ABSTRACT
If at the end of the twentieth century, there is evidence of a new international and national focus on girls deriving from an increased interest in women’s, children’s and human rights and the advocacy of UNICEF, government’s and women’s movements, there is also evidence of new and rising discrimination against girls. One of the reasons why this book has been written is that despite these efforts, the scale and forms of daughter discrimination still remain invisible in development circles and have yet to be incorporated into women, gender, children and development dialogues, frameworks and projects. If it is to girls as daughters that this study has directed attention, it has done so within a development context, largely because of a number of major assumptions in development circles which prolong daughter discrimination, relegating them to the lowest status or Ghandi’s ‘last persons of the last houses’. It is still widely assumed that the many interventions aimed at including women and children in the development process will advantage and empower girls automatically. This study has shown that the very considerable attention given to the contributions of and benefits to women of development processes has not reduced discrimination against girls. This study also shows that the very welcome interventions to improve the well-being of children have not taken sufficient account of gender disparities in childhood experiences of the family and of differential resource allocations. Where son preference is acknowledged, it is still widely assumed that son preference and daughter discrimination are associated with under-development or a lag in social attitudes and will disappear with greater economic and social development. What the study of South and East Asia confirms is that daughter discrimination has not declined alongside development and that a number of factors have combined to contribute to its exacerbation.
