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How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

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Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#61

Post by jwond »

dotnet00 wrote: post #42
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…

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…

> the practice of having the wife burn alive on the husband's funeral pyre

known as "sati"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#62

Post by fzeroracer »

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?

You're missing the actual exchange in this situation, which is societal status. The property being exchanged is your daughter and a sum of money; in exchange your family receives higher status and connections. Exchanging family for status has been a strong factor throughout human history because it can give certain legal and monetary benefits.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#63

Post by paulddraper »

hospitalJail wrote: post #58
paulddraper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Absolutely. https://www.google.com/search?q=who+pays+for+the+wedding

However, as marriage age has increased drastically over the last half decade, the financial obligations have shifted somewhat.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#64

Post by throwaway8534 »

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…

My wife came with a dowry. When I asked her about it, the rationale she gave was that it's a bit like child support and a bit like insurance.

It's like child support in that her parents wanted to be sure that her needs were met, and the money can be used directly for that.

It's like insurance in that if her health declines or for any other reason I start to view her as a burden, I'm agreeing to keep caring for her anyway rather than divorcing her. They're paying for that.

(I have no idea how much the dowry was -- I just handed her the envelope and she deposited it in her own accounts. I'm an American and accepting a dowry of course seemed weird and foreign, but she insisted that declining it would be improper.)

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#65

Post by dotnet00 »

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?

Yep, it was very messed up. It also went both ways, my maternal grandmother suffered decades of abuse from her son because she didn't consider her married daughters to be 'her' family. It took a plan of forcibly sneaking her out, moving her away and threatening her son with legal action to get her away.

Even after that she struggled to accept being a 'burden' on her daughters.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#66

Post by hef19898 »

booi wrote: post #57
QuercusMax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In a time, not so long ago, before we could have all the clothes for cheap in super markets, yes, it definitely helped.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#67

Post by toast0 »

booi wrote: post #57
QuercusMax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And a place to store them!

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#68

Post by hospitalJail »

paulddraper wrote: post #63
hospitalJail wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Absolutely. https://www.google.com/search?q=who+pays+for+the+wedding However, as marriage age has increased drastically over the last half decade, the financial obligations have shifted somewhat.

Well TIL, thank you.

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#69

Post by ZephyrBlu »

vkou wrote: post #56
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

This is going to be a very western perspective, but I thought that historically women's labour has been mostly valued as a homemaker. Is that not the case in a lot of non-western societies?

I'm also wondering if beauty plays a role in dowries. If a woman is beautiful does that mean she might have a lower dowry, or they don't care about beauty at all?

Re: How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic

#70

Post by rcktmrtn »

> In the nineteen-twenties, dowry payments occurred in about a third of marriages. By 2008, they were near-universal in rural areas, and many regions had seen alarming rates of dowry inflation.

> The expansion of dowry coincides with other worrying changes. Rates of sex-selective abortion appear to have increased in almost all states between 1981 and 2016, especially among wealthy and educated women.

> The payment of dowry, which was expected to die out with modernization, provides a telling example. In Europe, marriage payments mostly disappeared with industrialization

Abortion/family planning for the wealthy and sophisticated, dowry for the poor. National and international. Highly industrialized countries no longer need as many children to work the farm, since they can exploit their colonies and machines. Poorer countries have an extra incentive to create male dominated jobs as human farm/factory equipment foisted on their economy that traditional structures become ugly as they bear. Exploited men exploit women. Being exploited may be lucrative way to make USD, but it's not good for your culture.

There definitely are better and worse among traditional system of inheritance/dowry/brideprice, but I don't feel like dowry is the main thing at play here.

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