Despite numerous campaigns and popular slogans over the years, the fondness for sons remains strong among Indian parents. Many of them continue to see boys as an investment and girls a liability.

A recent series of gruesome rapes and murders has sparked outrage in northern India. The incidents are the latest for a region with a grim history of violence against women. Murali Krishnan reports from New Delhi.

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What can be done to protect women against sexual assaults? In India the state of Haryana has launched an all-female police unit. Read the news here, and other news about women.

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It is ironic that while India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, many Indian women are still trapped in the dark ages. Just name it – female feticide, child marriage, sexual violence, dowry, domestic slavery and abuse top gender evils. It might not necessarily be in that order.

Every day hundreds of young women and little children are bought and sold as domestic help across India. In many cases, parents have no idea that their child might be raped, tortured and subjected to severe mental abuse. “Girls in bondage,” a multimedia feature, highlights the plight of young women and children who are lured by agents and end up as domestic labour in different cities in India. Women Talk Online spoke to CNN-IBN’s Priyali Sur, the journalist who uncovered the tragic stories of these victims.

Salim loves Salman Khan, probably the only Bollywood hero who has been driving the masses in India wild for more than two decades now. Last year around the same time, Salim had gone to watch Salman’s latest flick about a corrupt police officer who turns into a new leaf after local goons murder his mother.

To curb the increasing incidents of rape in Haryana, the local village leaders have come up with a solution. They have suggested that the marriageable age for girls be lowered to 16 years. According to Indian law, girls cannot get married before they turn 18. This shocking statement has come a day after a teenaged girl from a lower caste immolated herself after being allegedly raped in Jind district in Haryana, India’s state notorious for being unsafe for women.