Male Favouritism

Reading about gender stereotypes and gender bias made me think of my grandparents, in particular my paternal grandmother, aka dad's mom.


I head from my mom that paternal grandmother is gender biased, towards boys. She would favour sons and grandsons.

A couple of things that my mom told me regarding paternal grandmother actually made me quite upset.

I don't have any brothers, only one sister. My mom told me that when me and my sister were born, my paternal grandmother, being the mother-in-law, did not bother to visit at all. Imagine a new mom and the stress she experiences after giving birth, and her MIL not providing any support when her daugher in law is supposed to be part of the family.
My mom said that it's because she doesn't think much of granddaughters. Instead paternal grandmother would be really nice to my male cousins.

Even my mom feels that paternal grandmother is too biased, and so when both me and my sister managed to graduate with degrees, she was quite proud of us. My male cousins, from dad's side of the family, didn't make it to university. This is my mom's way of proving grandmother wrong.

In my dad's family, the sons are the ones who gets higher education, the daughters are asked to help out at home and are not given opportunities for much education.

Even though paternal grandmother doesn't openly express her biasness, her behaviour gives away her implicit attitudes and prejudice towards daughters and granddaughters. Even the way she treats daughters and granddaughters could result in self-fulfilling prophesies.

I think most Chinese parents who came from China, or had parents from China, are gender biased in this way. The reason for such gender biasness? I found this from Wikipedia:


"Chinese tradition says that most parents want their first child to be born a male. Female deselection is also due to deeply rooted Confucian traditions, and Chinese parents desire sons in order to make familial propagation, security for the elderly, labor provision, and performance of ancestral rites.
Parents may wish for a male child because in many cultures only a male will carry on the family name (traditionally when a bride gets married she effectively becomes a member of the groom's family) because they believe that a male is needed for work, or because they wish a male to earn an income needed to support the parents in their old age"

I'm actually quite indignant about this whole issue. Grandmother herself is a woman, so why is she so biased against daughters and granddaughters? If everyone kills female babies like what they did in China, won't the world be full of males and there will be no females left to give birth?

This seems to be the trend of most Chinese families, especially the earlier generation. Even though now these attitudes and prejudices are supposedly phased out, i believe that they still exist, except that these attitudes are more covert than overt.