No Girl Left Behind

Today is the international girl child day,

I am looking back, when we grew up gender was never an issue, so to me lot of this stuff that media throws up is strange, yet last year a fellow blogger had put in a question, about girls changing name, I found it idiotic, I still do.

When BlogAdda requested us to blog for the India Today India summit I wrote my next blog before which out of curiosity I asked the 2^nd year BBA girls about what do they want out life, and the answers just jolted me out. Most of the girls were from the army settlement with their father serving in the Indian army, they were sent to do graduation because it improves their marriage market, and BBA is because there are no exams, arts se business management behetar hai..

Coming to the point what did the girls want, well they wanted to be allowed to rest on Sunday’s like their brothers did, they wanted to be allowed to do their assignment like their brothers were, in short they wanted to be treated equal to their brothers, fair enough.

I eat the humble pie and acknowledge there are communities were gender inequality does exist.

The global theme of “No girl left behind”  my question is very simple, child marriages are not right I totally agreed, it could lead to young mothers, premature motherhood…well maybe but biologic motherhood happens only when the body is right, and emotional maturity is independent of the biologic age. I do find it very obnoxious that the western world keeps its teenage pregnancy under the wraps and goes to Africa and Asia with a missionary zeal.

It is not just Asia and Africa, look the US election Hillary is being held accountable for her husband’s misbehavior while Trump refuses to take on the onus of his own. When women speak they quote Michelle Obama or Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan but quotes from Lincoln are used a little less.

I remember that my grandparents decided to educate a niece who stayed home after standard 12, to cook and clean. She was academically not performing well, that was put down to her shaky early education, but she went into depression, it turned out she did not want to go to college study and make a career, she happy with her cooking , cleaning and embroidery my grandparents of course gave up clucking and were very upset. But couple of years  later she got married and in her married home she was acquired fame for her embroidery skills which eventually became an economic venture for her.Today she trains people and sells her work.

Maybe we can resolve not leave the girl child behind, we can resolve to give her the choice of destination and the route to reach there, but we also need to give our sons the choice of staying behind.

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/girl-child