• Vulnerable children
• Street girls
• Street children
• India fights child slavery
• Rights of the Child

Before analyzing the lives of the girls who arrive in the cities or are born into such a precarious and rough environment, we will analyze women's and/or girls' roles in society in order to place our analysis within a wider framework.
The republic of India is one the few in the world with less women than men (929 women per 1,000 men, as per the 1991 census), and where life expectancy is lower for women. This situation is worsening with time, particularly since it became possible to determine the gender of the fetus in its first months of life. Amniocenthesis is becoming ever more common as a method which facilitates selective abortions on the grounds of gender, mainly among the upper and middle-upper classes.

Hinduism, the preponderant religion in the country, which has great influence even on non-Hindus, deems it absolutely mandatory that a son - not a daughter - light his parents' funeral pyre to insure their purification at the moment of death.

In addition, the Code of Manu - a moral code which was written in the period of epic and purist Hinduism, to which also belong the Ramayana and the Mahabharata - and the basis of the present popular moral code, points to the subservient position of women with respect to men. "...however lacking in good qualities, the husband must be continually adored and respected like a god by his wife." (5.154). Her father protects her in childhood, her husband in her youth, and her male children in old age; woman is not made to be independent.." (9.3) (Hawley and Wulff, The Divine Consorts. Ed. pg 210. ).

From these words it is also gathered that the male offspring are his parents' security in old age, a very important feature in a society where most of the population cannot rely on a pension once they are unable to work for a pay.

Women, who are discriminated against even before they are born - notwithstanding differences according to status, caste, religion, etc. - are relegated to a secondary position in the family and society. From childhood, they get worse nourishment, less healthcare and less education than their brothers. They are required to make economic contributions to the family at an earlier age and have to drop out of school in consequence. From a very young age, they help in daily survival tasks (gathering firewood, water, hay for the cattle, cooking, etc.) and they are responsible for their younger siblings' care. Any economic and emotional investment made on the daughters' behalf never yields a positive result for their own families, since they lose their family ties once they marry. To this must be added the economic hardship that paying the daughters' dowry entails, which has become an ever-increasing practice even within the Muslim and Christian populations in spite of being prohibited by law. Failing to pay the dowry, or paying it by installments, makes women prone to high quotas of violence at the hands of the husband or his family, sometimes escalating to murder, concealed as suicide by the media.

Women who lack status and power enter adulthood through marriage (95% of them are marriages of convenience, prearranged by their parents) and motherhood.

Being a patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal society, women in most cases do not inherit any of the family possessions, but are given a dowry in exchange so that they can marry into socially-desirable conditions. Once married, they are part of their husband's family and move in with them, severing their ties to their own kin. This is especially true of orthodox families, where it is common practice to have the daughters marry into families of geographically distant areas.

Women must be virgins at the time of the marriage, and their purity is an honor for their husband and his family, who see to it that this is so. Women who belong to higher castes and wealthy classes endure more control and seclusion, whereas poor women have to work outside the home and cannot be kept locked indoors.

Motherhood is the essence of women's lives in traditional Indian society. A childless woman is not a woman, and is for this reason repudiated and forsaken by her family and society. Hence the pressure put upon women to procreate, particularly male children.

The birth of a boy is lavishly celebrated, while that of a girl is considered a disgrace and a burden, particularly if no boys have been born into the family yet. Male children belong to the father, though they confer prestige, status and power upon the mother.
This situation is shared by all social groups, although it is manifested differently in each of them.

Poor street girls in big cities suffer said sex discrimination to which class, caste, ethnic and age discrimination must be added.
Born into a family environment possessing economic, social, and cultural characteristics which do not favor their development as people, and being frequently rejected for having been born females, girls have to assume responsibilities that belong to adults, bypassing their childhood as a result.
At four or five years of age, they do domestic chores and go out in the streets with their siblings to make a living. Girls and mothers are the ones who travel on a daily basis to gather firewood and fetch water for their family. These tasks may involve 10 km. walks in some cases or standing in line for many hours by the wells available to them, and amount to adding an extra six or seven hours to the already burden-laden work day of women. This time is taken away from rest and, in the case of girls, from studying.

The urban settlements that house the poor population are generally illegal. They are young shanty towns with self-built houses, completely lacking infrastructure and minimal public facilities. Under these conditions, women do not have a modicum of privacy which would insure their dignity. Toilets do not exist, nor the alternative of the woods or the fields that would be accessible in rural areas. All of this promotes sexual aggressions to women and girls in the midst of their own family or in the neighborhood and streets where they work.

A girl's virginity is held in high regard even among poor urban populations, where it is much harder to safeguard. It is not surprising that the practice of child weddings (forbidden by law since 1880) is common as a guarantee against the perforation of the hymen, and that it works as a strategy to protect girls against rape and sexual abuse. These marriages do not normally take effect until the couple reaches adolescence. Girls become mothers at 13 or 14 - as soon as nature allows.

Pregnancies and frequent abortions, undernourishment, and the hard living and working conditions of mother-girls are all factors which shorten their lives.

Another peculiarity of these populations is that they are matrilocal. Given a poor rural family's condition - devoid of alternatives - the possibility of migrating to the city is the only solution. This is why such families try to have their sons marry girls or teenagers from slums as a first step in their attempt to get closer to a city. No dowry is required from the woman's family in this case, but it is expected that it will take in, and assume responsibility for, the son. It is therefore the boys or the men who move in with the wife's family in such cases.

The burdens of procreation and sexual division at work and the scarcity of qualifications make it hard for street girls to have access to remunerated work, thus decreasing their possibilities in the non-qualified job market, and setting the stage for inferior working conditions, prostitution and jobs that the rest of society rejects.
Girls, mothers and grandmothers perform the harder tasks, which constitute a higher health risk in road, highway and building construction, and in laborer work. Women go to work along with their small children, and accidents are common.

Many women and girls survive owing to the rupees that they get from searching through garbage and selling recyclable items like paper, carton and glass to middlemen.