User:Nia Dokes/sandbox

Female Infanticide is the topic that I am going to contribute to on Wikipedia. Female Infanticide is the killing of female babies. It was mainly practiced by the Chinese, Pakistanis, Inuits, and Indians during the nineteenth century. Female infanticide was mainly practiced by these cultures due to females being seen as a burden in society. Females were not really able to contribute to society. They mostly contributed to the household and they were married off which required the parents to pay a dowry to the other family in which she married into. The dowry put an economic strain on the family and resulted in the killing of female babies. The information that I am going to contribute to the article is female infanticide within the Inuit tribe of North America and Pakistan in terms of how the females were viewed within their society. Also, how female infanticide affects the socio-economics as a whole. Lastly, introducing various programs that can help to alleviate female infanticide.

Female infanticide is a human rights violation. Female infanticide is a human rights violation because the female child is being denied the right to live. The mothers have a choice in eliminating their female baby, but the female baby is not given a choice to live. As a result, you are killing the baby because it is a female and what is that telling females in society that they are not good enough or are not equal to men in society? The sources that I will be using to contribute to the topics on Female Infanticide in Pakistan, India and North America will be CNN or PBS , journal articles, books online from Google Scholar and the library.

Bibliography

Balikci, Asen. "Female Infanticide on the Arctic Coast." Man 2, no. 4 (1967): 615. doi:10.2307/2799344.

Khattak, Aasia Khatoon. Female Infanticide and killing women forgiving birth to a baby girl.

Muthulakshmi, R. Female infanticide, its causes and solutions. New Delhi: Discovery Pub. House, 1997.

Sayah, Reza. "Killing of infants on the rise in Pakistan." CNN. July 20, 2011. Accessed September 26, 2017. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/20/pakistan.infanticide/index.html.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2007/04/the_missing_girlinks.html

Academic Article Outline

Balikci, Asen. "Female Infanticide on the Arctic Coast." Man 2, no. 4 (1967): 615. doi:10.2307/2799344.

The article Female Infanticide on the Arctic Coast by Asen Balikci is about female infanticide within the tribes of the Arctic Coast. One specific tribe that the author mentions within the article is the Netsilik Eskimos. The Netsilik Eskimos had more boys than girls within their community. In 1902 there were one hundred and thirty-eight boys compared to sixty-six girls. The reason why the Netsilik Eskimos had more boys than girls because the girls were often killed due to them being seen as less valuable in the tribe. For example the women of the Netsilik tribe were known for abandoning their daughters in the cold leaving them to die. Another practice would be suffocation by laying the baby on her back and suffocating her with animal skin. The reason why the practice of killing females was so common in the tribe because the boys were more valuable in being able to teach them to be great hunters. Thus being able to provide for their family.

Outline Contribution

• Title contribution: Female Infanticide
• The information that is already on the topic is that female infanticide was widely practiced in China and India. Both China and India practiced the dowry system where the female who was marrying into another family, her family has to pay their in-laws money. Therefore, females are already seen as more expensive than the boys. When giving the dowry to another family that the daughter is marrying into. the family of the bride can not be given the money back. The boys are seen as more appreciated within society because they do not have to pay a dowry for the boys. Instead the boys grow up to become men and they end up becoming the bread winner of their family.
• Female Infanticide in North America among the Inuit tribe was practiced due to environmental reasons to conserve food. Female infanticide was practiced in Pakistan due to females being undervalued in society and not being able to provide economic stability for their family. The boys are given a better education than the girls and have an advantage by being able to fully support their family economically. Edhi Foundation is an organization that help babies who are abandoned by their parents. The foundation places cradles around neighborhoods that the babies are suppose to be placed in. The babies are later on placed for adoption. The Gendercide Awareness Project is a project that provides both young girls and women with an education in order to improve their social status within their community.
• Balikci, Asen. "Female Infanticide on the Arctic Coast." Man 2, no. 4 (1967): 615. doi:10.2307/2799344.
• "Educating Girls."   Gendercide Awareness Project. Accessed October 17, 2017. https://www.gendap.org/educating-girls.html.
• Hassan, Saima. "Ending Infanticide in Pakistan." Foreign Affairs. May 29, 2016. Accessed October 17, 2017. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/pakistan/2016-05-29/ending-infanticide-pakistan.
• Rafiazakaria. "Pakistan’s ‘gone girls’." DAWN.COM. July 01, 2015. Accessed October 17, 2017. https://www.dawn.com/news/1191470.
• Riches, David. "The Netsilik Eskimo: A Special Case of Selective Female Infanticide." Ethnology 13, no. 4 (1974): 351. doi:10.2307/3773051.
• "Female Infanticide Worldwide." June 2016. Accessed October 17, 2017.

Drafting of Wikipedia Article

I am contributing to an existing article on Wikipedia about female infanticide. The subheadings Americas and Pakistan are on the existing Wikipedia page but I am using these current heading to add on more information. The new sub-headings that I am creating are socio-economics in terms of how Female Infanticide impacts the economics of a society and another title would be solutions. Solutions deal with the what can be done to end female infanticide?

