From the article: > "Dowry usually emerges in highly stratified societies, like caste-structured India and colonial Latin America, whereas the reverse conventi

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...