Mistreatment of The Girl Child

Woman can be said as the God’s complete creation. She is the symbol of independence, love, caring, gentleness and intensity- both in love and in hate. Women are emotionally stronger than man. Women endure much more pain than men do. No men can go through even half the pain a woman goes through during labor. Someone like Indira Gandhi has shown that women can rule a country even better than men. However, women have not been treated nicely by men all throughout time. They have been denied their rights, their opportunities. It is very common, happening on a daily basis in offices, sports, factories, schools and entertainment. Many women are showed disrespect for all that they do.

Most scholarships, in fact 99% of them in continents like Asia are awarded to boys. The common excuse is that girls are made to be housewives and mothers. Many women are now standing up for their rights and showing the men that women are just as strong as them. Motherhood is something that God has blessed only females with; however this doesn’t mean that girls should be totally ignorant about the world, current affairs, and history. God has revealed in the Holy Quran, “Seek knowledge from thy cradle to thy grave”. He has not added “this pertains only to men”. So, one does not have the excuse of religion for forbidding girls to study. In many cases around the world, religion is used to shut women down but religion encourages all men and women to study and work hard. In fact Prophet Mohammed has said, “Read even if takes you to China”. This is without discrimination. Girls who are well-educated make better wives and mother than uneducated women.

So many girls in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and many more eastern countries are having to give up their ambitions, simply because their parents feel that girls should be married and mothers by the age of 18. This is child marriage, and is not only in education where women have to take a backseat, it is child marriage too. The inequality spreads too many other things such as rape and sexual abuse. More than half of the total rape cases go unreported. This is because the victims do not want to shame their families by publicizing the abuse they have gone through and they do not want to face embarrassing cross-questioning in the court. The society makes the victims pay for someone else’s mistakes. Unwed mothers are verbally and physically abused in public places. Female infanticide is another problem. It is not a new problem; it has existed for thousands of years in the East. It is selective murder. As soon as the baby is born, if it is a girl, she is either buried alive or drowned.