This book is about the prevailing practices of dowry, its mechanisms, and the dowry laws as they exist in India. It argues that the practice of dowry is evolving in the commercialized neoliberal while the law has failed to keep pace with the socio-economic changes. Dowry, as it is practiced today, involves gruesome forms of economic violence, including extortion, blackmail, and exploitation of women and their families. The current legal framework ignores this triad of oppression consisting of compulsive, arbitrary dowry demands, coercion, and dowry-related violence, and therefore, it suggests rethinking the socio-legal discourse surrounding dowry in India.
This book is about the prevailing practices of dowry, its mechanisms, and the dowry laws as they exist in India. It argues that the practice of dowry is evolving in the commercialized neoliberal era, while the law has failed to keep pace with the socio-economic changes. Dowry, as it is practiced today, involves gruesome economic violence, including extortion, blackmail, holding women hostage for extracting money, and exploitation of women and their families. The current legal framework ignores this triad of oppression consisting of compulsive, arbitrary dowry demands, coercion, and dowry-related violence. Therefore, this work suggests a multipronged approach to ending the culture of dowry violence with impunity. It recommends fixing the accountability of the perpetrators of violence, developing strategies to support the survivors, transforming the patriarchal culture, and rethinking the socio-legal discourse surrounding dowry violence at the national and global level.
This book is about the prevailing practices of dowry, its mechanisms, and the dowry laws as they exist in India. It argues that the practice of dowry is evolving in the commercialized neoliberal while the law has failed to keep pace with the socio-economic changes. Dowry, as it is practiced today, involves gruesome forms of economic violence, including extortion, blackmail, and exploitation of women and their families. The current legal framework ignores this triad of oppression consisting of compulsive, arbitrary dowry demands, coercion, and dowry-related violence, and therefore, it suggests rethinking the socio-legal discourse surrounding dowry in India.
This book is about the prevailing practices of dowry, its mechanisms, and the dowry laws as they exist in India. It argues that the practice of dowry is evolving in the commercialized neoliberal era, while the law has failed to keep pace with the socio-economic changes. Dowry, as it is practiced today, involves gruesome economic violence, including extortion, blackmail, holding women hostage for extracting money, and exploitation of women and their families. The current legal framework ignores this triad of oppression consisting of compulsive, arbitrary dowry demands, coercion, and dowry-related violence. Therefore, this work suggests a multipronged approach to ending the culture of dowry violence with impunity. It recommends fixing the accountability of the perpetrators of violence, developing strategies to support the survivors, transforming the patriarchal culture, and rethinking the socio-legal discourse surrounding dowry violence at the national and global level.
Motherhood is a powerful virtue. However, in a patriarchal society, it is construed narrowly to uphold the heteronormative family norms which prioritize men over women. This traditional framework overlooks the diverse family forms and alienates female-headed households. Rather, families headed by lone mothers are chastened and labelled as broken, pathological, and degenerative. Despite constitutional guarantees of equality and justice, the state and society alienate them, deny them visibility, and absolve themselves of the responsibilities of protecting their citizenship rights. Nevertheless, for ages, single mothers, despite all hardships, have been defying patriarchal norms and are bringing up their children solely, with little support available from their families, society, or the state. Rather, they are challenging the dominant and hegemonic `male breadwinner and provider’ model. This work examines this active and empowered notion of motherhood, or feminist and emancipatory mothering, while focusing on how lone mothers are redefining and reshaping the socio-cultural norms to pave the social transformation through their maternal activism. With the increase in the number of female-headed households, this work recommends the need for an alternative approach to disrupt the dominant themes of victimhood, poverty, destitution, and neglect by deploying the axis of intersectionality. It suggests that the state needs to evolve a comprehensive empowerment framework to specifically recognize the entitlements of single mothers as citizens and take steps to advance their citizenship rights.
Some aspects of violent behavior are linked to economic incentives. In India, domestic violence is used as a bargaining instrument, to extract larger dowries from a wife's family after the marriage has taken place.
