{"id":11074,"date":"2011-11-05T19:11:56","date_gmt":"2011-11-05T19:11:56","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T13:40:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:40:16","slug":"why-does-india-hate-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11074","title":{"rendered":"Why Does India Hate Women?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest United Nations human development report shows that if you\u2019re looking for large numbers of teen mothers, you should look at India. While the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, rates in some South Asian countries are up there, too. Within South Asia, India and Nepal have the highest rates. In India, 8.6% of girls aged between 15 and 19 are having babies; in Nepal, that figure tops 10%. But because of India\u2019s huge population, the country probably has, in absolute numbers, more teen mothers than almost anywhere else in the world \u2014 a rough calculation would put the figure at about five million. Yet, except for the odd voice you never hear that much about India\u2019s teen pregnancy epidemic, because those pregnancies are generally happening within the confines of marriage \u2014 and that, apparently, makes it okay. Except it\u2019s not.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Teen pregnancy rates are an indicator of how a nation is treating its women. Most health experts (and the rest of us) agree that teenagers aren\u2019t grown up yet, either physically or mentally, and most of them aren\u2019t equipped to care both for themselves and a child. Some studies show that Indian girls who marry young are more likely to have malnourished children. These are years when young girls could be \u2014 or should be \u2014 finishing an education, and then getting married, joining the workforce, or some combination of the two, depending on their personal circumstances. The figures on adolescent fertility are part of the calculations for the United Nations gender inequality index \u2014 first introduced last year in its human development report. Last year, India ranked 122 out of 138 countries on gender inequality; this year it ranked 129 out of 146. More countries were included in the gender inequality index in 2011, so it\u2019s hard to compare the two years. In overall development, India ranked 134 out of 187 countries this year; last year it ranked 119 out of 169 countries.<\/p>\n

Not coincidentally, most of the countries on the \u201chigh\u201d human development list don\u2019t have very high rates of teen pregnancy. In the United States, just over 4% of teenagers have babies; in sexually permissive Norway, which topped the human development index, that figure is under 1%. And many of the countries with the highest rates of teen pregnancy appear rather low down the human development index. Sure, there are countries that buck the trend \u2014 that have teen pregnancy rates similar to India\u2019s and still report higher rates of overall development \u2014 but there\u2019s still a pattern here that India should pay attention to. Will it? Looking at the gender equity numbers, Jairam Ramesh, minister for rural development, saw a world where India was being discriminated against because of how the UN calculates some parts of the index, according to a story in the Indian Express on Thursday. Looking at the numbers, many of us would see a country where women are not just discriminated against, but actively disliked. Which is why it\u2019s sort of a puzzle when Indians, particularly those who have settled overseas, remark upon how proud they are that they or their children haven\u2019t succumbed to Western mores, that they remain Indian \u201cat heart.\u201d That\u2019s great for Indian boys, maybe \u2014 not so much for Indian girls.<\/p>\n

Numbers related to gender development, trafficking, sex abuse, education and nutrition rarely show that Indians are particularly good at protecting their daughters from early sexual activity, early pregnancy, dropping out of school or even hunger \u2014 the mistreatment just happens in a way that\u2019s culturally palatable. Let\u2019s take sex, for example. It\u2019s probably fair to say that most Indian women have their first sexual experience with a complete stranger. If that were happening post a visit to a bar and a few drinks \u2014 horrors. Subtract the bar and add a fire and priest \u2014 all well and good. <\/p>\n

Relations between teenage women and older men would anywhere else be called pedophilia or at least statutory rape. But add a fire and a priest, and well, you see where this is going. Yes, yes, India had a female head of government before many industrialized countries have; the head of the nation\u2019s ruling party is a woman, and so on and so forth. But surely the existence of Sonia Gandhi or Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi says as little about the general well-being of women in India as Mukesh Ambani\u2019s bank balance does about India\u2019s overall economic development. Even families who have educated their daughters pressure them to abandon their professional desires, as this blogger laments. Think a moment on the lives of the Indian women you know, no matter the class. Think a moment on the experiences women you know have told you about. I think, for example, of the number of women friends who have grown up in South Asia who recount having been molested by a family friend. I think, for example, of the backbreaking work most Indian women do every day, without it appearing to earn them much respect from their own families. Village fields are dotted with women weeding and doing other agricultural work; up in the hills, mothers and their daughters carry enormous bundles of firewood on their heads.
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SOURCE<\/a>
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The latest United Nations human development report shows that if you\u2019re looking for large numbers of teen mothers, you should<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":70655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sex-and-health"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"colormag-highlighted-post":false,"colormag-featured-post-medium":false,"colormag-featured-post-small":false,"colormag-featured-image":false,"colormag-default-news":false,"colormag-featured-image-large":false,"colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":false,"colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":false,"colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":false,"colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":false},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Joshua","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"The latest United Nations human development report shows that if you\u2019re looking for large numbers of teen mothers, you should","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Sex & Health"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":116,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":5,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":false,"medium":false,"thumbnail":false},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Joshua","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1213"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"Sex & Health<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}