News, Quotes, Companies, Videos SEARCH Monday, September 10, 2012 7:7:14 GMT INDIA Log In Register Subscribe Now PREVIOUS News Digest NEXT Politics Economy & Business South Asia Technology Lifestyle&Culture Sports English November 6, 2011, 8:30 AM IST India Journal: Why Does India Hate Women? Article Slideshow Search India Real Time Comments (72) िह दी SEARCH INDIA REAL TIME HOME PAGE » By Tripti Lahiri So, which countries in the world boast — though I suspect that’s not quite the right word — the highest rates of pregnancy among teenage girls? If you were to pick one of the nations of the supposedly sexually precocious West, you’d be quite wrong. The latest United Nations human development report shows that if you’re looking for large numbers of teen mothers, you should look at India. While the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, rates in some South Asian countries are up there, too. Deshakalyan Chowdhury/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images The latest UN report show s that if you’re looking for large numbers of teen mothers, you should look at India. Click here to view slideshow . More In Women Within South Asia, India and Nepal have the highest rates. In India, 8.6% of girls aged between 15 and 19 are having babies; in Nepal, that figure tops 10%. Powered by Taboola But because of India’s huge population, the country probably has, in absolute Mumbai Traffic Gets More Female Cops numbers, more teen mothers than almost Unlikely Support for U.P. Panchayat's Diktats 'Why Should Boys Have All the Fun?' anywhere else in the world — a rough calculation would put the figure at about 'Women Are Asking For It' five million. Why Women Are Less Competitive Than Men Don't Miss… Yet, except for the odd voice you never hear that much about India’s teen pregnancy epidemic, because those pregnancies are generally happening within the confines of marriage — and that, apparently, makes it okay. Except it’s not. Teen pregnancy rates are an indicator of how a nation is treating its women. Most health experts (and the rest of us) agree that teenagers aren’t grown up yet, either physically or mentally, and most of them aren’t equipped to care both for themselves and a child. Some studies show that Indian girls who marry young are more likely to have malnourished children. These are years when young girls could be — or should be — finishing an education, and then getting married, joining the workforce, or some combination of the two, T een s A r e T u n in g In t o You T u be for Mu sic 05:56 UN Secr et a r y Gen er a l Defen ds Ir a n V i sit 01:13 A n der s Br ei v i k Sen t en ced t o 21 y ea r s in Pr ison 19:02 About India Real Time India Real Time offers quick analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at [email protected]. Check out the main contributors to the blog and their bios here. Follow Like India Real Tim e on Tw itter India Real Tim e on Facebook depending on their personal circumstances. The figures on adolescent fertility are part of the calculations for the United Nations gender inequality index — first introduced last year in its human development report. Last year, India ranked 122 out of 138 countries on gender inequality; this year it ranked 129 out of 146. More countries were included in the gender inequality index in Most Recent Articles 1. Comments V ideo: Untreatable Tuberculosis Raises Concerns in India 2011, so it’s hard to compare the two years. In overall development, India ranked 134 out of 187 countries this year; last year it ranked 119 out of 169 countries. Not coincidentally, most of the countries on the “high” human development list don’t have very high rates of teen pregnancy. In the United States, just over 4% of teenagers 2. Photos: A Woman’s Struggle With Tuberculosis 3. V ideo Diaries: #IndiaRoadTrip 4. Bolly wood Journal: In Praise of Sridev i 5. The Legacy of India’s Milkman have babies; in sexually permissive Norway, which topped the human development index, that figure is under 1%. Latest Stories from india.WSJ.com And many of the countries with the highest rates of teen pregnancy appear rather low down the human development index. Sure, there are countries that buck the trend — that have teen pregnancy rates similar to India’s and still report higher rates of overall development — but there’s still a pattern here that India should pay attention to. Will it? Looking at the gender equity numbers, Jairam Ramesh, minister for rural development, saw a world where India was being discriminated against because of how the UN calculates some parts of the index, according to a story in the Indian Express on Thursday. Looking at the numbers, many of us would see a country where women are Infosy s to Buy Lodestone Holding China Economy Shows Frailty U.S. V isit Aims to Spur Egy pt Growth India August Car Sales Fall 1 9% India Shares Slightly Up Asia-Pacific Jobs not just discriminated against, but actively disliked. Internal Audit - VP - BlackRock Inc. Which is why it’s sort of a puzzle when Indians, particularly those who have settled Technical Specialist(System Admin) - AT&T overseas, remark upon how proud they are that they or their children haven’t succumbed