Does Love Make a Difference? Marriage Choice and Post ... · “The phenomenon like ragging where violence and bullying may be used by senior males students to establish relationships

Does Love Make a Difference?

Marriage Choice and Post-Marriage Decision-Making Power

Manjistha Banerji

Reeve Vanneman

India Human Development Survey

Working Paper No. 14

Does Love Make a Difference?

Marriage Choice and Post-Marriage Decision-Making Power

Manjistha Banerji

University of Maryland Department of Sociology

[email protected]

Reeve Vanneman Department of Sociology University of Maryland

[email protected]

Version:

August 2011

India Human Development Survey

Working Paper No. 14

Views presented in this paper are authors’ personal views and do not reflect institutional

opinions.

These results are based on the Health, Environment, and Economic Development survey. This

survey was jointly organized by researchers at the University of Maryland, the University of

California at Berkeley, the World Bank, the Energy Research Institute, Sri Ramachandra

Medical College, and the National Council of Applied Economic Research. The data collection

was funded by grants R21AG02402101, R01HD041455 and R01HD046166 from the National

Institutes of Health to University of Maryland.

ABSTRACT

Spousal choice in marriage patterns, whether parent-arranged or self-arranged “love” marriages,

may have long-lasting social implications for later family life. This paper takes a life course perspective

to examine the association between spousal choice at the beginning of the marriage and subsequent

decision-making autonomy in Indian families. Using data on 29,026 mothers in ages 18- 49 years from

the India Human Development Survey, 2005 we find that, as expected, women who started married life in

self-arranged marriages later end up with the most decision-making power. But a complex pattern of

power relationships among wives, husbands, and in-laws results from other types of marriage

arrangements. For example, women in parental arranged marriage where the bride is able to consent to

the parents’ choice end up with more decision making authority than in supposedly “jointly” arranged

marriages and far more than in parental arranged marriages where the bride did not have the opportunity

to consent. The results also show that the types of marriage arrangements have as much consequence for

the household authority of in-laws and the husband as they do for the wife.

Marriage Choice and Post Marriage Decision-Making in India

1

Introduction

Indian women have long been recognized as having low autonomy and decision making power

(Bloom, Wypij and das Gupta 2001; Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001; Mason and Smith 2000; Desai 1994).

Women’s limited empowerment within the household is associated with a series of outcomes – higher

fertility levels and unequal intra-household resource allocation (Basu 1992; Dyson and Moore 1983;

Doan and Bisharat 1990), higher child mortality (Bloom, Wypij and Das Gupta 2001; Durrant and Sathar

2000), lower contraceptive use (Dharmalingam and Morgan 1996; Kishor and Subaiya 2005; Visaria

1996) and, more surprisingly, less domestic violence (Jejeebhoy 1998; Koenig et al. 2003).

Women’s lack of power within the household has been related to a variety of geographic (Miller

1981; Sopher 1980), cultural (Dyson and Moore 1983; Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001; Jensen and Oster

2009), economic (Hashemi, Shuler, and Riley 1996; Rahman and Rao 2004) and demographic (Das

Gupta 1995; Hindin 2002) backgrounds, but a life-course perspective would suggest that household

authority follows a trajectory that begins at least with entry into the marriage. In particular, a lack of

choice in marriage partners may set the pattern for a subsequent lack of decision-making power in the

marriage. Historically, most Indian marriages have been arranged by the couple’s parents and extended

family. Even today, the vast majority of Indians first meet their spouses on their wedding day (Desai et al.

2010). While a life-course perspective has been widely used in the Western literature on marriage and

family transitions, its application to non-Western settings is far more limited. While Indian women’s

autonomy has long been recognized to grow over her lifetime (e.g., Das Gupta 1995), the path

dependency of later events on how earlier events transpired is not as well documented. This paper

contributes to the life course literature by demonstrating its importance for understanding the trajectory of

non-Western marriages. And it contributes to the literature on Indian extended families to show that a life

course perspective can help us understand the path dependency of how a wife’s eventual bargaining

position is associated with events at the very beginning of the marriage.

The association between marriage arrangements and subsequent decision-making is complicated

by the multidimensionality of both spousal choice and personal authority in an extended family. Marriage

Marriage type and Post Marriage Decision-Making in India

2

type cannot be easily arranged along a single continuum of parental-arranged versus self-arranged love

marriages: seemingly intermediate types such as parental arranged marriage subject to consent from the

daughter show distinctive characteristics that are not true of either self-arranged or completely parental

arranged marriages. Similarly, decision-making in an extended household is shared among the husband,

wife, and senior men and women so there is no simple trade-off between what enhances a wife’s power

and what enhances her husband’s power.

