A large amount of gift money. This article is from the WeChat official account:Earth Knowledge Bureau (ID: diqiuzhishiju) author: Dmitry, cartography: Sun green, proofreading: cat Stewart, editor: Yakult, head Figure from: vision China
If there are a few destiny nodes in a person’s life, marriage must be one of the important ones, so a sense of ritual is essential.
In China, common marriage ceremonies include appointment, return, reception, wedding banquet, wedding travel, etc. A complete wedding usually takes three to five days and dozens of processes.
One of the most distinctive features of the bride is the bride price. The bride price is the beginning of the marriage contract between the two parties in ancient times. The man’s family will give the woman a gift in the name of the bridegroom to represent the festive and auspicious wishes.
However, in certain regions and certain families in modern times, the bride price has become a deformed custom and a heavy burden for some rural male families. It is even linked to the sale of marriage and interference with the freedom of marriage.
In India, which is connected with the mountains and rivers of our country, the dowry system is a big mountain that weighs on most families. The difference is that the pressure is on the woman’s family.
The wedding is big
India’s dowry system refers to the money paid by the bride’s family to the man’s family in cash or in kind. Includes but is not limited to cash, jewelry, electrical appliances, furniture, vehicles and other household items.
The popularity of this system in India is veryIt is so wide that almost all ethnic groups and religions except the Northeast State jointly abide by the customary custom of giving a betrothal gift from the woman to the man.
This vulgar vulgarity only began to be re-examined in modern times (artwork picture: Wikipedia)▼
The amount of the bride price depends on many factors, such as region, caste, education level of the groom, bride’s appearance, etc., etc. Sometimes the negotiation skills of the bride’s family can also affect the amount of the bride price.
World Bank scholar Vijayawada Rawa, and Indian economics professor Anil Diolarica at the University of California, Riverside, have done statistics, now an Indian woman When married, the family’s dowry purchase cost can be as high as $130,000, which is not a small figure for most Indian families.
India’s GDP per capita in 2018 was only US$2010, and the high cost of gift purchases does not match the economic situation of Indian nationals (Photo: Radiokafka/Shutterstock) ▼
This kind of high price gift actually comes from the traditional concept of gender and marriage in Indian society. For example, some ethnic minorities in China also do not pay the bride price when they get married, and women bring part of the family property to marry, but this property belongs only to the woman herself, so that women have the ability to be independent when they get married.
In India, traditionally, women’s personal values are extremely underestimated, and they don’t think that women’s husbands and children and cleaning housework are things that create value. If a woman marries the man’s house, eats and lives with the man, she must pay a certain price.
Even if these men are poor at home, they have the upper hand in the relationship because of their gender advantages (Photo: Yavuz Sariyildiz / Shutterstock)▼
What’s even worse, In India’s inheritance system, women do not have the right to directly inherit family property. Although the “Indian Succession Act” passed into effect in 1956 clearly stipulates that daughters enjoy equal rights in family property, this regulation is often a dead letter in practice.
However, this does not mean that Indian parents do not need to save money for their daughters. Parents paying the bridegroom to their daughters are also regarded as a means of property distribution.
Indian girls are educated since they were young. They are proud of someone to marry. To marry a good wife is the growth goal of many girls (Photo: Ritesh Ranjan) Sett / Shutterstock)▼
In a family with many girls, their fathers tend to have more pressure. An Indian woman recalled in an interview: When she was young, every time her father was lax and frustrated at work, other relatives would remind him that he had three daughters and he wanted to save money for them. money.
It has become the pursuit of many families to marry their daughters early, even if they are minors, it does not matter, and there is even a market (Photo: De Visu / Shutterstock)▼
Then can women save money to pay for themselves? The answer is yes, but there are no conditions. In India, the illiteracy rate among women is 34%, which is higher than the 17% among men, and because India’s statistics on illiteracy are relatively crude, even those women who are not defined as “illiterate” may not have enough literacy. ability.
There are very few women who can go to high school or college, and most of them have no chance to be exposed to the ideas of openness, equality, women’s rights, etc. (picture : Talukdar David / Shutterstock)▼
In this situation, it is difficult for women to find a job that can make ends meet. Although more and more women are joining the labor force, some things are so ingrained in a certain culture and gender politics that it is not easy to get rid of them in a short time.
Having a job also represents a certain degree of financial independence, which is a prerequisite for the improvement of women’s status (Photo: Talukdar David / Shutterstock)▼
no betrothal gifts
The main reason why the pressure of the bride’s family is so high,is that the amount of the bride’s gift is directly proportional to the quality of life of the woman after marriage.
As mentioned above, women doing housework at home are not considered to create value, so women who don’t work are regarded as burdens at home. The man must spend a certain amount of money in order to support this “cumbersome”, and this money is best not paid by the man himself.
Women have to bring their own money and come to men’s homes to give birth and work, and even face life-threatening (Photo: VibhaSrivastava/Shutterstock)▼
A report by a women’s organization stated: “A woman’s value is only worth the property she brings. If she unfortunately lives longer, (The cost of raising her) exceeds the dowry, then she depreciates into something that can be destroyed or discarded.”
This is not alarmist,It often appears in India because the man’s family pays the bride price to the woman’s family.