Women in China Face Suicide Epidemic

Things began to go wrong when she was forced to marry a man she did not love.

Then only 20, Zhang Xiaoyun had to leave her family and friends to live with her in-laws. She didn’t know or particularly care for her new husband, so it was only a matter of time before feelings of helplessness and resentment grew.

What’s more, as a woman living in rural China, Zhang had no status in her community. She was a second-class citizen, expected to cook and clean for her husband. There was no place for independence or even a personality of her own.

So Zhang did the only thing she could think of to escape – she tried to commit suicide.

Zhang survived, but many like her do not. China is the only country in the world where more women kill themselves than men. Every year a staggering one million women there attempt to take their own lives. Upwards of 150,000 are successful.  That’s one suicide every four minutes.

Most occur in rural areas, where women struggle with poverty, abuse and rigidly patriarchal traditions that see females as worthless and subservient.  Without any social support system or rights of their own, these women suffer in silence.

Family disputes and economic pressures are often the main factors in suicide. And an alarmingly high number of women are pushed over the edge by seemingly minor quarrels with their husbands or in-laws – everything from a fight over mahjong to a disagreement about what to watch on television.

That’s because suicide doesn’t have the same taboo around it that you’d find in Western countries. In some parts of rural China, drinking pesticide is an almost normalized way of dealing with pent-up frustration.

It’s an impulsive act of desperation – a cry for help – from wives with nowhere else to turn.

These women don’t necessarily want to die, but they are alone and lack a sense of self-worth, so few think of the consequences. It’s hard, after all, to understand the value of your own life when no one else considers you valuable.

Many marriages in rural China are still arranged, while other brides are simply sold off. Both practices are illegal, but these customs are hard to break. And once a woman is married, gaining the acceptance of in-laws is a tall order in the face of high expectations and little respect.

Few of these women will ever benefit from the development and prosperity springing up in other parts of the country. On average, a rural woman who attempts suicide has just five years of schooling and a median per capita income of $13 a month. 

For these women, suicide is a way to escape from China’s suffocating shadows of discrimination and anonymity.

Though one organization is trying to change this. The Beijing Cultural Development Center for Rural Women is an NGO that promotes social development for females in rural areas.

It offers literacy classes, skills training and mentorship, all in the name of giving rural women the sense of empowerment they need.

“They don’t have self-confidence and feel their lives are meaningless,” Chen Shanshan of the Beijing Center said in an e-mail interview. “We try to help them recognize themselves and realize their potential.”

There’s even a suicide prevention program that tours the countryside showing women the value of life and teaching communities about gender equality and inclusion.

So far the center has helped some 5,000 people, including a much happier Zhang Xiaoyun, who is no longer suicidal.

But there remains a lot of work to do. The first step is to bring the plight of these women into the open. Too many of them are suffering in silence as China continues to modernize at an unprecedented rate.

Gross national product and international trade may be ways for a country to determine its economic wealth, but true well-being can only be measured by the quality of life of its citizens.

Until this well-being is taken seriously, and until China tackles gender

discrimination, alienation and inequality, the nation’s development will remain woefully incomplete.

No country should be able to call itself “developed” when a million of its citizens every year find suicide is their only option. 

Attacks on Women a Black Eye for India

Dipti Udapure was considered an ideal wife. She was well-behaved and obedient, two important female traits in patriarchal India.  As the daughter of a police officer, she was even allowed to get an education – a right still not given to many women in conservative parts of the country.

So when Dipti married a distant relative and settled in the city of Nagpur, she seemed destined for a happy life.

That soon changed though. Her in-laws began demanding she buy them a car, saying it was part of her dowry. Dipti had already paid her customary dowry as part of the wedding, but suddenly that was not enough.

She could not afford to buy a car so her in-laws harassed her repeatedly, insisting she pay them for the privilege of marrying their son.  Her husband had become an alcoholic so he was of little help, and she didn’t dare speak out against her in-laws to anyone else.

The demands became so intense and hurtful that Dipti could not stand them anymore. So she walked up the stairs to the fourth floor of her apartment and jumped to her death. She left behind a nine-month-old daughter.

The circumstances of Dipti’s death are tragic yet surprisingly common in India.  They are called dowry deaths and occur when the husband or in-laws of a newly married bride demand money or gifts in addition to the traditional dowry they receive. These demands can be so frequent and vicious that they drive the bride to suicide.

Other times, husbands and in-laws may go as far as murdering brides who do not comply.

According to India’s National Crime Bureau, there were more than 7600 dowry deaths in 2006 alone. That’s one every 77 minutes.

In the most extreme cases, women are doused with kerosene and set on fire in an attempt to make their death look like a kitchen accident. This gruesome tactic even has its own name: bride burning.

Yet as horrible as this may seem, far too many women in India are still second-class citizens with few rights, so there is little recourse for victims. Even though dowries have been illegal since 1961, barely a third of these deaths result in police action because authorities often turn a blind eye.

Brides often have no one to turn to when such demands begin. Once married, many are beholden to the will of their in-laws. And with few economic opportunities of their own in the country’s large rural and conservative areas, women are forced to become subservient. If they speak out, it will mean their financial and social ruin.

Dowry deaths have become so rampant that some community leaders are now calling for an end to lavish weddings, which they say encourage dowries.

The government has tried to curb these deaths as well by including “economic harassment” in the definition of domestic violence and by offering to protect brides who report their husbands and in-laws for demanding a dowry.

But these brutal incidences still occur every day. Regardless of what the law says, as long as women are seen as inferior, and as long as speaking out against these demands remains taboo, dowry deaths will continue.

So as we once again mark International Women’s Day, we must remember that the world has a long way to go before it can make any claim to gender equality.  If the situation is going to change, the world must shed a light on such injustice and demand better.

The terrible reality is that India is not alone. As a global society we’ve never been more advanced and well-off than we are today, yet women in many countries still fall prey to systemic exploitation, discrimination, rape and even murder.

In fact, the UN says that one out of every three women around the globe has been abused, usually by someone she knows.

In a world where human rights, justice and equality have long been championed as cornerstones of humanity, this single statistic represents one of our greatest failures.

Back in India, it may be too late for Dipti Udapure, but her daughter is still just a toddler. She can grow up like her mother only to be seen as the property of another person, or she can grow up to find the opportunities she needs to make the most of her life.

It is up to all of us to decide.