in unmarried women. Often a family may abandon
the infant to avoid damaging family honor. Such
infants may end up in orphanages where care is lim-
ited. Sudanese families wanting household servants
sometimes informally adopt female children from
the orphanages, but males usually remain without
a respectable social role. Reliable statistics on the
abandonment of female children in Sudan and else-
where are virtually non-existent, although anec-
dotal evidence suggests a need for a viable childcare
system in many urban areas.
In recent years, human rights activists have made
female infanticide, neglect, and abandonment the
first of many human rights violations that threaten
women’s lives. Critics have argued that the human
rights framework ignores political, social, cultural,
and economic constraints on women’s behavior
and derives in part from assumptions that non-
European peoples and cultures are encased in
passive and unchanging traditions that are funda-
mentally oppressive to women. The universalizing
human rights discourse has indeed confronted local
ethnic, religious, and cultural norms that may com-
mand the loyalty of women and men. The solution
is to emphasize the wide range and variation in cul-
tural practices within any given tradition, the many
ways to interpret religious texts, and the fact that
all cultures are formed from multiple influences
and evolve with the times.
It is not clear whether the international women’s
human rights campaigns against violence against
women will help advance Muslim women’s rights.
Certainly the new medical technologies have en-
abled governments and extended families to extend
their control over women’s sexuality and reproduc-
tive practices. Sex-selective feticide is considered
more humane and certainly far easier than infanti-
cide, neglect, or abandonment and is far more com-
mon than the earlier means of sex selection. The
resulting imbalance between males and females298 infanticide and abandonment of female children
may cause social disturbances in the future includ-
ing trafficking in women, forced prostitution, and
other social ills. The human rights campaigns may
draw attention to the problem and the heightened
awareness may lead governments and non-govern-
mental organizations to press for reforms.
Change may come in part through criminalizing
feticide, abandonment, and neglect, but more
importantly through family law reform that gives
women equal rights in marriage and divorce, in-
heritance, child custody, alimony, and a choice of
domestic arrangements. Women of all social classes
and in urban and rural areas need improved access
to education and work opportunities. Governmental
incentives such as extra educational and work pro-
visions, social security programs, tax credits, and
improved medical facilities for women and girls
along with limitations on dowries and prohibition
of sex-selective medical procedures will help to cor-
rect the male: female ratio. These reforms, however,
will not suffice or even be possible unless the enor-
mous inequalities produced by the global economic
system, the structural adjustment programs, and
the spiraling debts held by developing nations are
addressed.Bibliography
A. J. Arberry, The Koran interpreted, New York 1955.
J. Bargach, Orphans of Islam. Family, abandonment, and
secret adoption in Morocco, Lanham, Md. 2002.
F. M. Denny, An introduction to Islam, New York 1994.
E. Gruenbaum, The female circumcision controversy,
Philadelphia 2001.
M. Inhorn, Infertility and patriarchy. The cultural politics
of gender and family life in Egypt, Philadelphia 1996.
——, Quest for conception. Gender, infertility, and
Egyptian medical traditions, Philadelphia 1994.
R. A. Kanaaneh, Birthing the nation. Strategies of
Palestinian women in Israel, Berkeley, Calif. 2002.
D. Kandiyoti, Bargaining with patriarchy, in Gender and
society2 (1988), 274–90.
F. Rahman, Health and medicine in the Islamic tradition,
New York 1987.NANCYGALLAGHER