Women in India:

Well, women in India are discriminated in a number of ways even before they are born. It is not uncommon to see bill board posters with the text "Spend 500 rupees now, save 500000 later" advicing prospect parents to take a test in order to determine the sex of their child - if it is a girl maybe they should have an abortion instead! All the discrimination basically originates from the dowry (dansk: medgift) that the parents have to supply the girl when she gets married - basically they have to pay to 'get rid of' theyir daughters. After a girl is born, the parents may decide to kill her as an infant or just abandon her of if they keep her the parents sometimes feels that there is no need to feed her properly as she will not be a working force anyway. In the same way most women do not get an education, most often not beyond the 5th grade if they even get that far - why bother when the family will 'loose' her anyway once she gets married!!!? Once married, the girl 'belongs' to the in-laws and have to stay with her husband at the in-laws house for about 5 years before they get their own place.

Well it doesn't necessarily end here - once married, if the woman is unable to give birth to sons or if her family are having financial troubles such that they are having problems paying the entire dowry, well then sometimes the in-laws decides to kill off the girl. This is most often done in 'home accidents' where the girl allegedly dies while trying to light a fire in the kerosene ovens. So, it is now enforced that all deaths occuring within the first 7 years of marriage will be investigated by the police. If a man dies, there is no possiblities for the wife to remarry whereas there are no problems the other way around. Thus, a widow can present a big burden for her in-laws and sometimes they again decide they are better off without her. The common burial procedure for men here in India is a burning so the widow will be drugged and placed on the burial bed and burned alive with her dead husband (this process is called sati i hindi). Brrr....

Fortunately, this only occurs in the extreme cases but it is not unheard off. Damn, there is a long way yet for the womens rights movements!!!