Women

Hello all! It's been a while since I've posted, but that's basically because nothing too interesting has happened. I'm getting more and more used to my days here at Barli. Unfortunately, for about a 24 hour span, the Internet went out. :/ Here's one random information fact of the day: When women in the scheduled tribes of Madhya Pradesh get married, their husbands give them a special necklace which is never to come off, and two toe rings for the toes closest to the big toe. This makes it very easy to tell who is married and who is not. There are about ten married girls/women here at Barli. Some of them got married as young as 13/14 years of age. Its hard to understand, but that is the lifestyle of many of the rural tribes in India. I have been doing a lot of research here in gender conflicts, and it has opened my eyes to many horrible practices. One of these practices is infanticides. Indian mothers have been known to kill their baby daughters so it will take them less time to get pregnant in hopes of having a boy. One lady I read about fed her daughter oleander oil until she bled out through her nose. Other times, when a rural girl gets married, if her new in laws do not think her dowry is good enough, they will kill her and keep the dowry. Another horrible fact I have learned, is that women make up more that 50% of agricultural goods in the world, but own less than 1% of it's land.