[Logophile]

The killing of newborn girls has been common in rural India, where a daughter is perceived as a financial burden because her family has to pay a hefty dowry when she is married. But since the advent of ultrasound technology, abortion of female foetuses has become increasingly prevalent, not only in rural communities but also among the urban middle classes.

The solution seems straightforward enough: outlaw dowries.

Or turn it around and require the groom's family to pay a bride price. (I suspect that will happen on its own, as marriageable girls become scarce.)

[wagglebee]

Except in this case, it doesn’t sound like there was any financial burden.

[Logophile]

Wikipedia has this to say about the bride price in India:

The practice of bride price also existed in India, where it was considered as a social evil and the subject of a movement to eradicate it in the early 20th Century. Unlike what happened in the case of dowry, this movement was largely successful, although it has been making a comeback in recent years due to an increasing shortage of women.

[Talking_Mouse]

Or turn it around and require the groom's family to pay a bride price. (I suspect that will happen on its own, as marriageable girls become scarce.)

I think you are ultimately right but the transition is going to be brutal. Aborting female fetuses will continue as long as grandparents want males, because the grandparents have the money. I see another 30 - 60 years of skewed gender birthrates towards males, then the gradual change of skewed gender birthrates to females.

During this time India, China and the Middle East are going to have many riots, wars, and uprisings because a significant portion (maybe as high as 15%) of the males will never see themselves as having a wife. Forgive me for being crude here, but there are not enough prostitutes around, so many of these males will not ever see themselves as having sex. This will lead to very aggressive behavior on the part of said males.

One of the reasons the promise of 72 virgins is so attractive to jihadists is that they do not see themselves as being able to compete for and win females in their society. It will take a total cultural shift to start valuing females over males. This will only happen as the older generations (the current, and most kids over 5 will be part of this older generation) does not exert cultural power.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

The solution seems straightforward enough: outlaw dowries.

Dowries have been illegal in India since 1961.

[SauronOfMordor]

Or turn it around and require the groom's family to pay a bride price. (I suspect that will happen on its own, as marriageable girls become scarce.)

The free market will correct things in less than a generation. Part of it also comes from Indian inheritance laws, where sons and daughters do not get an equal share, which leads to families giving daughters their inheritance in advance in the form of a dowry.

Inheritance in India:

The government of Maharashtra State in India has recently passed a law designed to promote gender equity in property inheritance and discourage the practice of dowry-giving. The law provides for the right of a daughter to inherit parents' wealth on an equal basis with sons. Until this law was implemented in Maharashtra, daughters did not have the legal right to claim an equal share of an inheritance because of a loophole in national law. In most cases they had to be content with a dowry.

Dowry is officially supposed to represent a daughter's share of her family's wealth, in the form of a pre-mortem inheritance from her parents at the time of her marriage. Dowry is also given by the parents of a daughter to compensate the groom's family for supporting her after her marriage, since she is often prohibited by social customs from earning a cash income that would contribute economically to the family into which she is married. Women may also become an economic burden in the event of widowhood, which is likely since brides are typically much younger than grooms.

However, dowry has deteriorated into a method of extortion of wealth from bride's to groom's parents, leaving many parents of daughters in debt and encouraging the practice of female feticide - an increasing social evil in the state of Maharashtra, as elsewhere in India. This practice occurs as a result of great social pressure on parents to arrange socially acceptable marriages for their daughters without having the economic means to do so.

Simply passing a law equalising sons' and daughters' claims to land and other immovable property will not solve the problem of dowry-giving. In many regions of rural India there is a strict social taboo on a daughter inheriting land, since if she does so the land is lost by her father's lineage and passes instead to her children, who belong to the lineage of her husband. Furthermore, women in many rural areas are economically reliant on male kin. If the woman is widowed without adult sons or brothers-in-law, and her dowry was small, or was seized by her husband's family, she may be unable to earn a self-supporting income and be forced to sell her land inheritance share to a complete stranger.

[silver charm]

I suspect that will happen on its own, as marriageable girls become scarce.)........

It does seem like a cultural time bomb waiting to go off. If women become fewer and fewer in the general population, obviously more and more men are required to remain without progeny.

I wonder why no family with marriageable daughters has thought about charging a groom dowry? I wonder how much longer? 10 years? 20 years?

The same thing is brewing in China as well.

[chiefqc]

Hey Planed Parenthood, There’s a gold mine in India just waiting for you to open your murder for money sewer.