The Secondary Status of Women in India

Gender discrimination continues to be an enormous problem within Indian society. Traditional patriarchal norms have relegated women to secondary status within the household and workplace. This drastically affects women's health, financial status, education, and political involvement.. (From Foundation for Sustainable Development)

As a result, the sex ratio is very low in India as compared to many developing countries and most of the advanced countries. The high maternal mortality, infant mortality, child mortality foeticide, infanticide, abortion, low age of marriage, son preference are responsible for the low sex ratio in India.

Women in rural areas suffer the brunt of traditional gender discrimination right from the time that they are born. In India, girls are socially mandated to seek their final settlement phase in their husband’s home. The girl is taken to belong to someone else’s family and not for her own family to keep from the time that she is born. So naturally any investment made on her would ultimately bear returns not to her own parents as the culture propounds but to her husband’s family in future. 

She is thus taken as a liability by her own family. Besides this, her marriage requires more spending on the part of the family in the form of dowry and other gifts. Thus, she becomes more than a liability now. She becomes a loss-making investment. 
Just not worth the investment

Families with limited means find it easier to abandon their girl children or worse to kill them in their infantile stage rather than shoulder such a long scheme of investment with no scope of deriving any form of social pension in return like they have in case of boys. Boys are welcomed because they are taken to be the ones who would work and earn for their families and take care of their aging parents in the long run.

Since childhood, girls are discriminated against in terms of nutrition, education, health care and choices for wholesome development as far as family investment is concerned. Denial of inheritance except the jewellery that she is given at the time of her marriage makes her future insecure further and completely at the mercy of her in-laws. In most cases in villages and semi urban areas, the woman has to deposit her jewellery with her in- laws as well and has no say over her womb either.  More than often, pressure from the wife's in-laws determines when she conceives and how many children she bears. Already having been discriminated against in terms of nutrition earlier in life, she risks her health to give birth to her children and also suffers the risk of giving birth to malnourished children. Women are a lot more likely to suffer from poor health due to ill attendance to their own needs from childhood (e.g. food, healthcare) and to the untimely pressure of motherhood.

The price of gender discrimination in India is the lives of almost 240,000 girls under five every year. Much attention is given in India to the issue of female foeticide. Sex-selective abortions are considered the major driver of India's skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) and its resultant 63 million missing women. However, postnatal gender discrimination is also an issue worthy of attention. As a new study published in The Lancet Global Health reveals, it results in the avoidable deaths of 239,000 girls under the age of five every year.
The preference for sons over daughters often means girls get lower standards of education, nutritional and medical care compared to boys. This manifests in what the study's authors deem an 'excess female under-five mortality rate (U5MR).' Using the 2011 census as a baseline, the study puts this figure at 18.5 excess deaths per 1,000 live births.

'Gender-based discrimination towards girls doesn't simply prevent them from being born, it may also precipitate the death of those who are born,'said Guilmoto. 'Gender equity is not only about rights to education, employment or political representation. It is also about care, vaccination and nutrition of girls, and ultimately survival.'