Half of India's girls want to be boys
by Jess McCabe // 16 April 2007, 11:41
Almost half of girls in India wish they were boys, according to a government survey which also uncovered widespread abuse of children.
The Times of India reports that the government survey found 53% of five to 18 year olds in India have been sexually abused, and in 50% of cases the abuser was known to the child.
The same survey, according to the Telegraph, revealed wide-spread dissatisfaction among girls.
Almost half - 48.4 per cent - of girls surveyed said they "wished they were boys" which is incredibly sad. Everyone knows about the evils of sex-selective abortion in India, but life can still be very tough for the girls that make it.
Why do half of India's girls want to be boys? Perhaps because (again quoting from the survey) more than a quarter (27.7 per cent) said their parents gave them less food than the boys while half (48 per cent) said their parents gave the boys "more support" than the girls.
Photo by Eileen Delhi, shared under a Creative Commons license
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