Part of the Women’s Speaker Series through the UTM Women’s Center was held yesterday at 12:20 p.m. in Room 322, Gooch Hall. This speaker series was a women’s studies student panel, and a panel of students here at UTM led the session.
A video started the event, and it was called “The 3 deadliest words in the World- It’s A Girl” by Even Grae Davis. The video was about how gendercide is such a major problem in foreign countries such as India and China. The video also featured an Indian woman saying she strangled to death eight of her babies because they were girls and this woman only wanted a boy. This woman was given to her sister’s husband in order to give her sister a boy, and so she killed all the girls she gave birth to and buried them. The video goes on to talk about how boys are more valuable than girls in India, and there the mortality rate of girls is 75 percent more for girls. China gives birth to one million more boys than girls a year.
After this video played, the student panel stood up one by one and began talking about parts of the video. The panel talked about sex trafficking and how there is a recruitment of girls to be sold for sex. The student went on to say the girls and women are trafficked through force, threat or fraud by being promised a better life. Sex trafficking happens in the U.S., but it is not really well known and the laws aren’t being that enforced.
Another student spoke about the foreign side of thinking, and why they want to keep boys over girls because boys can work and bring home money and it was better for their girls to die right away than to suffer for their whole lives. This student said that this is something that needed to be changed and foreign countries needed to have more interest in their daughters’ lives.
Another student talked about how some girls are made to get abortions if they know before birth that they are having a girl and the women are left feeling empty inside after their abortion.
Another student spoke about how she had a girl and remember seeing her on the ultrasound and how excited she was, and talked about how she was glad she was from the U.S. because she couldn’t imagine not being able to keep your little girl. She went onto say money is a big reason for not keeping girls and keeping boys because how expensive girls are to raise and boys are celebrated because they make money.
Dr. Teresa Collard, leader for the Women’s Center, finished up the series by asking important questions such as how the problem could be fixed and what we could do and then opened up the floor for comments or concerns.