Previous work on spousal choice and bargaining power

Self-arranged love marriages have achieved increased significance in places were parental- and

family-arranged marriages were once predominant. In many countries – China (Xia and Zhou 2003;

Xiahoe and Whyte 1990), Egypt (Sherif-Trask 2003), Ghana (Takyi 2003), Japan (Murray and Kimura

2003; Blood 1967), Turkey (Hortacsu 2003), Trinidad and Tobago (Seegobin and Tarquin 2003) - self-

arranged or “love” marriages have replaced parent arranged marriages as the dominant marriage pattern.

This is also happening in India although more slowly and often only in partial ways that combine

elements of self-choice and parental arrangements. Nevertheless, more recent birth cohorts are somewhat

more likely to report greater autonomy in partner choice than women of older cohorts (Self- citation

2008).

The core premise of a life course theoretical framework is that early events have consequences

for later experiences and events (Elder 1994). Thus, post- marriage decision making within the household

cannot be understood without knowledge of how the marriage was contracted in the first place. There is

a path dependency to the evolution of family authority that is not easily turned around once the marriage

has been arranged.

In theory, a life course perspective would suggest that love marriages should lead to greater

equality in subsequent gender relations. Fox (1975, 188-189) following Blood (1972) argues that since in

arranged marriages kin-members play an important role in the spouse selection process, the husband-wife

relationship is de-emphasized from the beginning. Instead, greater emphasis is placed on the


3

“individual’s vertical linkage with and responsibility to antecedent kinsmen and his progeny”. Love

marriages, on the other hand, are based on personal qualities and inter-personal relationships that

emphasize a “horizontal bond” between marital partners. Women in love marriages are more likely to

have experienced a central life event that required articulating their own opinion and exercising self-

choice (Ghimire et al. 2006). Having entered a marriage with this level of assertiveness, they are likely to

display greater say in household decisions after marriage than can women whose marriages have been

parentally arranged with or without their consent.

While this theoretical argument is plausible, a weakening of generational power in the family

does not necessarily impose a weakening of gender power. Among other considerations, the association

between marriage types and gender relations depends on the institutional context (Silva 2008; De Munck

1996; Malhotra 1991). Where love marriages are culturally proscribed, the dependence of the wife on her

husband in love marriage may be enhanced because of the general disapproval of her flouting customary

norms. A survey of Sri Lankan youth in ages 16-29 indicates that even though romantic relationships are

quite common among young Sri Lankans, they are not necessarily associated with egalitarian gender

relations. On the contrary, the skewed pattern of gender relations within which these relationships form

suggests that they cannot be the basis of an egalitarian marital relation in the future:

“The phenomenon like ragging where violence and bullying may be used by senior males

students to establish relationships with junior girls, the male domination in various youth

activities including politics, the language of love and sex particularly in the university,

hierarchical gender relations in love affairs and the lack of consensus between boys and girls in

regard to premarital sex and the importance of preserving virginity are some evidence that love

relations do not necessarily ensure egalitarian gender relations in love and marital relationships

that may result from such relationships” (Silva 2008: 9).


4

In another 1966 study of 754 women in first marriages in Ankara city, Turkey, Fox (1975) found

that for some groups, especially those from more “traditional” backgrounds – rural, lower education and

younger ages at marriage – women reported a variety of more gender egalitarian responses in arranged

marriages than in love matches. The potency offered by love matches for a gender egalitarian relation in a

marriage is inhibited by the structural factors operating in a patriarchal environment.

The causal argument for any effect of spousal choice on subsequent gender relations should not

be overstated as well, given that the two are part of a mutually inter-dependent complex of family

relations. Although the decisions on whom to marry precedes the context of authority relations within

marriage, both spousal choice and greater gender empowerment are embedded within a complex of

family relations determining when to marry (especially delayed age at marriage), residence in nuclear

rather than joint households, (Fox 1975; Silva 2008), lesser age difference between the spouses, less

emphasis on dowry, and fewer restrictions on physical mobility (Santhya et al. 2010). Each of these

characteristics occur during the life course of the marriage, often early in its history, and may have

independent effects on subsequent household authority.

Nevertheless, with the caveats noted above, survey results across different social contexts mostly

suggest a positive and significant association between self-arranged or love matches and equitable

relations between the husband and wife. These positive associations have been found in China (Xiaohe

and Whyte 1990; Fox 1975) and Tokyo (Blood 1967). For example, a 1987 study of 586 ever married

women in urban districts of Chengdu, Sichuan province, China found that a marriage quality index was

consistently higher in love matches as opposed to arranged marriages. These results confirm the findings

of an earlier study by Blood (1967) in Tokyo that found arranged marriages to have a more patriarchal

power structure as compared to love matches.

