a life endured under these conditions.

• Violence and murder because of insufficient dowry is a severe and growing threat for women in South Asia.  

• In India, gender-detection clinics drew protests from women's groups after the appearance of advertisements suggesting that it was better to spend $38 now to terminate a female fetus than $3,800 later on her dowry.

• The National Crime Records Bureau of India quotes that there were 6,917 dowry deaths in India during 1998. Feminist organizations and other groups say the number is much higher, since many incidents go unreported. By one estimate, there are 15,000 deaths per year.

• Many of these murders are classified as "stove burnings," when in reality, a husband and mother-in-law set fire to a young bride.

• A UNDP study in Bangladesh reports, "The incidence of physical and verbal abuse of wives due to non-fulfillment of dowry obligations by their fathers is so high that it is almost considered a norm. It occurs in at least 50% of recent marriages."

Life-cycle

The Hunger Project Online Briefing Program  The Condition of Women in South Asia Page 21 of 25

At a Glance

In the 1980s, a new sense of possibility for India's women began to surface across the country.  Although obstacles persist, India's women are showing themselves to be up for the challenge.

• In the 1980s, the most sensitive observers noticed that something new was bubbling up in the psyche of India's women.

• A series of United Nations conventions and conferences spurred a worldwide movement of awareness and action regarding women's rights and their contributions to society.  This movement stretched from government centers of power to the local level.

• At the grassroots, women began stepping forward from the system of subjugation that holds hunger in place.

• Women began organizing themselves into self-help groups, mobilizing for health care and education, and working to generate income for their families.

• At the national level, policies and programs shifted to reflect this growing trend.

• In India, the government officially overturned the "welfare mindset" that had characterized national programs for women. In the 1985 plan, India converted its Division for Women's Welfare - housed under Social Welfare programs - into a full Department of Women and Child Development - part of the Human Resource Development ministry.

• In Bangladesh, women came to occupy a central focus in development efforts, and specific objectives were implemented to reduce imbalances between women and men's development.

• Perhaps the most revolutionary step taken to formally acknowledge the power of women as key players in their communities occurred in India in 1992.

• India's government passed the 73^rd and 74^th amendments to the constitution, which formally instituted reservations for 1/3 women's participation in local-level democratic institutions.

• For the first time in its 5000 year history, India's women have had access to the resources and political power to make a real contribution to the affairs and development of their communities

• Even when progressive laws are passed at the national level, customs and traditions that subjugate women in local communities persist.

• Women who step forth in their communities must face enormous, daily obstacles. They encounter protest and violence from their husbands, fathers, or mothers-in-laws, who oppose their work.

• They must add the community work to the time-consuming and arduous daily tasks of providing for their families.

• They face the legacy of thousands of years of tradition which systematically deny them power and voice.

• The Hunger Project's new South Asia Initiative is dedicated to empowering women to step forth from this subjugation - as change agents for a new future for their villages, their countries, and our global community.

Congratulations on finishing unit 4 of the online briefing program. This unit has looked at the life of a South Asian woman, and the link between women's subjugation and the persistence of hunger in South Asia.

• Unwanted before birth: There are more than 50 million "missing women" in South Asia

• Disadvantaged as a baby girl: She is denied health care and nutritious food, unlike her brothers

• Childhood of drudgery: She does the work of an adult, inside and outside the home  

• Married and secluded as a girl: She is married and pregnant before she is physically and emotionally ready 

• In poor health and uncared for in pregnancy: She is denied food and health care, even when pregnant

• Malnourished in womanhood: She passes on her malnutrition and poor health to her children

• Overworked and unacknowledged producer: She contributes up to 66% of total farm labor with little support

• Outcast in widowhood: She is harassed, abused, and even murdered when her husband dies

• Threatened by violence throughout her life: Violence and its threat holds hunger in place

• Awakening to a new possibility: Since the 1980s, a new movement of women's awareness has begun