Gendercide In It's A Girl Movie
It's a Girl! is a documentary that exposes the issue of gendercide, "the systematic elimination of a gender group, usually females" (It's a Girl! Discussion + Action Guide), particularly in India and China due to the enormous size of their population. The documentary was broken into two parts: the first explained the matter in India and the second part was in China. In India the main issue was the dowry system while in China it was the one child policy; these two issues contribute to the cause of gendercide. The film showed a great emphasis on the problem of gendercide being a strong cause of the devaluation of women in these certain societies. One important problem that is caused by this is the ratios of men to women in both countries today.
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This is a problem in India because of their dowry system; women are being devalued and turned into properties and objects, thus causes the reoccurring act of gendercide. A common Hindi saying that was mentioned in the documentary was, "daughters are someone else's property" (It's a Girl!). This portrays the alliance theory by Claude Levi-Strauss. The dowry system, gift giving, in India resembles this theory due to the fact that it makes "men turn women into sex objects whose exchange, as wives, cements the alliances among men" (Kimmel 66). The problem in China is the same ideology/argument but with the one child policy instead, and mothers are forced to have abortions. According to the statistics provided in the film, for every 140 males born in China now, 100 females are born. The distorted sex ratio causes much harm such as sex trafficking, child brides, and bare branches. Also, it was mentioned that there are 37 million more men than women in China; these men, bare branches, are having a difficult time finding wives inside China (It's a Girl!). According to Johnson, these two societies have a patriarchy system where it's male denominated, male identified, and male centered (Johnson 90). If women were devalued from the moment they are born then they would suffer from discrimination later on, simply because they were never seen as the same or equal to men but always as
This is a problem in India because of their dowry system; women are being devalued and turned into properties and objects, thus causes the reoccurring act of gendercide. A common Hindi saying that was mentioned in the documentary was, "daughters are someone else's property" (It's a Girl!). This portrays the alliance theory by Claude Levi-Strauss. The dowry system, gift giving, in India resembles this theory due to the fact that it makes "men turn women into sex objects whose exchange, as wives, cements the alliances among men" (Kimmel 66). The problem in China is the same ideology/argument but with the one child policy instead, and mothers are forced to have abortions. According to the statistics provided in the film, for every 140 males born in China now, 100 females are born. The distorted sex ratio causes much harm such as sex trafficking, child brides, and bare branches. Also, it was mentioned that there are 37 million more men than women in China; these men, bare branches, are having a difficult time finding wives inside China (It's a Girl!). According to Johnson, these two societies have a patriarchy system where it's male denominated, male identified, and male centered (Johnson 90). If women were devalued from the moment they are born then they would suffer from discrimination later on, simply because they were never seen as the same or equal to men but always as