Understanding Marriage Dowry

The dowry problem has not been known to produce suicides elsewhere in the world. Women without dowries or adequate dowries often ended up in convents or religious homes in England or Italy. Suicides and murders of young women on account of their family's inability to gather the requisite amount of dowry is unique to South Asia. What then, one wonders, is the practice of dowry all about? Is it something that represents unremitting oppression to all women or are there aspects to the practice that can in fact be empowering to those who receive dowry? How do we begin to comprehend women's complicity in the giving and taking of dowry and what is the relationship between such actions and law? This review article is an attempt to answer some of these questions by surveying the existing literature on dowry.