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How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

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Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#21

Post by [deleted] »

speeder wrote: post #15
sonofhans wrote: post #2

Dowries are a plague on humanity. They’re rooted in the idea that women are property. I lived in India in the 1970s as a child. At that time the shorthand was “cooking accident” when new brides were killed. As in, “The bride’s father couldn’t pay the dowry. Too bad she had that unfortunate cooking accident.” The local man who did our laundry had four daughters, and it was considered a curse. He killed himself because…

Not sure how dowries are rooted in the idea that women are property... If you were talking about bride price then it would make more sense. In many cultures the men had to pay the father of the bride, thus people in a sense were literally selling their daughters. Still there was a reason for this at the time, in those cultures, women moved to live with the husband family, and at same time their labor was important, i…

[deleted]

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#22

Post by spoonjim »

sonofhans wrote: post #2

Dowries are a plague on humanity. They’re rooted in the idea that women are property. I lived in India in the 1970s as a child. At that time the shorthand was “cooking accident” when new brides were killed. As in, “The bride’s father couldn’t pay the dowry. Too bad she had that unfortunate cooking accident.” The local man who did our laundry had four daughters, and it was considered a curse. He killed himself because…

Does the dowry get paid after the marriage? Why wouldnt' it be paid at the time of the marriage? Or do they keep asking for money?

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#23

Post by stevenwoo »

questime wrote: post #9

I don't completely understand how dowries are a thing - isn't there a massive gender imbalance in India, wouldn't dowries go the other way? Curious why this is not the case. This is awful.

The very first anecdote has the women committing a particularly vicious killing (and being acquitted!) of an innocent woman because her dowry (which benefited the killers) was considered inadequate so there are some pretty powerful cultural forces at work here that are very difficult to grasp for the average HN reader. China also has a different sort of problem with a worse gender imbalance, giving us two terrible test cases from an outsider's point of view.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#24

Post by renewiltord »

fsckboy wrote: post #5

I was reading about dowery/dower/brideprices in the past week, mostly on wikipedia but chased a few links. There is a very interesting hypothesis about the origins of these practices in prehistoric human cultures. in hoe-based agriculture, which tended to predominate in mobile/migratory cultures, farming was "women's work" in plough-based agriculture, which tended to predominate where people were stationary and land…

What were the factors that had hoe-based agriculture be "women's work"? One would imagine that the increased strength and endurance of men for physical labour would have resulted in the opposite: when you have the plough and the dray horse, farming is less dependent on physical stature.

The idea of which direction the money was paid being related to the perceived productive output of the woman does make sense. It's the other part of the argument that isn't so obvious to me.

I can look it up, etc. but if you happen to have the links available from history that would speed things up for me. Much appreciated.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#25

Post by failuser »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #11

Can someone explain how it relates to property, given that the daughters family pays the dowry. Isn't this like "I'm paying you to take my daughter off my hands". If the girl is property, shouldn't the grooms family pay the daughters family? Like an exchange for the girl?

Utilization fee?

A more generous reading is that a dowry is the starting capital for the new family. In Russian history the dowry was considered wife’s property, but I understand that this is rare.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#26

Post by giantg2 »

klipt wrote: post #16

India's anti dowry laws tried to address this but went way overboard. Some highlights: https://theswaddle.com/indias-dowry-laws-are-ineffective-eas... * if a man is sentenced on a dowry related charge, his whole family, including babies and elderly grandparents, is jailed with him * the law requires immediate arrest with no bail based on just a verbal accusation, so the threat of this is often used as a tool during d…

"based on just a verbal accusation, so the threat of this is often used as a tool during divorce for the wife to get what she wants"

Sounds a lot like protective orders in US divorce.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#27

Post by kgodey »

questime wrote: post #9

I don't completely understand how dowries are a thing - isn't there a massive gender imbalance in India, wouldn't dowries go the other way? Curious why this is not the case. This is awful.

People don't generally make decisions about their life by looking at the global scale, they do whatever is familiar to them from their upbringing and their friends and family. If you're used to the idea of dowry, and your potential marriage partner and their family is also used to it, then it's going to keep happening.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#28

Post by notRobot »

giantg2 wrote: post #26
klipt wrote: post #16

India's anti dowry laws tried to address this but went way overboard. Some highlights: https://theswaddle.com/indias-dowry-laws-are-ineffective-eas... * if a man is sentenced on a dowry related charge, his whole family, including babies and elderly grandparents, is jailed with him * the law requires immediate arrest with no bail based on just a verbal accusation, so the threat of this is often used as a tool during d…

"based on just a verbal accusation, so the threat of this is often used as a tool during divorce for the wife to get what she wants" Sounds a lot like protective orders in US divorce.

Getting arrested and getting a protection order are different.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#29

Post by b112 »

renewiltord wrote: post #24
fsckboy wrote: post #5

I was reading about dowery/dower/brideprices in the past week, mostly on wikipedia but chased a few links. There is a very interesting hypothesis about the origins of these practices in prehistoric human cultures. in hoe-based agriculture, which tended to predominate in mobile/migratory cultures, farming was "women's work" in plough-based agriculture, which tended to predominate where people were stationary and land…

What were the factors that had hoe-based agriculture be "women's work"? One would imagine that the increased strength and endurance of men for physical labour would have resulted in the opposite: when you have the plough and the dray horse, farming is less dependent on physical stature. The idea of which direction the money was paid being related to the perceived productive output of the woman does make sense. It's t…

My understanding is that the plow and horse, still required significant muscle to keep it on track, push it into the ground, whilst the horse was pulling forward. Additionally, rocks had to be moved (even in older fields, rocks appear, big rocks, over time).
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