And even if a woman is strong enough to protect a girl child for nine long months, while constantly dealing with barbed, unwarranted remarks (or worse, physical abuse) from the people close to her, and give birth to the child at last, the kind of treatment she has to bear during and after the delivery of the child is heart-wrenching.

The mother ends up in the delivery room crying in labour pain and the baby finally makes its way into this world. But lo! It’s a girl child. There isn’t even an iota of happiness in the faces of the relatives. They look sad, grief-stricken, even angry. At best, they conjure a fake smile to show how happy they are. At worse, they explode with anger. Conditions for a girl child might be getting better in the West, but in our part of the world, it’s the same old story.  

Sadly, the sufferings of a girl child go on increasing with the passage of time, since the treatment she receives from her parents, relatives and society at large goes on getting harsher.  While sons are treated as precious gifts by their parents, girls become burdens for their families. In many cases, and this is mostly visible in the rural areas, sons are given nutritious food while daughters are forced to eat the leftovers. Parents don’t want to compromise on sons’ education, whereas they are reluctant to spend money on sending their daughters to schools. So, sons get educated while daughters spend their lives doing household chores. And as they grow up, the amount of freedom and social license that boys enjoy goes on increasing, while girls are forced to live under more restrictions.

These socio-cultural biases that girls face reach their peak when they get married: they are forced to leave their homes, sacrifice their hopes and desires and go with strangers, that too by giving dowry. They end up becoming a part of men’s lives rather than living their own. Now that they are married, they have to follow every beck and call of their husbands.

These prevalent differences in the treatment of boys and girls make me wonder how they came into existence in the first place. Is it because girls are inherently weaker than boys that such treatments are meted out to them, or is it the patriarchal mindset and anachronistic traditions that have played a spoilsport for women? The more I think about it, the more I realise that it’s the latter that’s responsible for turning women into the second sex.

Things are changing now. Even in a country like Nepal, we are starting to see more and more women coming out of the closet to participate in public life and economic activities. Gender-based feticide, which is the main culprit behind the skewed male-female ration in our subcontinent, has been made illegal. Several scholarship programmes, educational and job opportunities have been specially tailored to encourage girls to become independent. But it will still take us some more decades to reach the level of equality that women in western countries enjoy.

For now, I just hope that one day I get to live in a society that celebrates International Human’s Day instead of International Women’s Day.

Barakoti recently completed her MBBS degree. She is currently working as a medical officer in Kavre