the girl child

India may have its first woman president but it is going to be a long time before the girl child in India gets the same right as her male sibling. What is tragic is that it is often the mother, a girl child herself, who treats her that way.

No mother will ever accept that but one just has to look at things to see the difference. The three kids in the picture are siblings, whereas the boy was dressed warmly as the morning was chilly, the little girls were sent to school in summer frocks.

I wonder why mothers react this way. One would have thought that having suffered similar humiliations themselves they would not perpetrate them and yet it is the mothers who are the real culprits.

This is one of the reasons why the theme selected for the first meeting of the women's group at the Kamala centre was the girl child and we decided to show Matrubhhomi as we felt that it was one every woman should see particularly in a land where one the one hand women are worshipped but on the other they are used and abused!

Over 15 women attended the meeting and the issue of the girl child was debated with passion and verve. Every one agreed that something had to be done and that the girl child needed to be protected but they also accepted the fact that it would not be an easy task. They all promised to give the matter some thought and come back for the next meeting with ideas for an awareness campaign.

We know it is no mean task as the laws themselves are far from being respected. This came to light the very next day in a glaring manner: a pregnant lady, mother of two girls came to our centre asking us to keep her daughters till late evening as she worked. She also told us that the child she was carrying was yet another girl as had been revealed by an ultrasound she had done recently. Were not sex determination tests banned in our city?

You can share some of the moments of our first women meeting here


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