There is a saying in Punjab that most people in the region may recognise: Naar ghani ta jaaniye j munda howe dhaak (A woman is considered worthy only if she holds a son).
This kind of saying, alluding to son preference, can easily be dismissed as a thing of the past. But when you spend some time listening to the folk songs sung at childbirth celebrations, weddings, and family gatherings in Punjab, you will quickly realise that this way of thinking has not changed. It is still very much alive in the folk songs of older women, which are passed down to younger generations.
Being born and raised in rural Punjab, I grew up listening to these songs. My doctoral research focused on the folk songs of women in Punjab, and during my field visits, I interviewed elderly women, asking them about the songs they used to sing. What I found in the study was deeply moving yet unsettling, not because it was surprising to me, but because of how deeply these beliefs about gender were entrenched and how naturally they were expressed through folk songs.
The numbers behind the songs
Punjab is often referred to as one of India’s success stories, owing to its relatively prosperous economy and high level of development compared with other states in the country. However, the picture is quite different when it comes to gender equality.
The numbers reveal this. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), conducted between 2019 and 2021, recorded a sex ratio at birth of 904 girls per 1,000 boys in Punjab. This gap represents the ‘missing girls’ who were not allowed to be born because of son preference. However, son preference is not new; even colonial records contain evidence of female infanticide in the past. To curb this practice, the British government introduced the Punjab Female Infanticide Act in 1870. With the advent of ultrasound technology in the 1990s, however, the practice changed its form.
This article is based on research suggesting that son preference has never been merely a matter of law, economics, or policy, but is deeply rooted in culture. And folklore, particularly folk songs, serves as a custodian of this culture, transmitting it from one generation to the next.
What the songs actually say
When a son is born into a Punjabi household, there is a tradition of singing folk songs to celebrate the birth. One folk song goes:
A son has been born in my brother’s home,
Mother-in-law, I have grown taller by inches.
In this song, the birth of a nephew elevates a woman’s status within her husband’s family. She believes that the birth of a son in her brother’s house brings her greater respect and increases her value in her in-laws’ household. There are countless songs in which the birth of a son is celebrated. Another one goes:
If a son is born in the house,
father, now it is the time for liquor,
father, sit at the liquor shop and shout loudly in celebration, father.
This song reflects the public celebrations and drinking that accompany the birth of a son. The celebration described in the song clearly demonstrates the value placed on having a male child. On the other hand, folk songs celebrating the birth of a daughter are rarely found. In contrast to the song above, this is what is often sung when a daughter is born:
The day a daughter was born in the father’s house,
it felt like a night of misfortune, friends.
The father’s turban bent low.
No one came to offer congratulations.
Nine hundred lamps were lit on the rooftop edges,
yet the night remained deeply dark.
The most unsettling part of this song is that a woman is the one singing about the sorrow that accompanies a girl’s arrival into the world. Here is another one:
If a daughter is born in the house,
father, the family members fall into thought, father.
There is clearly no celebration, no welcome, but only sorrow and silence at a daughter’s birth. This song carries the weight of son preference, which is deeply entrenched in Punjab. The women singing these songs are themselves daughters who once brought this ‘silence’ to their own homes. Yet here they are, passing that very silence forward.
One can easily dismiss these songs by saying that they are outdated and hold little relevance in today’s context. But even today, they are sung on different occasions in rural Punjab. Across generations, these songs have transmitted gendered ideologies and contributed to the internalisation of practices such as son preference. But to understand this, we must now turn to Kamla Bhasin.
The patriarchy women build together
To understand why women sing these songs with such conviction, we can turn to the work of Kamla Bhasin. She raises a simple but important question: why do women reproduce the very systems that oppress them?
Why do women reproduce the very systems that oppress them?
She argues that women are not weak or willing participants in their own oppression. Rather, patriarchy is not simply a system imposed from outside; it also operates through the way women view themselves and understand their place in society. Over time, this system shapes their hopes, fears, desires, sense of self-worth, and understanding of what it means to be a ‘good woman’.
Here, Bhasin refers to the internalisation of patriarchy, whereby patriarchal values become so deeply embedded in everyday thinking that they no longer feel like coercion. In this way, through folk songs, women become carriers and transmitters of patriarchal ideology.
The invisible work of performance and repetition
Folk songs are also a form of performance. In this context, the theory of gender performativity becomes particularly relevant. American scholar and philosopher Judith Butler has theorised that gender is not something we simply are; it is continually reproduced through repeated acts, behaviours, and social practices.
Folk songs are performances that are repeated on various occasions, and they reinforce ideologies such as son preference and gender bias. The repetition of these performances makes such ideologies appear more natural, beyond question, and culturally legitimate. Folk songs do not merely reflect social reality; they actively reproduce it.
One folk song proclaims:
My brother’s son, my nephew,
the foundation of my father’s lineage.
In the non-translated version of the song, the phrase ‘neo jad’ literally means a foundation or root from which the family continues to flourish. It suggests that the daughter is merely a branch that will eventually be pruned away or married off. This metaphor reflects how sons are positioned in these songs as the legitimate carriers of the family line.
When young girls grow up listening to these songs, sung by their mothers, grandmothers, and other women, which celebrate the birth of a son and express disappointment at the birth of a daughter, they gradually internalise these values.
When young girls grow up listening to these songs, sung by their mothers, grandmothers, and other women, which celebrate the birth of a son and express disappointment at the birth of a daughter, they gradually internalise these values. They absorb an emotional and cultural environment in which the male child is consistently portrayed as more desirable and valuable. Over time, these repeated performances of folk songs can shape their perceptions of gender and influence their aspirations, such that they may themselves come to view motherhood primarily in terms of having sons rather than daughters.
Can we change the songs we were raised on?
Punjab has been labelled a ‘kudi maar‘ state (a state that kills daughters) due to its long history of a skewed sex ratio and practices such as female infanticide and foeticide. However, while legal protections are in place, laws alone cannot change cultural attitudes. Folk songs, for instance, have historically been important vehicles for transmitting patriarchal values from one generation to the next.
There are countless folk songs that have been passed down through generations of women whose lives were constrained by strict patriarchal limitations. For those women, these songs were an outlet to express their hopes, anxieties, grief, and desires, all of which were themselves shaped by patriarchy. But a crucial question that must be asked is: what do these songs mean for the current generation, which includes the daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of those women?
The gender ideology carried in these songs will continue to be perpetuated if modern society continues to sing them. Do these songs have to remain the same? Couldn’t they instead celebrate the birth of a child regardless of gender? Is it possible to rethink them and create a more equal world through folk songs?
The beauty of folk traditions is that they can be modified and transformed. Folklore does not remain static; it evolves as it is handed down from one generation to the next. Every performance of a folk song offers an opportunity to recreate and reinterpret it. If folk songs have transmitted patriarchal values across generations, they can also transmit values of equality, dignity, and empowerment. Reimagining these songs does not mean rejecting tradition. Rather, it means allowing tradition to evolve in ways that reflect our changing ideas about gender equality.
If we create and sing songs that celebrate daughters as well as sons, future generations may grow up with cultural narratives that value equality rather than hierarchy. Folklore, therefore, is not only a means of carrying values from one generation to another; it can also be a space in which we rethink those values and imagine a more equal future.
About the author(s)
Dr Veerdeep Kaur holds a doctorate in Women/ Gender Studies from the Department cum Centre for Women's Studies and Development, Panjab University, Chandigarh, specialising in folklore, oral traditions, culture, and gender. Her doctoral research, supported by an ICSSR Doctoral Fellowship, examines the portrayal of women in Punjabi folk songs.
