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Strategic Life Decisions: Who Has the Final Say?
While, in theory, bride price can be interpreted as explicit recognition and valuation of women’s potential contribution to marriage, in practice, it often limits women’s control over their own lives. Similarly, in theory, dowry may endow daughters with property (or an inheritance) early in life to protect them (or give them some agency), but in practice, it transfers “their” property rights to the husband. It is worth noting that it is not just women who want to change traditional marital practices. A young man in Koudipally Mandal (Andhra Pradesh), India, explained that, although a dowry is traditional and common practice, although he took a dowry for his wife, and although he (like other men) has control over the assets taken under dowry, he still felt that “more love marriages should take place.” Young men in Sudan (Red Sea State) also wanted to be able to freely choose who to marry, but they did not believe that women should have the same right. Most focus groups indicated that formalizing a union via wedding or civil ceremony is customary, but they called less forcefully for expanding that practice. Interestingly, in Peru where informal unions are more frequent, some young women wanted legal unions because they felt that a marriage contract brought them more benefits and rights, such as financial support for childrearing and social status and respectability. They also believed that they gain voz y voto (voice and say) in their household. For them, a formal marriage license, by securing their status as wives, is a means of getting more equal footing with their partners. But norms and practices are hard to change. The desires of young women to change certain practices restricting their freedom to choose do not go unchallenged. Young men in Afghanistan, the Republic of Yemen, Tanzania, Sudan, Vietnam, South Africa, and Fiji, and some adult women in South Africa, the Republic of Yemen, and Vietnam, pushed back strongly. They argued for the protection of traditional marriage customs to preserve the norm—the way things have been done in their culture as passed down by the ancestors—for the future.
How Can a Child Take Care of Another Child? The average age of a girl or young woman when they bear their first child varied among the communities studied. As seen in table 3.2, rural focus groups reported that women start having children much earlier than their urban peers, and earlier than the average age that young men become fathers for the first time. Nearly 50 percent of rural groups said most girls were mothers by age 17, compared
Table 3.2 Age of Men and Women at Birth of First Child percent Men Women
Rural Urban Rural Urban
15 years or less
16–17 years
18–25 years
26+ years
15 14 26 13
23 17 22 18
54 57 44 58
8 12 7 10
Note: Average age of marriage in each community as reported by 194 young adult focus groups.
On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3