GENDER DISCRIMINATION AND DEVELOPMENT PARADOX

India’s story of economic development has not translated into corresponding gains in the social sphere and this paradox is indicative of how development can sometimes be a misnomer if it does not change unjust cultural thought and practice. The overall socio-economic development in India has improved health care – especially maternal, infant and child health, increased life span, narrowed literacy level gaps between male and female and growing opportunities for work, particularly for women, has not resulted in equalizing sex ratios in general and gender relations in particular. Rather, the child sex ratio declines are not only getting worse but taking newer forms and manifestations. In this ongoing process of transformation, there is an unholy alliance between tradition and technology of selecting sons and deselecting daughters, thus playing havoc with the already declining child sex ratio.
The present volume examines the ways in which sex selective technologies such as the ultrasound are misused at the family, community and state levels. The contributors to this volume attempt to understand and comprehend the multi-layered dimensions related to adverse child sex ratio. Scholars have put together their diverse research, studies and ideas to examine the strategies of stakeholders to check further decline in sex ratio in general and child sex ratio in particular.

Neerja Ahlawat teaches Sociology at Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak. She is Hon. Deputy Director, Women’s Studies Centre, Maharshi Dayanand University. Currently, she is coordinating UN Women Project titled ‘Gender Biased Sex Selection: A Study of Haryana’. She has published extensively in national and international journals on Gender Studies, Violence against Women, Male Marriage Squeeze and Across-Region Marriages, Skewed Child Sex Ratio and Political Economy of Khaps in Haryana. Her earlier published works are Women Organizations and Social Networks and Crises of Social Transformation in India (co-editor).