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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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That would be bride-price, not dowry. More than token bride-price is normally a feature of polygynous societies where demand for brides exceeds supply - the market value of a wife in a Malthusian society with a monogamy norm is negative (dowry being a payment from the bride's parents to the groom, or in India his parents) because there are more women than men who can support a wife.

In other words, in our society, women entering marriage with debt is stupid.

Ah, we call it mahr in our (Muslim) system, it's money given by the Groom's family to the Bride's family to provide for her in case the marriage doesn't work out for her, it's a sort of insurance no different to how a college education is insurance for a woman since she now has the skills to work for herself and be able to live a decent life if the union with her husband goes south (yes, in reality I know modern college education is nothing of the sort, but that's beyond the point here, we care about the intention, not the results).

The standard dowry you mention the woman's family gives the man's family is actually Haram.

Islam, of course, permits polygyny (although I understand it is rare in most Muslim societies). Both Christianity and Hinduism prohibit it, meaning that dowry was near-universal among landed-class Christians and continued into the early industrial era, and is still a live issue in India.