Calvi, R., & Keskar, A. (2021). 'Til Dowry Do Us Apart: Bargaining and Violence in Indian Families. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3783911
Laws against dowry, the practice wherein the bride’s family pays money and other gifts to the family of the groom during marriage, have been made more stringent over the decades. These anti-dowry laws, which allow for a jail sentence of up to 5 years for members of the groom’s family who are found to be guilty, are widely believed to have reined in at least the explicit exchange of dowry items. However, the downfall in the practise of dowry shows only one side of the story. There may be other unseen and unintended consequences resulting from the strict legal ban on dowry that need to be taken into account while evaluating anti-dowry laws.
In “Til Dowry Do Us Part: Bargaining and Violence in Indian Families,” economists Rossella Calvi and Ajinkya Keskar look into the amendment to the Dowry Prohibition Act and its various effects on the Indian family setup. In 1961, India enacted the Dowry Prohibition Act that made the giving and receiving of any dowry illegal. This law proved to be unsuccessful in curbing the practice and hence, in 1984, it was amended with stricter provisions. As a result, there was a significant increase in convictions and greater public awareness around the anti-dowry law.
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The researchers note that after the anti-dowry law was amended by the Government in 1984, the value of the gifts that were exchanged as dowry between families dropped by as much as 20% between 1985 and 1990. Further, while the prevalence of dowry dropped among the Hindus who came under the purview of the anti-dowry law, it remained unchanged among the Muslims who were not covered under the law. All this suggests that the anti-dowry laws curbed the practise of dowry to a significant extent.
The encouraging drop in the exchange of dowry gifts for marriage, however, had other negative consequences. The authors argue that there is always an implicit bargain that happens between the bride’s side and the groom’s side with each side trying to maximise its gains from the marital partnership. Laws against dowry changed the terms of bargaining between the two sides to some extent. For instance, with stricter anti-dowry laws, the groom’s family could no longer explicitly bargain for money and other gifts as a condition for marriage. But anti-dowry laws do not take other bargaining tools out of the equation of marriage. The groom’s family could still bargain in other ways implicitly. When dowry is outlawed, the groom’s family may expect the bride to have a job that brings a steady flow of earnings to the family. The researchers, in fact, found that parents of daughters started investing more in their daughters’ education and career to compensate for the absence of dowry.
More importantly, the outlawing of dowry also led to a drop in the status of women within the family after marriage. The researchers found that women’s decision-making powers within the family (such as their say on how to spend their husband’s earnings) dropped by around 3 percentage points after dowry was outlawed. This is because when dowry could no longer be used as a bargaining chip by women, the influence that women had within the family began to drop. In such a scenario, unless women brought something else other than dowry that was lucrative to the table, the groom’s family was likely to be disappointed with the marriage deal. Violence against women also witnessed a rise of about 2 percentage points after dowry was outlawed. Further, given the widespread social stigma against divorce, women had no choice but to stay in these abusive marriages. The researchers thus warn that prevailing social attitudes, such as the transactional view that many people have towards marriage must be taken into account when framing laws to protect women.
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