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How Dowries Are Fuelling a Femicide Epidemic
- sonofhans 3y agoDowries 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 he couldn’t pay their dowries, and he knew he’s spend the rest of his life in shame with daughters who were spinsters, or dead.
- boringg 3y agoAwful, all of it.
- spoonjim 3y agoDoes 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?
- boomboomsubban 3y agoHow would you pay it at the time of the marriage? Bring a large sum of money to an event with tons of people?
- dotnet00 3y agoIt can be a mix of all sorts of cases. Sometimes the expectation is for it to be paid by marriage, but, especially for daughters of wealthier families it has also been a common thing to marry and then use the marriage as leverage because divorces are also often blamed on the woman.
- vasco 3y ago> spend the rest of his life in shame with daughters who were spinsters Perspective is a hell of a thing.
- poopbutt7 3y agowhat the fuck
- speeder 3y agoNot 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, it was expected then that the husband's family would pay the bride's family enough money to replace the "lost labor" of having one of their workers moving away. I don't know the logic behind dowries though, much less why it persists now. EDIT: making clearer: Bride Price: Man pays the Woman's father. "buying" her, and giving in payment a value expected to be equal to the labor her father lost with her moving away. Dowry: Woman's father pays the Man. Never saw someone "buying" something by getting paid for it... thus why I think Dowry has nothing to do with women being property. (instead it is more like Women are a burden you want to offload).
- engineer_22 3y agoFrom the article it looks like the dowry is a form of extortion - keep us well paid or something bad will happen to your daughter.
- QuercusMax 3y agoWhat 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.
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoE: this comment explained it very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299846. 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.
- paulddraper 3y ago> 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.
- hospitalJail 3y ago>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.
- paulddraper 3y agoAbsolutely. https://www.google.com/search?q=who+pays+for+the+wedding 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.
- hospitalJail 3y agoWell TIL, thank you.
- russelldjimmy 3y agoThis is still common in Indian society. Even in cities, among well educated circles.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WeylandYutani 3y agoAsk a conservative Christian if they think women are equal to men and they'll end up with "seperate but equal" bullshit. Baby machines. It reminds me of the Tleilaxu in Dune. It's understandable because humans were dropping like flies 2000 years ago.
- reducesuffering 3y agoDo you think Men and Womens' division tennis is bullshit? Do you know who would be the biggest critics of combining them?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vhcr 3y agohttps://archive.is/98DKB https://archive.is/98DKB
- fsckboy 3y agoI 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 was "owned", farming was "men's work" Where women did agricultural work, a brideprice was paid, as per the theory, because a women's productive output was valuable. Where men did agricultural work, a bride was expected to bring a dowery, paid as a transfer from her family's land-based wealth. I find it interesting how very rough "logic" from many thousand years ago would continue to affect us today.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoStandard religious practice. In the US, it has a huge impact on our politics. Other nations have their own issues with religion, as in India. Also, as any engineer can attest, “We’ve always done it this way” is quite powerful.
- renewiltord 3y agoWhat 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.
- b112 3y agoMy 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).
- questime 3y agoI 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.
- failuser 3y agoTraditions are very hard to break.
- stevenwoo 3y agoThe 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.
- kgodey 3y agoPeople 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.
- moffkalast 3y agoGoes to show that supply and demand theory doesn't really work in practice.
- zabzonk 3y agothe whole dowry thing is dreadful, but it is not going away onless better articles (and documentaries) are done on it than this one - write clearer, write shorter, and despite the horrible subject, use some wit.
- elil17 3y ago>Use some wit The author's aunt was brutally murdered.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoCan 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?
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoYeah I don't get this either.
- failuser 3y agoUtilization 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.
- bombcar 3y agoIt would imply the girl is negative-value property, if property at all. Cultures are different and what the norms associated with even apparently identical practices (dowries in Britain vs dowries in India) could be entirely unrelated.
- adamrezich 3y agothis has always bothered me too, to the point of making me think that the "only a century ago, women were considered property" claim to either be a false oversimplification, or require far more justification than I've ever seen given to the topic. because like, I can sell my property, in addition to buying it—so I'm not really sure how that adds up, either.
- Dracophoenix 3y agoThe doctrine applied to married women is called coverture. Coverture deems that a married woman has no independent existence or right, but shares with her husband the benefits and (some of) the rights of he had possesses. > because like, I can sell my property, in addition to buying it—so I'm not really sure how that adds up, either. Bodily organs are recognized as property and yet many countries forbid their purchase or sale irrespective of the owner's or purchaser's consent.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- klipt 3y agoIndia's anti dowry laws tried to address this but went way overboard. Some highlights: https://theswaddle.com/indias-dowry-laws-are-ineffective-easily-exploited-and-women-are-paying-the-price/ 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 divorce for the wife to get what she wants
- giantg2 3y ago"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.
- abc_lisper 3y agoThe 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 values, the customs are from another era, and are not fit for anyone living in modern era. All my Indian friends, please gain some perspective and recognize the ills of "customs" too, along with the good that comes with it. The country and the world will be better for it.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago> 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.
- abc_lisper 3y agoYeah. 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.
- hef19898 3y agoOne thing that steuck me as odd, and out right bizarre, was reading some English language newspaper in Delhi like a decade ago. My assumption, as a liberal European, was a) an English language paper most likely was read by more educated people and b) youth problems, I come to that, are more or less the same. The odd thing so was a whole bunch of readers letters, in a kind of advice collum of sorts, around the question of what to do if your parents haven't found a marriage partner for you yet! I, maybe naively, expected the problem to be the opposite. My impression was, that the younger generation seemed to more conservative regarding arranged marriages then their parents. I might be mistaken so. Back then I made a comment about how us Europeans have a probpem with arranged marriages in the Muslim world, but upheld, at the time, India as this huge, free democracy. And I made a mental note about cultural differences. I do wonder so, what this does with the people involved. Marriage is hard enough sometimes, and yes feelings don't make it easier, but spending your whole life with a person you don't love or care about sounds horrible. As does being kind of forced to spend your live alone, if that is not your choosing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaw2023612 3y agoAnother 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.
- questime 3y agoThis inheritance discrimination is blatantly illegal but like many things in India the laws are fine and the justice system nonexistant.
- screye 3y agoI am not so sure about that. In India, the eldest son is also expected to take care of their parents through their old age, and there fore inherits the family house. After watching a good dozen families take care of aging parents, I can say with confidence, that inheritance is an insufficient payment for the human cost of being a carer to your in-laws for 40+ years. I know quite a lot of family feuds that have broken up in the last decade, where the brother finds it hypocritical that the sister never contributed to taking care of the parents but showed up at their death's door for inheritance. Remember, divorce is non-existent in India. So, any money paid to the the son-in-law or the daughter, can be considered to be going to the same joint account. Again, Dowry is terrible, and fortunately my region does not practice it. But even in cases where it does exist, the monetary exchange is surprisingly even when all the responsibilities are tallied up. Social systems around the world develop in their own context. Taking them out of that context often leads to head scratchers and blatantly incorrect conclusion.
- rcktmrtn 3y ago> 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.
- shmde 3y agoWhy does this article contain funny comics in between the paras ? Getting emotionally wrecked and a funny comic appears out of the blue in between the paragraph feels really weird.
- websap 3y agoI'm not normally emotional, but reading this invoked a rather visceral reaction. I'm from India and spend the first 25 years of my life in India. It's hard for me to parse the truth between the stories not lining up between the parents and the husband.
- rohith2506 3y agoGrowing up in the southern rural part of India, where traditions are deeply rooted, and now living in a progressive Western society, I have been reflecting on a pressing issue that continues to plague our society: dowry. While poverty, lack of education, and gender inequality contribute to this problem, the most terrifying aspect is that society has normalized and accepted it as the status quo. Even among the brightest minds I encountered at a national university, seven out of ten of my acquaintances personally admitted to accepting dowry during their marriages. This stark reality left me feeling a mixture of sadness and disappointment, as it demonstrated that even individuals with progressive thoughts and ideologies on paper still engage in this archaic practice. The article I read regarding dowry failed to address a crucial point – it presented the issue in binary terms. For women who grow up in rural areas and get married within their local communities, the crux of the problem lies in the gray area. While cases of physical torture inflicted by husbands or their families for dowry exist, they represent a minority compared to the emotional torture women endure if they fail to meet expectations. Let me share an example involving a close relative of mine. Her daughter was married into a local community, and before the wedding, an agreement was made to provide a dowry of 10,000 euros along with covering the wedding expenses. For my relatives, this was a significant sum, and they managed to gather around 70% of the agreed amount, which they handed over to the groom's family. Unfortunately, their efforts were met with disappointment. The real problems for the girl began a month after the wedding. She was not treated with respect or equality in her new home. Her husband never supported her and constantly criticized everything she did, as did her mother and father-in-law. While they never resorted to physical abuse, the emotional abuse she endured was indescribable. Constant pestering, undermining her upbringing, and calling her unfit for everything took a severe toll on her mental health. She even contemplated suicide multiple times. Now, at this point, many of you might feel sympathetic and wish to offer advice, which I'm sure can be categorized into the following three options: Why can't she divorce him and pursue a happier life? It may seem easy for us to suggest, as we are not the ones who have to face the consequences. Unfortunately, in India, especially in rural areas, divorce still remains a taboo, and mental health concerns are often disregarded. She believes that enduring emotional suffering is a better option than going through a divorce. She has resigned herself to her fate, feeling that she cannot change it and must work with what she has. This sad reality is further compounded if she has children, amplifying her sense of entrapment. Why not report the family to the police and hold them accountable? Let's consider the scenario in which she lodges a complaint. What is likely to happen? The police may issue a warning to the family, given the absence of physical abuse. However, this would only widen the divide between her and her husband's family. The alternative, as we have already discussed, is divorce. Consequently, she finds herself trapped in an endless loop of suffering, seeking solace and happiness through her children. As a child, I remember her as a beautiful and vibrant charismatic woman. However, when I see her now, all I see is the profound sorrow buried within her eyes. Yet, she still wears a smile for her children and clings to a tiny glimmer of optimism that tomorrow will be better.
- jschveibinz 3y agoThe average net dowry is $361 in India. From a BBC article at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57677253 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57677253 “the researchers found that a groom's family spends on average about 5,000 rupees ($67; £48) in real terms in gifts to the bride's family. The gifts from the bride's family, unsurprisingly, cost seven times more at about 32,000 rupees ($429). This implied an average real net dowry of 27,000 rupees ($361).”
- wrp 3y agoTFA is about India. Don't automatically apply its perspective to other cultures, because the motivation of dowry/bride price can vary considerably. When I worked in Arabia, I had occasion to discuss wedding arrangements with some traditional families as they were going through negotiations for a wedding contract. Although they used "dowry", what they were concerned about was not really that or a bride price. When getting married, the husband is expected to give the bride a large lump sum of money. The bride is then expected to hold it in reserve in case something happens with the husband (e.g. divorce or death). Another example is the historical case of dowries in England, such as you read much about in Jane Austen novels. Because of primogeniture, women couldn't inherit estates, but fathers were still concerned to pass wealth along to their daughters. Dowries allowed a transfer of wealth that couldn't be done through inheritance.
- screye 3y agoThis has been an odd article to read. It sounds like it's about 10 years too late, and didn't pass my smell test. I empathize with the stories being told, the unjust tragedies of the subject and the persistence of of dowries. But, the statistics are maliciously sourced. > By 2008, dowry was near-universal in rural areas, and many regions had seen alarming rates of dowry inflation. "World Bank found the average net dowry had been "remarkably stable" over time, with some inflation before 1975 and after 2000. And the researchers found an average real net dowry of 27,000 rupees ($361). [1] At an average of $361, dowry sounds more like a formality than a real expense. Any research into dowries also has to weigh it by what it means as a real economic burden." Dowries consume a substantial proportion of household savings and income: in 2007, the average net dowry in rural India was equivalent to 14% of annual household income. I can't imagine that 14% of a poor family's income in 1 year would play a substantive role in sex selection. IMO, dowries are a more prominent problem in middle-class societies where the woman is deemed to be 'marrying up'. In those cases you will see numbers that would devastate any family, but I find it to be a natural commodification of a marriage which India has always seen from a more transactional lens than than of irrational love. It is reprehensible in the same way that being a gold-digger is reprehensible anywhere. It used to be doubly reprehensible when it was socially enforced, but that has become increasingly difficult in middle class communities as women have gotten more educated, selective and aware of their own rights. (the anti dowry and anti-domestic violence laws are very harsh on paper in India) > 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. Female representation in higher education is rising, yet female labor-force participation, as of 2021, sits at a paltry twenty-three per cent, declining from twenty-eight per cent in 1990. This is the clearest sign of journalistic mal-practice. We have numbers till 2021, and they have sharply declined since 2016. [2] [3] Rates of sex-selective abortion have clearly declined especially among those who can afford ultra sounds. > Female representation in higher education is rising, yet female labor-force participation, as of 2021, sits at a paltry twenty-three per cent, declining from twenty-eight per cent in 1990. A 2015 study published in The World Bank Economic Review showed that women were less likely to work when their husbands were educated and had high incomes, again underlining the paradoxical effects of affluence. India seems to value women less than when it outlawed dowry, sixty years ago. I am not sure I agree with the conclusion. As India has moved from an agricultural economy [4] (where women were defacto employed) to physical migrant labor (defacto male employment), there is a natural lack of fresh jobs for low skilled women. While it is a scathing indictment of the one-sidedness of labor force changes in India, it isn't caused by sexism. The article makes it sound as if all trends are pointing downwards, but look at the numbers [5] and they've been sharply rising from 2016 - 2021. Hilariously, a lot of India's problems are due to labor force protections. Neighboring Bangladesh was able to vastly increase their female labor force participation by allowing exploitative textile factories to be built. This led to a massive rise in safe and non-physical jobs for women. > The Indian state of Punjab, where the majority of the world’s Sikhs live, has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the country The decline in Sikh female infancide has been quite stark [6]. Long way to go, but an directionally excellent. ______________ I know that : "all stats for women are looking up in India since 2016" is not a narrative anyone wants to buy right now. But there is cause for genuine enthusiasm. There are also signs that the govt. might actually weaken some of the labor restrictions, and we might see some Bangladesh style rise in women-favored jobs, but the optics of "worse labor protections" makes it political kryptonite. ______________ [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57677253 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57677253 [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/08/23/changes-in-son-preference-ultrasound-use-and-fertility/#:~:text=and%20Society.%E2%80%9D)-,These,-changes%20in%20ultrasound https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/08/23/changes-in-s... [3] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/08/23/indias-sex-ratio-at-birth-begins-to-normalize/pr_2022-08-23_india-sex-ration_00-01/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/08/23/indias-sex-r... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Share_of_labour_force_employed_in_agriculture_in_India.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Share_of_labour_force_emp... [5] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locations=IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locat... [6] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2022/08/PR_2022.08.23_india-sex-ration_00-02.png https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/site...