Dowry System In Pakistani Societies

Submitted To:

Miss. Madiha Mohsin

Submitted By:

Sonia Kanwal

Quaid-i-Azam University

Department of Anthropology

Islamabad-Pakistan
Introduction

Marriage plays an important role in human life. It is a turning point in the life of
women. In Pakistani culture, it leads to many problems in life after marriage but
before marriage there is even a bigger challenge for a girl’s family that can affect
her life after marriage. And that challenge is dowry system. Among other societal
issues infecting Pakistani society, the dowry system plays the most significant
role.

Dowry system in Pakistani societies is a transfer of parental property at the

marriage of a daughter. It includes furniture, linen, money, etc. Dowry contrasts
with the related concept of bride. It is the wealth transferred from the bride’s
family to the groom or his family. This trend has now become status symbol of
parents. This status symbol puts bitter impacts on finance. This fun may provide
the financial security in widowhood against a careless husband, and may
eventually go to provide for her children, but it’s bound to effect the society badly
in the end.

Dowry is no longer a set of gift items intended for contributing towards a suitable
beginning of the practical life of a newly married couple. Giving every furniture
item, life stock, dresses for every season, cutlery, other household items, dresses
and jewelry for not just bride, but for groom and his other family members as
well, and many course meals have become a general rule of thumb for marrying a
daughter off in Pakistani society. In some cultures, groom’s family put down their
own demands for dowry that has to be arranged, or else, they call off the
wedding.

In a country where an immense majority of populace lives beneath poverty line

and is devoid of basic human requirements like water, sanitation, and electricity,
health and education, dowry system is adding even more miseries.

There are many cases in which most daughters remain unmarried due to financial
problems. Pakistan adopted the dowry system from Indian culture. In the modern
educated class, dowry has become a demand of bridegroom. They demand heavy
dowry in some cases, like to arrange a car or motorbike for the groom, or give him
a huge sum of money to start a business. Rich families go down to giving cars,
flats or in some cases property to the groom. Riches have set the bar of dowry so
high in the society that for poor, it has become a pure evil that’s sucking the life
out of parent’s bodies. It has become impossible for the parents to marry off their
daughters without, or very little dowry.

The dowry and bridal gifts act, is one such act that badly await the attention of
lawmakers in Pakistan. Dowry for weddings is a serious issue for poor families.
Many women are unable to marry because their relatives cannot afford the gifts
and money demanded by groom’s families. In Pakistan, the average age for a
woman to get married is set between 18 and 28. Beyond this age, it becomes very
hard for a woman to find a good, or any proposal at all.

Objectives of the Studies

 To explain the custom of dowry in Pakistan
 Reasons behind dowry system for daughters in Pakistan
 Impact of dowry system on Pakistani culture
 To find out how many people are in support of this system and how many
are against it
 To find out why educated people still support the idea

Research Methodology
My research statement is about dowry system in Pakistani societies. The research
is based on how many people are suffering from the dowry system at present and
how many favor this system.

I conducted various interviews among students of every department of QAU with

different backgrounds. I asked them some basic questions related to dowry and
dowry system in Pakistan and concluded their responses as in how many of them
support the idea of dowry and how many detest it.
Interviews
I conducted some interviews with students from different departments at QAU,
each belonging to a different area of Pakistan.

In an interview with a boy from Mandi Bahauddin, the boy said that in his family,
they do not take dowry from girl’s family. Instead, they make dowry for her. But
girl’s family still gives dowry to their daughter, no matter they are rich or poor
because the society expects it from them.

In another interview a girl from DG.Khan said the concept of dowry is very low in
her family. But now a days they give some dowry. She said dowry is important for
girl. Dowry guarantees a strong position for a girl in her in laws.

In another interview with a girl from Sialkot, the girl told me that in her family,
parents are supposed to give their daughter dowry two time. Once, when she is
getting married, and then again when she gives birth to a child, the same process
of dowry is repeated.

I interviewed a Kashmiri girl. She told me that in Kashmiri society, girl’s is given
dowry by her family at any cost. Girls even demand what they want in their
dowry. She was a strong supporter to the concept of dowry.

Results
In Pakistan, there are three common financial classes:

 Lower Class
 Middle Class
 Upper Class

I interviewed students belonging to every class. And at the end of my interviews, I

realized the response was really shocking for me. Although, the poor suffers the
most by this evil, but lower class is the only class that detests the very idea of
dowry the most. I did a total of 30 interviews from students with different
backgrounds and recorded their responses.
 Classes involved in the dowry system in Pakistan

Lower Class Middle Class Upper Class Total

Student %age Student %age Student %age Students %age
s s s
5 16.67 15 50 10 33.34 30 100

From results shown in above table, it’s clear that the middle class supports this
idea the most in Pakistani society. Lower class is the most against dowry system.
And Upper class mostly supports it for the sake of show off and securing their
business for future purposes.

Conclusion
Dowry system is affecting our society in a bad way. The dowry system has given
birth to too many evils. It has caused too much distruction to the socio economic
structure. Both love and arrange marriages among educated and illiterate people
are practicing dowry system in the society of Pakistan. However, there are still
some people out there who are not in the favor of this system. Girls become
mentally affected. If they cannot meet the demands of dowry laid down by the
groom’s family, they get abused by the husband and his family verbally and, in
some cases, physically. Parents also lose their self-respect under the burden of
dowry.

From the interviews that I conducted, I concluded that 100% students know about
the dowry system. 80% student strongly disagree with this system. It shows that
all young students want to save society from dowry system and its negative
consequences. Only 20% students are in the favor of dowry and that’s only
because they have been fed with this idea since birth that a woman can never
make her place in her in laws if she cannot arrange for a biggest dowry than other
girls from her family.

Dowry basically defines the worth of the daughter in Pakistani culture and makes
for groom’s family’s respect in the society. However ugly this concept may be, but
people still practice it today. Rich do it to prove their worth and to show off their
money. And poor do it out of compulsion, to help create a stable environment for
their daughters in the next family.
Reference
All the data was collected from research interviews and Thesis from Departmental
Library to Anthropology