Social status of the rural girl child in Tamil Nadu.
OBJECTIVE
The social status of the girl child in school age was assessed in a village in Tamil Nadu applying both qualitative and quantitative methods.


METHODS
The home milieu was taken as the social context for the study purpose since home is the first societal unit a child comes into contact with. The various issues considered to study the social status were (1) Gender preference in having children (2) Nutrition and health care given to them (3) Importance given to their education (4) Activity pattern in daily life (5) Attitude of the community towards (a) girl child after menarche and (b) marriage.


RESULTS
In the study village, although there was desire to have sons, a girl child is not ignored. The value of having a girl in the family was appreciated. There was no gender discrimination in giving nutrition and health care. However the workload in girls was found to be marginally higher than in boys. The educational status of girls was lower than that of boys in terms of school enrollment and attendance. But menarche, was not an important cause of the lower educational status of girls. In the sociocultural context of the study village the priority in a girl's life during school going age was marriage. Soon after attaining puberty in a girl's life during school going age was marriage, not education and this perhaps reveals the lesser importance given to a girl's education by the community.


CONCLUSIONS
The need of the hour is to improve her educational status by changing the attitude of the community so that a girl child's priority in her school age is not marriage but education.
Ananthakrishnan
Shanthi
S
Vector Control Research Centre (ICMR) Pondicherry, India. ananth-4@vsnl.com
Nalini
P
P
D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D011287:Prejudice; D012424:Rural Population; D012938:Social Perception; D012945:Social Values; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires