From: bhattach@dip.eecs.umich.EDU (sayan bhattacharyya)
Subject: Re: Preventing Female Children - in India
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor, MI
Date: 27 Aug 92 21:51:58 GMT

In article <2A9D2E41.13106@ics.uci.edu> tittle@alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
>In <1992Aug27.003136.22261@zip.eecs.umich.edu> bhattach@dip.eecs.umich.EDU (sayan bhattacharyya) writes:
>
>>I think that the problem is more related to poverty than to
>>lack of education. Traditionally, the girl child leaves the
>>family when she is married, while the male child will stay
>>in the family for ever and will contribute his earnings
>>to the family. Thus, it makes perfect economic sense for an
>>impoverished family to kill or neglect girl children, because
>>any investment made on the girl child is a waste of money .
>>It makes more sense to invest the already meagre resources
>>on the sons , for they are a good investment.
>
>>This is the ground reality in India and , I think, in many
>>third world countries.
>
>All this perfect economic sense is going to go out the window
>a generation from now, you know...
>
>I *don't* think the problem is *just* economic.  I think it is
>symptomatic of the continual dismissal of the value of the work
>that women do, which is true here as well as there.
>
>--Cindy
>
>--

I have to disagree with you.

Recognition of the the work that women do , or creating an
environment congenial to working women, is I think ineluctably
related to the economic situation of the society.

I think a big flaw in the feminist debate is that feminists
implicitly assume (as an article of faith) that the problems
women face (and the causes of these problems) are exactly the same
everywhere in the world. Note how Cindy says that she *doesn't*
think that the problem is *just* economic without furnishing
any reason as to *why* she doesn't think so. In other words,
the sameness of the woman's condition everywhere in the world
is an unchallengeable starting point for her which cannot be
quetioned or subjected to scrutiny. Naturally, she also believes
that the factor to which she ascribes this condition (dismissal of
the value of women's work) is also the same everywhere in the
world.

I believe that there is a big difference in the problems that
women in the affluent West are confronted with on one hand, and
impoverished women in the third world countries are confronted
with , on the other. It is a weakness of the Western feminist
agenda that it tends to visualise these problems as essentially
the same, and to deny that the women's question for the third
world is in various ways related to general economic questions
with a broader scope.

I strongly suspect that Western feminists are so casually dismissive
of economic reasons for the women's problems in third world
countries  because in many instances it is exploitation by the West
itself that is responsible for the continued impoverishment of
these countries and hence indirectly responsible for the continued
wretchedness of women in these countries.

Western feminists are westerners as well as feminists. By pretending
that the misery of third world women is entirely caused by 'society',
i.e. the relevant third world societies, these feminists are probably
trying to evade the responsibility of the West for the glaring
economic disparities among the world's countries. This of course is
an old game .

-Sayan Bhattacharyya


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