Americas

Female infanticide was practiced in North America among the Inuit tribe during the seventh century. One group in particular called the Netsilik who are apart of the Inuit tribe were known to abandon their baby daughters outside in the cold to freeze and starve to death. Another technique that was used for the elimination of female babies was suffocation. The mother would suffocate their child with animal skin, while the baby was placed on its back. The reason why female infanticide was a common practice among the Netsilik because it was used for environmental purposes to conserve food. The men in the tribe were the main ones who hunted while the woman's role was to look after the children and prepare the food. During hunting season the men would loose lives due to tragic accidents which meant that there would be more women than men within the tribe. The need for males was severely important to the tribe. Due to the elimination of females food became plentiful and in 1902 the tribe had only sixty-two girls and one-hundred and thirty-eight boys.

The elimination of female babies within the tribe was mainly decided by the grandparents or the husband. The reason why parents mostly favored boys over girls because they were the main providers. The boys were trained from a young age how to properly hunt. The husbands mostly favored their sons so that they could have a companion and later on pass on the role of being the provider. This represents the importance of male babies and the big role that they fulfill in their tribe , as said by Freeman "female babies were being seen as a burden and female infanticide may result from the need for explicit demonstration of male dominance." When the male ratio became greater than the female ratio this created a problem when it came to marriage. In addition to that most men from the Netsilik tribe stole other women from near by tribes which created tension among other tribes and sometimes polygamy was also practiced to make up for the lack of females.

Pakistan

The nineteenth century was when Female Infanticide was being practiced in Pakistan. Baby girls were known to be thrown into trash cans or abandoned in alleys. Some were even thrown into trash cans that were set on fire. In Pakistan girls were seen as a financial burden with in their society. Pakistani women who had daughters were allowed to have a choice to their kill daughters because they did not want their daughters to grow up in a society that already viewed women as inferior.

Baby girls were seen as a waste of valuable money because as they became older and married the parents had to pay a dowry to the family that she was marrying into. In addition to that the year of 1986 all the way to 1991 eighty-seven percent of dowries were paid by Pakistani families. On average Pakistani society is still a nation that is being dominated by men and remains a patriarchal society. The men are allowed to work in a professional setting while only eighty-seven percent of women were working a professional job. Also, five hundred and forty-seven women in total do agricultural work and eight-thousand six-hundred and fourteen women in Pakistan are currently not working. On top of that the boys in the family were given preferential treatment by being the first to get fed and medical care before the girls in the family. The boys as they became older were more relied on by their parents for financial stability for the family to maintain a stable lifestyle. The boys who later on became men could go out into society and be provided with a job helping to care for their parents, even though it was the daughter's job to take care of the parents.

Socio-economics

Of course with eliminating females in certain countries there will be less and less to be able to birth children. The there will be a huge shift in the gender ratio in terms of there being more boys than girls. Also, families wanting to eradicate the female babies are teaching young girls in society that they are inferior to the opposite sex. As a result women become oppressed within their community and are rarely able to be provided with jobs which affects the poverty line. Again due to the dowry system this also affects the economy of some countries that practice female infanticide because some families earn money that is below the minimum wage. Which creates a rise in poverty with family members struggling to pay their daughters dowry which resulted in an increase with female infanticide.

In 2017 Pakistani women still earn less than men today. Pakistani women earn under a hundred rupees with in a month which is equivalent to one dollar and fifty-four cents in US dollars. Also, women not being provided with an education lowers the economic status as well because they are subjected to low paying jobs and working harsh hours. In addition to women working in rural Pakistan some were restricted to only working in the house, while the men were allowed to do eighty-four percent of the crop work, and ninety-nine percent of the herding.

Solutions/Programs

There are (NGDOS) known as non-government developmental organizations where they have a gender awareness policies an organization that is designed to stop female discrimination all over the world. For instance these NGDOS are starting off in small groups were they go to corporations to educate the people about gender discrimination particularly towards females. The organization mostly sees the importance of educating the men who are in the work force on the issues of women with in society. Therefore, the men are able to sympathize with the women in terms of how being a women in society makes you inferior. Another solution would be to eradicate the dowry system so that families will not have pay such a heavy price for their daughters. Also, with the eradication of the system it will eliminate the idea that females are seen as financial burdens. Thus will allow females to become more of an individual being able to raise their social status in terms of women being provided with a better salary.

The Girl Child Protection scheme is an organization that is designed to set up cradles near stores so that families who have mostly daughters are allowed to drop them off,without the practicing of killing the female. Therefore, this allows the government to take over and place the female child up for adoption. Educating young girls and women about the purpose of female infanticide will help them to become aware of how important women are in society being able to become independent. Also, with more women being able to contribute to the work force,society will be able to move above the poverty line.