i want to include these facts....
Dowry is goods and money a bride's family pays to the husband's family. Originally intended to help with marriage expenses, dowry came to be seen as payment to the groom's family for taking on the burden of another woman. In some countries, dowries are extravagant, costing years' worth of wages, and often throwing a woman's family into debt. The dowry practice makes the prospect of having a girl even more distasteful to poor families. It also puts young women in danger: A new bride is at the mercy of her in-laws should they decide her dowry is too small. UNICEF estimates that around 5,000 Indian women are killed in dowry-related incidents each year.
Sex-selective abortions are even more common than infanticides in India. They are growing ever more frequent as technology makes it simple and cheap to determine a fetus' gender. In Jaipur, a Western Indian city of 2 million people, 3,500 sex-determined abortions are carried out every year. The gender ratio across India has dropped to an unnatural low of 927 females to 1,000 males due to infanticide and sex-based abortions.
China has its own long legacy of female infanticide. In the last two decades, the government's infamous one-child policy has weakened the country's track record even more. By restricting household size to limit the population, the policy gives parents just one chance to produce a coveted son before being forced to pay heavy fines for additional children. In 1997, the World Health Organization declared, "…more than 50 million women were estimated to be 'missing' in China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing's population control program." The Chinese government says that sex-selective abortion is one major explanation for the staggering number of Chinese girls who have simply vanished from the population in the last 20 years.
In cultures that maintain strict sexual codes for women, if a woman steps out of bounds—by choosing her own husband, flirting in public, or seeking divorce from an abusive partner—she has brought dishonor to her family and must be disciplined. Often, discipline means execution. Families commit "honor killings" to salvage their reputation tainted by disobedient women. Three women fall victim to honor killings in Pakistan every day—including victims of rape. In areas of Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe, all responsibility for sexual misconduct falls, by default, to women.
For the young girls who escape these pitfalls and grow up relatively safely, daily life is still incredibly hard. School might be an option for a few years, but most girls are pulled out at age 9 or 10 when they're useful enough to work all day at home. Nine million more girls than boys miss out on school every year, according to UNICEF.
UN statistics show that although women produce half the world's food, they own only 1 percent of its farmland. In most African and Asian countries, women's work isn't even considered real labor.
Globally 36 per cent of woman between the ages of 20-24 were married or in union before they reached 18, most commonly in sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia, where it is often a long standing tradition and difficult to protest. Premature pregnancy and childbirth is often a dangerous consequence of child marriage.Every minute, a woman dies as a result of pregnancy complications, adding up to more than half-a-million women per year. Some 99 per cent of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries, with over 90 per cent of those in Africa and Asia.
Two-thirds of children denied primary education are girls, and 75 per cent of the world's 876 million illiterate adults are women. Every extra year a girl spends at school could reduce child mortality by ten per cent. (UN, World's Women)
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