u/that_bish_sherel_

I live in India and gender bias is so common here. It’s literally rooted in the culture. But one thing that disturbs me the most is this indirect bias when a baby is born.

So my mother is a gynaecologist and whenever a baby is born in the hospital she tells me and we both go to meet the baby. Prenatal sex determination (determination of sex of the baby before birth) is banned in India because when people figure out it’s a girl, they abort it! It is very outrageous. But it makes me wonder if banning it has changed anything or not.

Because whenever a boy would be born in her hospital, the parents would gift my mother sweets etc. in happiness. And whenever a girl is born, we can tell everyone fake smiles and there is no grand celebration. One time i was visiting a patient with my mum and she had a baby girl. The mother looked happy and some of her relatives were in the room. It made me so furious what her in law said. “It’s okay, next time we will try again for a boy.” The woman already had 4 daughters and she looked happy but her family wanted to keep going only to have a boy as the 5th one!

And it’s not just poor and uneducated folk. Most of the people who have given birth here are well off and educated and still they hold such biases! When a boy is born, many relatives come to visit the mother and congratulate her and if it is a girl i have barely seen any visitors with a few exceptions.

Yes, aborting a baby based on its gender is banned but what difference did it even make? Now the families are just forcing women to keep giving birth till a boy is born as if India isn’t populated enough. Also makes me feel so sad about the future of the girls who have to live in a family which would never love them whole heartedly.

Man i wished this stopped. It really angers me so much.