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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 t

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, 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 ago
From 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 ago
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.
- booi 3y ago
  Because obviously, the only thing a household needs for success… is linens
  - hef19898 3y ago
    In a time, not so long ago, before we could have all the clothes for cheap in super markets, yes, it definitely helped.
  - toast0 3y ago
    And a place to store them!
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Because obviously, the only thing a household needs for success… is linens I think you take for granted just how difficult and time-consuming it is to produce cloth and material for clothing. If a woman got married and had one child, there'd be little to no time to make clothing for the second child that followed almost immediately after[1]. [1] Contraceptive, while being an ancient invention, was never widely used until recently (past 50 years, maybe?)
    - QuercusMax 3y ago
      Cloth goods were expensive up until quite recently. People generally didn't have nearly as many outfits as we do now. Being able to repair and manufacture your own clothing and linens was a huge deal.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
strgcmc 3y ago
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 (i.e. take my daughter because she has a high dowry, and is thus more desirable to marry than other girls with less dowry).
- Phrodo_00 3y ago
  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.
abc_lisper 3y ago
It was like that in India too. Some social critics and authors back in late 19th and early 20th century changed that practice. Dowry started as a pocket-money for the girl, when she leaves her parent's house to go with her husband, because woman is "their" property now. Parents worried about her daughter's well-being there, would do that in consolation that it might help her, should things go south. That generousness was "expected" as time rolled on.
parl_match 3y ago
> 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.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  That's a "bride price"; the opposite of a dowry.
dotnet00 3y ago
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 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.
- ZephyrBlu 3y ago
  > 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?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vkou 3y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epikleros
throwaway8534 3y ago
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.)
tropdrop 3y ago
From the article: > "Dowry usually emerges in highly stratified societies, like caste-structured India and colonial Latin America, whereas the reverse convention, bride price, is more likely to appear in communities with less socioeconomic differentiation, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Some critics object to the way “paying” for a bride seems to commodify women, but there is little evidence that bride price harms women’s well-being. Dowry, in contrast, encourages two forms of violence." Occam's razor says that while bride price does, in theory, objectify women, it also places an objective metric ($$$) on her value – you must pay $$$ in order to receive this precious artifact. Whereas it seems that dowry places the opposite objective metric (-$$$) on her value, i.e., please, take this burden off our hands and we will pay you $$$. EDIT: An afterthought, it seems what might also be at play is that doing work on something (or, paying a lot of hard-earned money for something) makes us value it more. This is borne out in the Ben Franklin effect, where doing someone a favor makes you like that someone more, not the other way around. [1] 1 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/11/16/do-me-a-favor-so-youll-like-me-the-reverse-psychology-of-likeability/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/11/16/do-me-a-favor-so...
freetinker 3y ago
By labor you mean indentured servitude?

engineer_22 3y ago

From 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 ago

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.

booi 3y ago
Because obviously, the only thing a household needs for success… is linens
- hef19898 3y ago
  In a time, not so long ago, before we could have all the clothes for cheap in super markets, yes, it definitely helped.
- toast0 3y ago
  And a place to store them!
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Because obviously, the only thing a household needs for success… is linens I think you take for granted just how difficult and time-consuming it is to produce cloth and material for clothing. If a woman got married and had one child, there'd be little to no time to make clothing for the second child that followed almost immediately after[1]. [1] Contraceptive, while being an ancient invention, was never widely used until recently (past 50 years, maybe?)
  - QuercusMax 3y ago
    Cloth goods were expensive up until quite recently. People generally didn't have nearly as many outfits as we do now. Being able to repair and manufacture your own clothing and linens was a huge deal.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

strgcmc 3y ago

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 (i.e. take my daughter because she has a high dowry, and is thus more desirable to marry than other girls with less dowry).

Phrodo_00 3y ago
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.

abc_lisper 3y ago

It was like that in India too. Some social critics and authors back in late 19th and early 20th century changed that practice. Dowry started as a pocket-money for the girl, when she leaves her parent's house to go with her husband, because woman is "their" property now. Parents worried about her daughter's well-being there, would do that in consolation that it might help her, should things go south. That generousness was "expected" as time rolled on.

parl_match 3y ago

> 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.

paulddraper 3y ago
That's a "bride price"; the opposite of a dowry.

dotnet00 3y ago

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 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.

ZephyrBlu 3y ago
> 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?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vkou 3y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epikleros

throwaway8534 3y ago

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.)

tropdrop 3y ago

From the article: > "Dowry usually emerges in highly stratified societies, like caste-structured India and colonial Latin America, whereas the reverse convention, bride price, is more likely to appear in communities with less socioeconomic differentiation, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Some critics object to the way “paying” for a bride seems to commodify women, but there is little evidence that bride price harms women’s well-being. Dowry, in contrast, encourages two forms of violence." Occam's razor says that while bride price does, in theory, objectify women, it also places an objective metric ($$$) on her value – you must pay $$$ in order to receive this precious artifact. Whereas it seems that dowry places the opposite objective metric (-$$$) on her value, i.e., please, take this burden off our hands and we will pay you $$$. EDIT: An afterthought, it seems what might also be at play is that doing work on something (or, paying a lot of hard-earned money for something) makes us value it more. This is borne out in the Ben Franklin effect, where doing someone a favor makes you like that someone more, not the other way around. [1] 1 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/11/16/do-me-a-favor-so-youll-like-me-the-reverse-psychology-of-likeability/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/11/16/do-me-a-favor-so...

freetinker 3y ago

By labor you mean indentured servitude?