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How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

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Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#51

Post by throwaw2023612 »

Another aspect of traditional indian family practice that relates to dowries is how a family's wealth itself flows in estate planning. When the parents die their wealth and land are inherited only by their sons (none given to daughters). The dowry in that respect, also functions as a pre-payment of a share of the family's inheritance to the bride (and her new family,) as she's moving on to a different family.

In middle class and higher families, there is also a large amount of gold and jewelry gifted to the bride during marriage, by everyone in both the bride and husband's extended family. This is generally done in public and can be considered a pre-payment of her divorce settlement. This gold is owned by her and because this transfer is documented and done in public, if the couple breaks up, it would be known in the village whom the gold belongs to.

It's important to keep in mind that these traditions vary greatly within different Indian sub-cultures and even family to family. You can't paint everyone with the same brush of this article. The broader culture is also changing slowly as generations tick by, and women's education and their own capacity generate a salary grows rapidly.

I can imagine in 20 years there will be significant change to all these practices.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#52

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> They’re rooted in the idea that women are property.

You have that backwards!! A bride price is the price paid to the bride's family, as you would pay for property.

Whereas dowry is the opposite -- paid by the bride's family to the groom.

It's rooted in the idea that the groom is expected to personally contribute financially, but the bride's family makes a contribution for her.

The most direct effect of the dowry itself is to increase the "privilege" given to brides in the wedding arrangement.

---

A modern analog is the bride's family paying for the wedding.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#53

Post by paulddraper »

parl_match wrote: post #39
speeder wrote: post #15

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…

> Not sure how dowries are rooted in the idea that women are property > in a sense were literally selling their daughters > pay the bride's family enough money to replace the "lost labor" of having one of their workers moving away You answered your own question.

That's a "bride price"; the opposite of a dowry.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#54

Post by ygjb »

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…

I think a lot of folks who don't have an agricultural background mistake how different the processes are. Often when a person uses a hoe in modern times (for example, urban gardeners), they use it the way one would use a plough - long troughs or lines, except that they then plant seeds in a a few locations on the line, with the belief that turning the earth has some significant impact. Tilling can be a valuable process depending on what you are growing, the quality of the soil, when it is done, etc, but it is very distinct from using a hoe to plant seeds.

In practice, planting with a hoe is extremely light work, you turn the earth (or even just make a little hole), plant the seeds, maybe apply some fertilizer, or fresh soil, then close up the hole.

With a plough, you cut a long line, usually with pack animal or mechanical assistance, and then follow and plant seeds along the entire line. This can mean managing a large animal, or operating heavy machinery, or both! Plus there is the issue of removing obstacles (dead trees/plants, rocks, and other debris).

Setting aside the physical requirements for the different planting methods, there is also the issue of the capital cost of farming. https://blog.oup.com/2013/06/agriculture-gender-roles-norms-... is a decent high level article that covers how and why this is thought to contribute to gender roles.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#55

Post by questime »

throwaw2023612 wrote: post #51

Another aspect of traditional indian family practice that relates to dowries is how a family's wealth itself flows in estate planning. When the parents die their wealth and land are inherited only by their sons (none given to daughters). The dowry in that respect, also functions as a pre-payment of a share of the family's inheritance to the bride (and her new family,) as she's moving on to a different family. In midd…

This inheritance discrimination is blatantly illegal but like many things in India the laws are fine and the justice system nonexistant.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#56

Post by vkou »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #47
dotnet00 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Wow, that's an insane perspective. So even your own daughters were thought of as a burden?

In many societies, women's labour was significantly undervalued compared to men's, so the more women, relative to men there are in your household, the more stress it puts on your resources.

Also, if women in a society inherit nothing (Because it all goes to sons), whomever they marry is going to expect a dowry, instead. Which puts further financial stress on the family, to save up for said dowry. Which is made more difficult by point #1.

Also, women often married at a younger age than men, which again, would make the dowry issue financially ruinous for a family. The longer you scrimp and save, the harder it will be for your daughter to get a good match...

----

Here's another fun bit (from ancient Greece, but plenty of other parts of the world shared the same fucked-up dynamic.)

Women weren't allowed to own property. What happens when a woman is the only child, and her dad dies?

She'd be forced to marry one of her close male relatives - usually an uncle, to 'keep the inheritance in the family'. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epikleros

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#57

Post by booi »

QuercusMax wrote: post #19
speeder wrote: post #15

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…

What I've heard is that it was to ensure that a household was set up for success. Similar to the idea of a hope chest - a girl would assemble all the necessary linen components a house would need by sewing them herself. Once she had accumulated the requisite skills and equipment to run a household, she'd be eligible for marriage.

Because obviously, the only thing a household needs for success… is linens

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#58

Post by hospitalJail »

paulddraper wrote: post #52
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…

> They’re rooted in the idea that women are property. You have that backwards!! A bride price is the price paid to the bride's family, as you would pay for property. Whereas dowry is the opposite -- paid by the bride's family to the groom. It's rooted in the idea that the groom is expected to personally contribute financially, but the bride's family makes a contribution for her. The most direct effect of the dowry it…

>A modern analog is that the bride's family paying for the wedding.

Does this occur? I havent heard of this. I'm among professionals, and it seems that everyone complains about how expensive the wedding is. I imagine if someone else was paying for it, this wouldn't be a big deal.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#59

Post by abc_lisper »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #48
abc_lisper wrote: post #20

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…

> Many of my friends had trouble finding brides 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.

Yeah. Majority of marriages even today are arranged by the family and it becomes impersonal and somewhat crassly practical. Choices are sorted by their family's net worth, social standing, color(darker complexion is looked down), age and education. Choices usually belong to the same caste. Color has nothing to do with race, like in US. People come in all sorts of colors, even in the same family, like Mendelian flowers and lighter complexion is usually preferred.

This means that if someone is educated but comes from a poor family, they may not find a match. The irony is some of these people pulled themselves up from their bootstraps. It is hard for a groom to find a bride once they are past 30, if they didn't before, because of said bootstrapping.

Edit: Added caste.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#60

Post by Phrodo_00 »

strgcmc wrote: post #32
speeder wrote: post #15

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…

Well the article paints a pretty clear hypothesis, if you read it -- dowries are rooted in the idea that in a particular kind of society (not the ones where a household is losing out on a woman's labor and hence needs a bride price), the woman who is married off into her husband's household is seen as a burden, an outsider, one more mouth to feed. Therefore a dowry is both compensation, and a demonstration of value (…

Yes, but then it isn't "rooted in the idea that women are property", it's more rooted in the idea that women are a burden, which is maybe worse.
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