to Western mores, that they remain Indian “at heart.” That’s great for Indian Business Development Executive - Cisco Partner - Vfm Systems & Services (P) Ltd. boys, maybe — not so much for Indian girls. keyword Numbers related to gender development, trafficking, sex abuse, education and nutrition rarely show that Indians are particularly good at protecting their daughters from early sexual activity, early pregnancy, dropping out of school or even hunger — the mistreatment just happens in a way that’s culturally palatable. city, state, zip FIND JOBS MORE JOBS AND CAREER NEWS Finance Jobs | Technology Jobs | Sales & Marketing Jobs FINS for Employers & Recruiters » POST A JOB Let’s take sex, for example. It’s probably fair to say that most Indian women have their first sexual experience with a complete stranger. If that were happening post a visit to a bar and a few drinks — horrors. Subtract the bar and add a fire and priest — all well and good. Relations between teenage women and older men would anywhere else be called pedophilia or at least statutory rape. But add a fire and a priest, and well, you see where this is going. Yes, yes, India had a female head of government before many industrialized countries have; the head of the nation’s ruling party is a woman, and so on and so forth. But surely the existence of Sonia Gandhi or Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi says as little about the general well-being of women in India as Mukesh Ambani’s bank balance does about India’s overall economic development. Even families who have educated their daughters pressure them to abandon their From Around the Web professional desires, as this blogger laments. Content From Sponsors Powered by Taboola Think a moment on the lives of the Indian women you know, no matter the class. Think a moment on the experiences women you know have told you about. I think, for example, of the number of women friends who have grown up in South Asia who recount having been molested by a family friend. I think, for example, of the backbreaking work most Indian women do every day, without it appearing to earn them much respect from their own families. Village fields are dotted with women weeding and doing other agricultural work; up in the hills, mothers and their daughters carry enormous bundles of firewood on their heads. Some two centuries ago, Thomas Munro, a settlement officer and collector in south India wrote a letter recounting how one farmer “cannot afford to pay his usual rent because his wife is dead, who used to do more work than his best bullock,” which Philip Mason quotes in his account of Indian Civil Service life. I doubt women are working any less hard today. At city construction sites, women hoist heavy baskets of bricks back-and-forth as men run the machines. The people who sweep the streets in many city neighborhoods are women. I’ve met many women, even married ones, who are the main bread-winners in 8 Wa y s t h e Dr ou gh t Wi l l A ffect You Kiplinger Wh y No Lov e for T h i s Oil Com pa n y ? The Motley Fool Wor st Col l ege Ma jor s for You r Ca r eer Kiplinger their families, sometimes because a husband is unemployed or drinks, sometimes for other reasons. If there’s anything to quibble about in the human development stats, it’s surely how much the 32.8% labor force participation rate is missing, given that it’s hard to meet an Indian women, except perhaps the very rich, who don’t spend most of the day toiling away. First they toil in their parents’ homes; then they toil in their in-laws’ homes (for which honor the new family often gets a handsome sum, even these days). And yet somehow the collective wisdom that daughters are a burden still prevails, despite daily visual evidence to the contrary, and becomes a justification for neglect. When that neglect shows up in the numbers, we quibble about how they were calculated. Think on all this and it’s hard not to think this is a country that doesn’t just dislike women, it hates them. Now, can someone please tell me why? Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime. Africa, India Journal, Nepal, South Asia, United Nations, Women « PREVIOUS W h a t T h ey Sa id: Pa kist a n ’s Goodw ill Gest u r e NEXT » Rem em ber in g Bh u pen H a za r ika : Sin g er , Com poser , Fa m ily Fr ien d India Real Time HOME PAGE Don't Miss… Powered by Taboola NEWS LIVE PROGRAMS UN Secr et a r y Gen er a l Defen ds Ir a n V isi t A n der s Br ei v i k Sen t en ced t o 21 y ea r s i n Pr i son 01:13 19:02 TECH LIFESTYLE T een s A r e T u n in g In t o You T u be for Mu … Mi ss Ph il i ppin es Bea t boxes a t t h e 2012 Miss Wor l d… 05:56 03:45 IIPM:Great MBA Placements Top ranked in Global Exposure. Register now for free prospectus. www.iipm-iipm.info/admissions2012 Home Loan Eligibility How much are you eligible for? The original Apnaloan calculator. www.ApnaPaisa.com/emicalculator Jobs in India Get jobs hand-picked by our experts at Naukri.com. You deserve it. www.Naukri.com No registration or signup Instant classified site, post ads in an instant. Post Now in seconds. adpress.in You Might Like Mum bai’s Male Masseurs: the Dark T rade Just Like India, But With Skim pier Clothing