KOUSALYA RADAKRISHNAN DOESN’T NEED OUR HELP, REALLY. What
she most needs is for people to get out of her way.
Like other girls in her south Indian village, Kousalya was
told to stay at home, marry young, and have lots of babies,
staff writer Howard LaFranchi notes in this week’s cover sto-
ry. If she and a number of her teenage friends had listened,
her village would have worse sanitation,
fewer library books, and no streetlights.
Instead, they made a pact: They were going
to make their village better, even if they had
to do it alone. So they did.
Howard’s story is about women’s rights,
but not in the way that issue is so often portrayed – as a
power struggle.
Yes, it is true that women’s rights crucially address a
historical imbalance of power. But perhaps more import-
ant, they address an imbalance of opportunity. Expanding
opportunity is the fuel for greater wealth, better health,
and more happiness for all. But how often do we talk about
women’s rights – or the rights of any group, for that mat-
ter – in those terms? With static or shrinking opportunity,
societies stagnate. With growing opportunity, they thrum
with energy.
Think about it. By what logic should a society present
opportunity to only half its people? With mathematical cer-
tainty, that society will be half of what it could be. Without
the efforts of a handful of teenage girls, Thennamadevi,
India, would be less than it is now.
Surely, at some point, marriage and child-bearing will
come for most of these girls. But when that, too, is an ex-pression of opportunity, possibility, and free will, then those
virtues will be sown more deeply into society, kindling in
the virtuous cycles that undergird progress.
Both of my children were born in India when I was a
Monitor correspondent there. When my wife was pregnant
with our daughter, the physician never told us if she was a
boy or a girl because Indian law prohibit-
ed it. In some areas, many female fetuses
are aborted.
Yet when my wife became pregnant
with our son, the attendant couldn’t help
himself. It’s a boy! he blurted out. The
impression was that he thought there was no chance of us
harming a boy, so why not share the good news?
Female feticide in India can be a coldly economic cal-
culation. Boys bring wealth. Girls are just mouths to feed
and, in some communities, require a dowry (though India
has officially banned that practice, too). Girls can be seen
as economic ruin.
But what of Kousalya, who is studying physics and wants
to be a college professor? In this case, it seems relatively
easy to point an accusatory finger at India. But the fact is,
opposition to women’s rights worldwide is simply the same
mistaken premise in other insidious forms. As opportunity,
possibility, and free will are truly shared by all, the world
takes quantum leaps forward. As Kousalya says, “We’re
making things better not just for girls, but for everybody
in our village.”UPFRONT
INDIAN SCHOOLGIRLS SIT IN A PARK ON A FOGGY MORNING IN NEW DELHI. TSERING TOPGYAL/AP/FILETo improve the world, enlist girls, too
r You can reach me at [email protected].BY MARK SAPPENFIELD
EDITOR