Death and the Dowry System: India’s Women and Female Children at Global Risk of Gendercide Over Money

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Devaki Monani ◽  
Felicity Gerry QC

AbstractIncreasing globalization means that some actions or events transcend national boundaries and often require harmonization of responses. This is increasingly apparent in the context of violence against women and girls as movement of people and culture creates new challenges. News of accusations of dowry harassment against actress Smita Bansal caused a sensation in December 2015. The allegations arose during her brother’s divorce in London. It was suggested that her family had taken away jewelry and money from her sister-in-law during marriage to her brother. The allegations were refuted. True or otherwise, the issue of dowry has been catapulted onto the world stage. Whilst the demanding and giving of dowry has been effectively illegal in India since 1961 (The Dowry prohibition Act, 1961), the practice continues and has been exported globally with migration. No similar provisions appear outside India to protect extra territorial dowry demands or harassment. Research is scant but news reports suggest that women are burned, poisoned, beaten and forced to commit suicide. Female children suffer infanticide and foeticide when dowry is unpaid or deemed insufficient. This paper explores these issues.

2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
B R Sharma ◽  
D Harish ◽  
Manisha Gupta ◽  
Virendar Pal Singh

The world has entered the new millenium but it is a harsh reality that the woman in India has long been ill-treated in our male-dominated society. She is deprived of her independent identity and is looked upon as a commodity. She is not only robbed of her dignity and pride by way of seduction by the men outside, but also may become a victim of cruelty by her saviours, within the four walls of her own house. However, her trauma does not end here, it may even go to the extent of forcing her to commit suicide or she may be burnt to death for various reasons, including that of dowry. This type of violence transgresses the boundaries of caste, class, region or religion and is prevalent in almost all societies in India. The system of dowry is a social practice which on its own has claimed the lives of scores of women – both young and old, and has made life a virtual hell for many more. Unfortunately, education among women has not produced a reformative effect on their social outlook, nor encouraged any change in them conducive to social upliftment. Those parents who prefer not to take dowry for their well-qualified and settled male children, are in fact considered `strange' by the society and doubts about `the respectability of the groom's family' are usually raised. The present study makes an in-depth review of the dowry system in India and analyses the reasons which have demonized dowry into its present commercialized and institutionalized form.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (142) ◽  
pp. 113-126
Author(s):  
Enrique Dussel Peters

China's socioeconomic accumulation in the last 30 years has been probably one of the most outstanding global developments and has resulted in massive new challenges for core and periphery countries. The article examines how China's rapid and massive integration to the world market has posed new challenges for countries such as Mexico - and most of Latin America - as a result of China's successful exportoriented industrialization. China's accumulation and global integration process does, however, not only question and challenges the export-possibilities in the periphery, but also the global inability to provide energy in the medium term.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 796-806
Author(s):  
Sana M Kamal ◽  
Ali Al-Samydai ◽  
Rudaina Othman Yousif ◽  
Talal Aburjai

COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the world, which considered a relative of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), with possibility of transmission from animals to human and effect each of health and economic. Several preventative strategies and non-pharmaceutical interventions have been used to slow down the spread of COVID-19. The questionnaire contained 36 questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 quarantine on children`s behaviors and language have been distributed online (Google form). Data collected after asking parents about their children behavior during quarantine, among the survey completers (n=469), 42.3% were female children, and 57.7 were male children. Results showed that quarantine has an impact on children`s behaviors and language, where stress and isolationism has a higher effect, while social relations had no impact. The majority of the respondents (75.0%) had confidence that community pharmacies can play an important role in helping families in protection their children`s behaviors and language as they made the highest contact with pharmacists during quarantine. One of the main recommendations that could be applied to help parents protection and improvement their children`s behaviors and language in quarantine condition base on simple random sample opinion is increasing the role of community pharmacies inpatient counseling and especially towards children after giving courses to pharmacists in child psychology and behavior. This could be helpful to family to protect their children, from any changing in them behaviors and language in such conditions in the future if the world reface such the same problem.


Author(s):  
Pooja Sharma ◽  
Karan Veer

: It was 11 March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the name COVID-19 for coronavirus disease and also described it as a pandemic. Till that day 118,000 cases were confirmed of pneumonia with breathing problem throughout the world. At the start of New Year when COVID-19 came into knowledge a few days later, the gene sequencing of the virus was revealed. Today the number of confirmed cases is scary, i.e. 9,472,473 in the whole world and 484,236 deaths have been recorded by WHO till 26 June 2020. WHO's global risk assessment is very high [1]. The report is enlightening the lessons learned by India from the highly affected countries.


Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Globally, violence against women and girls is a pandemic—resulting in massive trauma and death. Certain scriptures and cultural texts condone the aggression; others adamantly protest heinous, unjust behaviors. Lament provides an avenue for naming and processing individual and communal violence, grief, and pain. This essay explores lament as response to pain and suffering generated amidst sexual and domestic violence, from a global womanist perspective. After providing a brief overview of my womanist biblical hermeneutic, this essay: (1) explores lament as a response to patriarchal misogynistic violence in Scripture, in dialog with global domestic violence; (2) explores lament embodied in selected Psalms, lamentations, and a lament by Beyoncé; and (3) concludes by invoking lament as a pathway of engaging global, daily loss and grief.


2021 ◽  
pp. 152483802110160
Author(s):  
Seema Vyas ◽  
Melissa Meinhart ◽  
Katrina Troy ◽  
Hannah Brumbaum ◽  
Catherine Poulton ◽  
...  

Evidence demonstrating the economic burden of violence against women and girls can support policy and advocacy efforts for investment in violence prevention and response programming. We undertook a systematic review of evidence on the costs of violence against women and girls in low- and middle-income countries published since 2005. In addition to understanding costs, we examined the consistency of methodological approaches applied and identified and assessed common methodological issues. Thirteen articles were identified, eight of which were from sub-Saharan Africa. Eight studies estimated costs associated with domestic or intimate partner violence, others estimated the costs of interpersonal violence, female genital cutting, and sexual assaults. Methodologies applied to estimate costs were typically based on accounting approaches. Our review found that out-of-pocket expenditures to individuals for seeking health care after an episode of violence ranged from US$29.72 (South Africa) to US$156.11 (Romania) and that lost productivity averaged from US$73.84 to US$2,151.48 (South Africa) per facility visit. Most studies that estimated provider costs of service delivery presented total programmatic costs, and there was variation in interventions, scale, and resource inputs measured which hampered comparability. Variations in methodological assumptions and data availability also made comparisons across countries and settings challenging. The limited scope of studies in measuring the multifaceted impacts of violence highlights the challenges in identifying cost metrics that extend beyond specific violence episodes. Despite the limited evidence base, our assessment leads us to conclude that the estimated costs of violence against women and girls are a fraction of its true economic burden.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document