41–50 of 114 posts
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.
Goes to show that supply and demand theory doesn't really work in practice.
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…
They were leaving their original family, thus reducing the number of people who'd need to be fed and sheltered, while the husband's family was taking on that duty, thus they claimed to deserve compensation.
Such cultures suffered from similar other ills like mistreating or kicking out widows or, in India, the practice of having the wife burn alive on the husband's funeral pyre.
Their persistence nowadays (particularly in wealthier societal strata) is largely cultural inertia and greed, as of course nowadays in all wealth levels it is very normal for women to earn their own living too.
In my family, dowry for the current generation has been passed off as "gifts intended for the couple's married life", which although still doesn't sit quite right with me, is at least not as exploitative and not explicitly asked for. It mostly boils down to expensive gifts of clothes, kitchenware, makeup etc which can be useful when establishing a family.
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…
Could you explain the culture around marriage and dowries a bit more?
I'm really confused as to why marriage is culturally important when dowries and that level of abuse exist.
Why is marriage common if it's just an excuse to extort the bride's family and it endangers everyone's daughters? From my perspective that's a deal no one would want to take.
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?
because like, I can sell my property, in addition to buying it—so I'm not really sure how that adds up, either.
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.
In the last, it was mainly a north Indian thing but has successfully been imported by South as well especially Andhra.
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…
America had dowries until the mid 1800s and the wealthiest among us globally still predominantly define marriage in romantic and business terms.
The issue that most comments do not discuss, that exacerbates this situation, is the idea that a bride marries into another family and becomes that family's responsibility. Dowry is most often demanded by the parents of the marrying groom, and negative actions are often taken on as a group rather than an individual.
As a result:
- laws are written to impact the entire family.
- The logic is 'one more mouth for the working FIL to feed' esp when marriages are younger and the groom's career is still growing.
- women have limited cultural rights to exit relationships in hindu society with massive repercussions socially and in their employment
I do want to point out for that last one, the stink of divorce has only recently begun to dissipate. Women in the US in our grandparents and great grandparents era could not bank independently, it was very difficult to get even near parity of pay and often kept cash or valuables to pawn so that they would have an exit or a net if their partner was unsuitable or died.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The logic behind dowries was that women were a burden since they would be relying on the husband for food, shelter and protection. They were leaving their original family, thus reducing the number of people who'd need to be fed and sheltered, while the husband's family was taking on that duty, thus they claimed to deserve compensation. Such cultures suffered from similar other ills like mistreating or kicking out wid…
Wow, that's an insane perspective. So even your own daughters were thought of as a burden?
The impact of this has been felt for more than a decade now. Many of my friends had trouble finding brides, despite being nothing wrong with them - as a result, some of my friends were never married and are in their 40s now. It is absolutely terrible and gut-wrenching to see this Darwinism in action, as if we are wildlife. The people who are responsible for this are all considered "decent" people in society. The valu…
Could you elaborate on this? Maybe set some context in terms of "what culture" because this means something very different in America/Europe than it does in India I think based on the wording.
The impact of this has been felt for more than a decade now. Many of my friends had trouble finding brides, despite being nothing wrong with them - as a result, some of my friends were never married and are in their 40s now. It is absolutely terrible and gut-wrenching to see this Darwinism in action, as if we are wildlife. The people who are responsible for this are all considered "decent" people in society. The valu…
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?