ABSTRACT
The custom of paying dowry at the marriages of girls has taken on new forms and meanings over the 20th century and has come to be associated with violence. This chapter reviews scholarship on dowry to understand the transformation of the custom and its contemporary rationale. It observes that a coercive form of dowry is rooted in the contemporary marriage system, which normalizes the protection of women through marriage. Competition for bridegrooms with secure employment and good earnings has given the practice of dowry a market character. In this chapter, Praveena Kodoth details how dowry is characterized by gender inequality that is implicit in the structure of marriage, as evidenced in (i) women's relatively early age at marriage, (ii) the normative age gap between spouses, (iii) the relatively low investment in women's human capital and (iv) women's structural disadvantages in the labour market.
