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This International Girl Child day, let’s remind ourselves of the challenges that a girl child continues to face, through her entire lifecycle, not just after getting born but even before.

These are:

1. Pre-birth :

. In conservative societies, people, across social strata, would still prefer to have a boy child

– To fulfill this wish, they would go for foetal gender determination, illegally.

– If a girl is still conceived, they shamelessly attempt female feticide

2. After-Birth:

After birth, her ordeal, instead of ending, now goes to the next level, affecting her in all dimensions of her life, such as:

– FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)-Societies are known to cut parts of the reproductive organs of their girls under a misconception that this helps them stay chaste till their marriage.

– Social Pressure – Right from her childhood, a girl continues to feel like an outcaste, what with not being allowed to study at all to not be allowed higher studies.

– No Economic Independence – Whether after studies, or without, if a girl attempts to carve out her financial independence, she would be forced into early marriage, with no permission to follow any career or vocational aspirations.

– Stigma of Divorce and Widowhood- Even today, there are societies where women are forced to bear the stigma of isolation and derision for becoming widows or getting divorced, or choosing to live as single individual or mother.

While all the above challenges for a girl child, across her entire lifecycle, are the hallmarks of most underdeveloped societies, they are by no means exclusive only to such societies or even exhaustive in their scope.

At a deeper and subtler level, even in the so called developed societies, girls face challenges of being stereotyped for certain societal and professional roles. In most of the world, this gender hits a glass ceiling, whether rising in the business, political or any other fields.

Cases of Sexual Harassment are so prevalent and concealed from public scrutiny that the less said about them the better.

With such a daunting environment faced by a girl child, where does our civilisation go from here, how do we redeem ourselves of this sin, what should both genders do to achieve such redemption, separately and together, are the critical questions worth asking of ourselves on this International Girl Child Day, and even otherwise.

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