From Around the Web Content from Sponsors What's this? Ram pant trafficking of OFWs in Sy ria uncov ered (Inquirer.net) Missing Bird Prepares to Land Form er T ennis Star Makes a Mark at Colum bia Law School (The New York Times) Play boy Pin-Up Sherly n Chopra and India’s Changing Morals T he snub heard around the world (Global Connections) Kindle Store, E-Reader Now Av ailable in India Pound Sinking In T he Sea Showing Depression Recession And Econom ic Downturn (eToro Blog) o tu ( g) Palestine Under Rom an Rule (MyJewishLearning.com) Add a Comment Name We w elcome thoughtful comments from readers. Please comply w ith our guidelines. Our blogs do not require the use of your real name. Comment CLEAR Comments (5 of 72) POST View all Comments » 7:53 am May 29, 2012 American wrote: Title is absolute nonsense and so is the article. Completely imbalanced. I could also ask why India loves its women so much and hate it men so much? Just check the gender biased laws. ALL are biased in favor of women. I repeat ALL. Go to http://www.498a.org to see what is actually going on and how women are exploiting men. Double standards are disgusting. This article (including the title itself) is a big exaggerated one sided lie and has double standards. So many men have commited suicide because of the gender biased laws in India (in favor of women) and this tripti lahiri has the nerve to ask why Indians hate women? 11:12 am March 20, 2012 jeerknbn wrote: KARACHI: Former envoy to US Husain Haqqani has agreed to appear just before the Judicial Commission probing into the memo scam on March 26, Geo News reported. Reiterating his innocence, Haqqani categorically told Geo News, he was not the creator in the memo he had been accused of writing. Haqqani sounded rather self-assured saying that the evidence created before the Commission couldn’t be held against him, adding, the forensic report would prove Mansoor Ijaz wrong in all respects. Earlier, the Judicial Commission had ordered former ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani to record his statement in Islamabad High Court on March 26. To this, Hussain Haqqani had mentioned that he wanted the commission to reach a conclusion as soon as possible and for that he could seem before the commission tomorrow to testify. “I am the affected party who had to quit the position of an ambassador because of the memo case, so I want the commission to obtain to some conclusion as soon as possible,” Haqqani mentioned. This article to As [url=http://www.cheaparmaniwatches.org]cheap armani watches[/url] 11:29 pm March 15, 2012 poonam singh wrote: its not india who hates women…..it is woman of india who dont know yet what she wants,,,,,she hates herself,,,no one else 10:16 pm February 14, 2012 Preeti Again wrote: I also want to thank Jay for his thought-provoking and insightful analysis of the psychological roots of hatred. I have often wondered why a certain kind of Indian man gets so outraged when he sees women “asserting” themselves in any way. A certain kind of Indian man gets enraged when he sees women wearing Western clothing, talking and laughing loudly, being assertive and self-confident and generally refusing to bow and scrape before every man who crosses their path. When young women were attacked and beaten up for drinking in a bar in Mangalore in 2009, I wondered what sort of a man would think it perfectly acceptable to “discipline” women in such a brutal fashion. Jay’s analysis helped me understand the psyche of men who think nothing of assaulting women on the pretext of “protecting Indian culture”. I now understand why such men harbour so much rage and hostility against women. I have no doubt that the commentators who appear sceptical of the truth of the article are mostly men who have never thought about what it must be like to be an Indian woman. Such men think of women as selfless, cheerfully servile creatures who are happy to serve, obey and pamper the men in their lives. For such men, women don’t exist as individuals in their own right, they only exist to serve and be of use to the men in their lives. 5:40 pm February 14, 2012 Preeti wrote: Didn’t you know that most Indians wake up every morning and pray to their respective gods, “No daughters please, we are Indian.” Gender-based inequality is so great and so ubiquitious in India, that most Indians assume it to be natural and universal. There’s a great deal of hypocrisy in how Indian society treats women. Many Hindus will tell you that women are worshipped as godesses in Hinduism but will, in the same breath, say the most misogynistic things about “females”. Many Indian men are like Ganesh Savadi, an ex-ministers who was caught watching a woman’s gang rape on his phone, while the state legislature was in session. He was formerly Karnataka’s minister for women and child welfare, and had publicly declared that women ought to cover themselves and behave modestly if they wanted to prevent rape and sexual assault. It is not surprising that he felt no moral dilemma in watching a gang-bang while the house was in session. After all, women were responsible for what happened to them, weren’t they? 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