Pink Ladoo project welcomes baby girls in the world

Harbir Singh, the Canadian director of the Pink Ladoo project aims to eliminate this gender based discrimination and bias that is rooted in most South Asian communities.

“We want to start the conversation about gender equality very early in a baby girl’s life,” said Singh.

The project was brainstormed by Singh’s friend Sumeet Gill. The program intends to encourage families to distribute a pink sweetmeat instead of the traditional yellow to celebrate the birth of a daughter in their family.

“Whatever you would traditionally do for your son in your family is fine — we just want you to do the same thing for your daughter,” said Singh.

Singh, who grew up in Brampton, said, she too experienced the male preference in her community, despite staying abroad.

“Since I was a little girl it was made evident that the value of baby boys was higher than baby girls,” she recalled.

She added, “And the community showed me this by the way in which baby boys were celebrated and a lot of the comments were made about if someone had one or more baby girls, the comments were always like ‘Well, perhaps next time you will be blessed with a boy’”.

When Singh gave birth to her second daughter it was then that she realized how relevant the gender bias still was.

“I was shocked to see these comments were directed to me. I was floored and my jaw dropped open. Oftentimes, instead of a “congratulations,” I received an ‘It’s-OK-maybe-next-time.’ ”

On Tuesday, The Pink Ladoo Project was launched across five Canadian cities to coincide with the International Day of the Girl. It’s also hosting a five-day campaign at the Brampton Civic Hospital until Saturday to spread awareness and celebrate the birth of baby girls with their parents.

Apart from addressing gender based biases encircling the birth of a girl child, the project would also throw light to other gender discriminations that take place in South Asian communities like the tradition of the bride’s family giving away hefty gifts to the husband’s family when they marry to issues of inheritance and female children not receiving their parents’ wealth when they pass away.

Gill, Singh and a few of their other friends decided to take the concept globally, launching it beyond Canada to the South Asian rich countries like United Kingdom and Australia in the past two years.

(Reporting by Debarati Mukherjee)

(Image: Pink Ladoo/Facebook)