When an astrologer read my birth chart, he told my mom to check my partner’s birth time to make sure the marriage would be successful. My mom is now worried I might pick the wrong person, meaning I really do need to know your birth chart before making it official. In South Asian culture, astrology is seen as a way to protect women by securing a good match. However, astrology is only one way to do this. Another prominent strategy, especially within arranged marriages: control over dowry.
Dowries can consist of money, property, jewelry, or land — essentially any gift holding monetary value that wives bring into the marriage. In arranged marriages, dowries are typically the biggest negotiator in marriage proposals. In another context, the dowry system may make it seem as if a wife’s value lies in her assets, as if the dowry is, in other words, sexist practice. However, in reality, it is just the opposite. Dowries in South Asia are used to reduce risk of insecurity and violence, and women are heading this initiative.
While there are many different types of dowries, economists Raj Arunachalam and Trevon D. Logan define modern-day dowries as one of two terms: “bequest dowry” or “bride price.” A bequest dowry is a gift the wife receives from her family at the time of her marriage. This gift is her inheritance, and they are not always items that can be utilized right away — say if it was the family house her parents and siblings are currently living in. A bride price consists of similar factors: it is also a set of assets given during marriage, but it is not a gift from the family to their daughter at marriage. The bride price is a price the wife’s family gives to the husband in order to get married. Bride price was typically used in the past, but bequest dowries have been making their mark within the marriage market.
Bequest dowries allow for wives to have control over their assets, whereas bride prices transfer the ownership of said assets to husbands. Arunachalam and Logan emphasize that marriages with bequest dowries are typically better off than marriages with bride price. But why is it important for a wife to have a bequest dowry?
In a survey of South Indian women, researchers Sasee Pallikadavath and Tamsin Bradley found that dowries themselves are not indicative of protection, but that protection comes from a wife having control over her dowry (through a bequest dowry). Similarly, economists Danesh Jayatilaka and Kopalapillai Amirthalingam found that because of the 2004 tsunami, Sri Lankan women needed more claim to their dowries as a way to ensure their safety in arranged marriages. Because many assets were lost to the tsunami, women were struggling to find ways to ensure their protection in under-resourced communities. Through their dowries, they became property and land owners, even if their land or property was damaged. By having ownership of their assets, instead of offering it as a price to their husband, dowries became an integral way for survivors of the tsunami to navigate the marriage market.
These studies have found if a wife has control over her dowry (through a bequest dowry), it could protect her from domestic violence while providing her financial independence, home and land ownership, and some control over gender roles. There is no guarantee a woman will be fully safe in her marriage, even with a bequest dowry, but dowries have been used in many communities for this reason. Dowries are a tool of survival for many women living in traditionally patriarchal societies.
Bequest dowries are so much an important protective force that it is better to not give a woman a dowry than to give her a dowry she doesn’t have control of. With a bride price, a wife’s negotiations end after the price is paid: without control, a woman’s assets become the legal property of her husband. She no longer has the safety net that assets provide — for example, the guarantee of financial or housing security. Without a dowry, however, a wife is able to negotiate outside of the realms of monetary value, something harder to do if monetary value is already transferred. In fact, reporter Kumala Wijeratne found that Tamil Sri Lankan women are currently refusing to marry any man who demands a dowry. In doing this, they are not only taking control of family assets, they are rejecting the influence financial bargains would otherwise have over their marriages. But when a woman is not able to refuse, bequest dowries are one of the best ways to ensure wives’ safety and autonomy.
Before defining our feminist framework, we must first take into account the lasting impression that sexism instilled within the subcontinent. South Asian culture, historically, often favored the husband, leaving the wife with very little freedom or say. Common examples include but are not limited to: women being forced to work within the domestic sphere, a social pressure to stay with abusive husbands, the expectation to live with in-laws, and brides having their virginity tested on the wedding night. Present day culture claims to have progressed, but women still silently suffer from the effects of generational sexism and violence.
Since bequest dowries are tools of survival, would they still be considered empowering? I argue that bequest dowries carry empowerment specifically because they are used for survival.
Bequest dowries perform as feminist agents because women were able to create safety and survival for themselves in the very system that was designed to benefit men, using the tool that historically monetized them. Dowries were not originally intended to be a tool of survival for brides, it was economic trade between families, the “simple” exchange of assets for the housing of a daughter. Women took this system and found ways for these contracts to benefit their safety and well-being. Dowries help women find justice and peace within an unjust system. In an ideal world, marriage would not include a dowry component. But until all women are able to marry without assets being bargained, bequest dowries play a significant role within South Asia.
Dowries are not valuable because they emphasize the assets a wife holds. Rather, dowries are valuable because they allow a wife to negotiate her marriage. The arranged marriage system has many flaws — almost as many flaws as the marriage systems of the west — but women have been able to reinvent the dowry into something that benefits us. And as long as dowries are part of the marriage process, South Asian women should continue to utilize bequest dowries as a way to protect ourselves.
References
Arunachalam, Raj, and Trevon D. Logan. 2016. “On the Heterogeneity of Dowry Motives.” Journal of Population Economics 29(1):135–66. doi: 10.1007/s00148-015-0544-1.
Jayatilaka, Danesh, and Kopalapillai Amirthalingam. 2015. “THE IMPACT OF DISPLACEMENT ON DOWRIES IN SRI LANKA.” Centre for Migration Research and Development.
Pallikadavath, Saseendran, and Tamsin Bradley. 2019. “DOWRY, ‘DOWRY AUTONOMY’ AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AMONG YOUNG MARRIED WOMEN IN INDIA.” Journal of Biosocial Science 51(3):353–73. doi: 10.1017/S0021932018000226.
Wijeratne, Kumala. “Tamil Brides in Sri Lanka Reject Grooms Demanding Dowries,” August 4, 2015. Global Press Journal. https://globalpressjournal.com/asia/sri_lanka/sri-lankan-tamil-brides-reject-grooms-demanding-dowries/.
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