What if women were an endangered species?

I recommend reading a brilliant new post by Snigdha Sen: India's missing girls -- nipping them in the bud?

She begins:

"Gender-based abortions in India is no longer the man-bites-dog breaking news story. It's such a pervasive  practice that it probably doesn't outrage us enough to tackle it on a war footing. It is recognized as a problem by law, it makes some men shift in their seats and many women unhappy. In other words, it runs the risk of becoming just another addition to the endless list of gender issues that we know the country needs to deal with, and hope that time and a robust economy will drive it to its natural death."

I was immediately reminded of sci-fi Author Frank Herbert's book, The White Plague, which poses the question, "What if women were an endangered species?" Here's the amazon.com write-up:

"It begins in Ireland, but soon spreads throughout the entire world: a virulent new disease expressly designed to target only women. As fully half of the human race dies off at a frightening pace and life on Earth faces extinction, panicked people and governments struggle to cope with the global crisis. Infected areas are quarantined or burned to the ground. The few surviving women are locked away in hidden reserves, while frantic doctors and scientists race to find a cure. Anarchy and violence consume the planet. The plague is the work of a solitary individual who calls himself the Madman. As government security forces feverishly hunt for the renegade scientist, he wanders incognito through a world that will never be the same. Society, religion, and morality are all irrevocably transformed by the White Plague."

When I read stories like Snigdha's, I often do raise my eyes to heaven and thank God for the rights American women enjoy. Then I start making demands on the universe, such as the one where I insist that when I next wake up, I'll be Oprah Winfrey, with the bank account of Croesus and enough international influence that I can invest in a woman-to-woman system for outreach, encouragement, economic partnership and (forgive me for getting all kumbayah, ya''ll, but) love.

But I'm not Oprah, and her Swarovski clutch is nowhere in site. Sans moolah, I think the only way that we can help change the world is one woman and one family at a time. And in this case, Snigdha has started the process by driving traffic and exposure to this issue and a fantastic list of blogs by Indian women, many of them parenting blogs -- women truly in the trenches on this issue. I've written to three of these bloggers to see if they're interested in applying to join the BlogHer publishing network when it re-opens in February. We provide ads, yes, but as if not more importantly, we syndicate member headlines across our network of 1,200+ women writers.

I'm talking about exposure, baby. We are committed to getting our exceptional writers READ. Our mission has never changed. Women this right, given the soapbox they deserve, will be much harder to wrong.
 
Okay, now bring me back to earth...(ducking)