The Women of India

In a country that so prefers baby boys that 750,000 girls are electively aborted every year and an unknown number are killed at birth, Prachi’s father, in The World Before Her had chosen to save her and raise her as his only child.  In The World Before Her, this history comes out in the context of sensational media revelations that Miss India of 2009, now a star, had been saved from infanticide only because her mother had walked out on her husband. This existential reality is shared by girls and women on both sides of the seeming divide between tradition and modernity throughout the film.

Female fetuses are aborted and baby girls killed after birth, leading to an appallingly skewed sex ratio in India. Many of those who survive face discrimination, prejudice, violence and neglect all their lives, as single or married women. This is really scary to see how women have to lose their baby just because it is a girl, meanwhile in the US abortion laws are spreading from state to state.

Girls are treated so much differently from a boy in their family. I remember a scene in the film The World Before Her, a girl allows her father to beat her for a tiny misbehavior just because she was grateful to even be alive. She does everything to obey her father and thank him for keeping her alive. This scene shocked me because I can’t imagine being in her shoes and have to endure being beaten by my father and scared to even make a little mistake.

I believe that India is in denial of the fact that a majority of its women do not feel safe alone on the streets, at work, in markets, or at home, even though they have learned how to cope with this existential anxiety. Women learned to modify their behaviors to feel safe – they don’t go out alone unnecessarily; come home at night before dark; get permission to go out; are always careful and alert; and they censor their speech, their clothes and their body posture, including whether or not they look men in the eyes. (The Guardian)

Rape statistics in India really reflect how women have little value. Which means in turn that girls must be trained to act as if they do not exist, to minimize their presence to survive, to serve men and not inconvenience them. In 2020 this is especially alarming that women are treated this way, but it is true in India and to a greater or lesser degree across many cultures.