“Dowry” is money, property or real estate that the bride’s family gives to the groom’s family when they marry. This practice is common in cultures where the transfer of property is largely down the paternal line, traditionally pulls the wife to the man’s place of residence, and whose inheritance laws favor men. Historically, dowry payment has occurred in Europe, South Asia, and Africa. Today, in over eighty percent of marriages in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, a woman’s family pays a dowry.
Sometimes the term “gift” is euphemized. Families who want to present themselves as progressive try in this way to distance themselves from the act of giving and taking a dowry. But even disguised as a “gift”, dowry remains illegal: in India it has been banned since 1961. More than half a century later, an Indian woman is the victim of dowry murder about every hour, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Not only is dowry payment still widespread sixty years after it was banned; in many Indian states a threatening increase trend can even be observed.
In addition to cultural reasons, there are also economic reasons. In many cultures, concern about the marriage of daughters has always played a central role. There is even no stopping at mutilation: In China, until the 20th century, it was believed that one had to “shorten” women’s feet in order to conform to a common ideal of beauty. Women’s toes were also often broken to help them develop stronger muscles in the hips, thighs, and buttocks, which was also considered attractive. To this day, female genital cutting is practiced in African countries and some Indian communities to ensure virginity before marriage and fidelity in marriage. Regardless of all academic or professional achievements of a woman, marriage remains the top priority in India: a woman who decides not to marry or to marry late is usually denigrated and ostracized. Since marriage has a high priority in Indian society – especially for women – the parents try hard to find a “good bridegroom” for their daughters and are also prepared to pay a large dowry to the said “good bridegroom” “To pull on their side.
The groom occupies a dominant position in the Indian marriage market. The bride’s parents have no choice but to try to comply with his demands. While wealthy households can mask dowry giving and taking with opulent weddings and the display of wealth, middle and lower class women are humiliated, attacked and killed when dowry demands are not met. How can these relationships be changed?
Education also costs
As societies develop and men’s education increases, they often want educated wives by their side. Then it makes sense for parents to put the resources they have put aside for the dowry payment into their daughter’s education. A study entitled “Preferences and Beliefs in the Marriage Market for Young Brides” found that many parents in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan are willing to postpone the marriage of a daughter until she is eighteen, but not beyond. They are convinced that the chance of a good marriage offer increases with their daughter’s education, but also decreases quickly after graduating from school. If the demand for female labor were to increase, men might also be more interested in marrying women who can work, as this could increase the family’s overall income – thus the value of education would increase and that of dowry would decrease.
But the proportion of women in the workforce in India has steadily declined since 2005. Even if some educated men now want equally educated women, this has not resulted in fewer dowries being paid. Obviously, the fact that the dowry payment still holds does not only depend on the preference of the men. It obviously has something to do with the caste system. In India, the majority of the marriage decisions for a girl are made by her family. The families are looking for a man who belongs to the same religion and social class. The economic status should also fit. Weddings across castes and religions are rare and reluctant to see. Wedding apps that target certain religions and castes have changed modern dating forever. According to the 2012 India Human Development Survey, 73 percent of women said that their parents or family chose their husbands. And a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that while most Indians consider their country to be religiously tolerant, they are against interfaith marriages.
Marriage by caste and religion
For the majority of all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains, it is even a high priority to stop marriage between women and men with different caste affiliations. While the modernization process in Europe has weakened family ties and women could henceforth marry whoever they wanted, in India the family structures continue to set the tone because of the caste system. If a woman could marry any wealthy man, it would weaken the power of men in the marriage market. But since in India she can only marry within her caste, power is concentrated in the hands of men. Endogamy – a marriage order that favors marriages within the social group – gives men a monopoly on the Indian marriage market.
In India today, combating the compulsion to marry within caste and religion is a difficult challenge. The current government of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not only strengthening and advocating endogamy through divisive politics. It even makes the country an unsafe place for people who decide to love and marry outside of denomination and caste: Laws against an alleged “love jihad” – a conspiracy theory according to which Muslims marry Hindu women and convert for this only force to overturn the religious majority in the country – are supposed to make interreligious marriages more difficult and have legalized religious fanaticism. The attack on women’s self-determination continues.
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