What are dowries? Well first off a dowry is money, goods, or estate that brings women to a man on their marriage date. This is done so that the man can feed and house his family just in case he dies and she becomes a widow. This tradition is not very popular anymore because now they stick to bride pricing.
So the bride price which according to anthropological literature is, the groom’s family pays money to her family for the loss of their daughter. That just still does not make any sense to me. Sometimes I sit and wonder where people came up with the thought of giving women a dollar sign to their name. Well it all started back in 1790 B.C in ancient Babylon, with a code called The Code of Hammurabi. The code basically has a list of 282 laws of dos and donts that you are allowed to do and follow in the country it is basically like our Bill of Rights.
Code of Hammurabi:
• a man who paid the bride price but looked for another bride would not get a refund, but he would if the father of the bride refused the match.
• If a wife died without sons, her father was entitled to the return of her dowry, minus the value of the bride price.
In today’s culture there are plenty of countries that still follow these traditions they are not mandatory but they still practice it, such as Thailand, China, Africa and Central Asia. When I was reading this whole thing I bumped into a very absurd statement which stated that In Thailand it depends what the women is worth, if she is divorced or is heard around to have slept with many men she might be sold off for nothing. That was just so oblivious and arrogant!
So now I have a better understanding of this whole “bride price” tradition. I still as a person with my own opinion do not and probably will never agree with it.
^ http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/hammurabi.html
http://www.ask.com/web?q=dictionary%3A+dowry&content=ahdict|43811&o=10616&l=dir
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/th.html
This was a great post. It was very interesting and has opened my eyes to something that I was not aware of. You can count me in as another who does not agree with this and will never agree with this. This makes me wonder how the women feel about the price that they were deemed "worth" as opposed to another woman whom others felt was not "worth" the price that she was sold. I would imgine that self esteem might be an issue in a lot of these countries. Are there any cultures that practice this, but only in reverse where men are sold for what someone else feels that they are "worth"? There probably are not.
ReplyDeleteI get the impression a "dowry" is just a synonym for "bride price." You suggest that they are different here, but I can't really tell. What are the acutal differences? I like how you move to a historical code like Hammaurabi's. But other cultures were also going on concurrently...Egyptian and Chinese, to name two. Do they have similar practices?
ReplyDeleteAlso, make sure to add reference data to your URL to fill it out (FLOW, PR).
I completely understand what your saying in this blog. Dowrys are still accepted in my culture and it still doesnt make sense to me. Why would any parent want to put a price tag on their daughter? I didnt realize that putting a price on a bride was something that started such a long time ago and its crazy to think that it still till this day continues.
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