Women, Children, and the Sex Market (cont.)

Women are usually considered to be the "Dalit of the Dalit", or lowest of the low. Girls who are not old enough to work (any girl under the age of five or six), are viewed as even less valuable than adult Dalit women. No one is exactly sure of an exact percentage, but it has been estimated that over 40% of Dalit girls at birth are either killed or put into the sex market. When people first hear this, they usually can't understand how Dalit parents can be so evil and cruel. However, it's a lot complicated than that.

You have to remember that from the day a Dalit is born, he/she is taught that they are sub-human. The majority of Dalit people do NOT understand that the way they are treated and the lifestyle they lead is not ok. It is all they have ever known and they truly believe that as Dalits, they do not deserve any sort of human rights like the rights given to people of other castes (or "jatis").

If a Dalit parent finds out that they are having a girl, there is a good chance that the mother will have an unsafe abortion.
If they let the child live, the girl might be sold into the sex market for an average of about $30 (U.S.). Most of the girls sold usually have between 4 and 10 different sex owners (masters) by the age of 16.
If the girl lives with her parents, she will probably start working to bring the family income around the age of 5.
In the slight chance that she gets to go to school, well, she isn't exactly safe there either. Many "recruiters" as they are sometime called will stake out girls within schools, kidnap them, and sell them. Some of these recruiters claim to teachers or parents that they are going to take their children to a boarding school.

I know some of us didn't grow up in the most ideal situation, but I am confident that none of us had a childhood as poor as these girls do.
What if they don't go into the sex market? What is life as a Dalit child like then? Well... the Human Rights March along with the Global March Against Child Labor estimated that 100 million children in India today are working "under conditions akin to slavery." Slavery. I know some of us hate our jobs, but I'm pretty sure no organization would say that any of us are working under conditions similar to slavery.

I know this is a lot of overwhelming statistics, facts, and stories. I have spent two posts talking about the children, women, and the sex market in India because it is what I am most passionate about and if I didn't see it first-hand, I would not be able to believe that so many people in the world, or in one country, could be living like this. It is truly astonishing.