A main objective in this analysis is to extend empirical research on this relationship to India,

where love marriages are, as yet, still quite rare while those that combine some elements of self- choice

and parental control are becoming more common. In doing this, we are able to incorporate a more


5

complex understanding of both the multiple possibilities between love-marriages versus arranged

marriages and of gender as well as generational inequalities in the intra-household distribution of power.

The Indian context

Trends in marriage patterns

India has long been associated with the institution of parent arranged marriages, where parents

exert a strong influence over the choice of partner for their son or daughter. A 1993-94 survey of 1842

over1800 ever-married rural women in ages 15-39 years confirms that few women have a say in the

choice of their husband (Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001). In Uttar Pradesh around 10 per cent of the Hindu

women and 13 per cent of the Muslim women had any say in their marriage decision. The corresponding

per cent for women in Tamil Nadu is higher though still low at 32 per cent for Muslim women and 42 per

cent for Hindu women.

Previous work, however, also suggests that the mate selection process is far too complex to be

conveniently placed in the dichotomous categories of either self-arranged (or “love”) marriages and

parent-arranged marriages (De Munck 1996; Malhotra 1991). Rather, a more nuanced understanding of

marriage processes treats autonomy in partner choice as a continuum with parent-arranged and self-

arranged marriages occupying the extreme ends of the spectrum (Ghimire et al. 2006).

Another survey of married and single adults in Mumbai confirms that a sizeable proportion of

recent birth cohorts have a say in the choice of their partner (Mathur 2007) without being truly self-

arranged. About 71 per cent of married adults had marriages in which the spouse was selected by the

parent or the family, 19 per cent had marriages in which they selected the spouse but with parental

involvement, and 10 per cent had selected their spouses with no parental involvement. Similarly, 60 per

cent of single adult respondents expected their parents to arrange their marriages without any input from

themselves, 26 per cent expected to select their spouse with some parental involvement, and 13 per cent

expected to arrange their own marriages without any parental involvement.


6

A recent survey conducted by the IIPS and Population Council (2010) also confirms some

participation of youth in the selection of their spouse. Among married men (15- 29), 84 per cent reported

that their parents had asked their opinion regarding spouse choice; the corresponding per cent for married

women (15- 24) was 70. However, only 5-6 per cent of the youth reported self-selecting their partner. At

the opposite extreme, 11 per cent and 25 per cent of young men and women respectively reported parent

arranged without their approval in the choice of partner.

However, even an ordinal measure of marriage arrangements may mask some non-linearities in

the categories. For example, a 2005 survey finds a trend of increasing autonomy in spouse choice across

birth cohorts in India although not an increase of strictly self-arranged marriages (Self- citation 2008).

There has been a decline in the share of parent arranged marriages with no consent of the daughter across

cohorts from 1956-60 to 1976-80 and a concomitant increase in the share of parent arranged marriages

with consent of the daughter (roughly a 5 percentage point increase). The share of love marriages across

birth cohorts has remained stable but low at 4-5 per cent. None of these are very large changes so the

common perception in India of a movement towards love marriages may be more a reflection of

Bollywood romances than of trends in actual behavior. Further, while education is associated with greater

autonomy in partner choice, it is most strongly associated with parent arranged marriages with consent

rather than strictly self-arranged “love” marriages.

The increased role of youth in the spouse selection process sets the context in which we examine

the association between type of marriage and women’s empowerment within marriage. The analysis

incorporates both the range of marriage arrangement options and the possible non-linearities among them.

The nature of power dynamics within a household

Much of the literature on a decision-making dynamics within the household focuses on the

gendered nature of women’s disempowerment (Dharmalingam and Morgan 1996; Morgan and Niraula

1995). Usually, the husband is identified as the key decision making authority who limits a woman’s say

in household decisions. Nevertheless, in developing countries where extended families are common, in-


7

laws such as mothers-in-law or an elder sister-in-law could as well hold significant decision-making

power (Safilios-Rothschild 1982). Examining the full dynamics of intra-household decisions in the Indian

context requires both a gender and a generational dimension to women’s say in intra-household decisions.

For example, some correlates associated with more women’s empowerment such as her age, a senior

position in the extended family and the household’s landlessness are also associated with more decision

making power for her husband. On the other hand, other correlates such as endogamy and labor force

participation increase the women’s decision making power vis-à-vis both her husband and her parents-in-

law (Self-citation 2006).

Data and Methods

The main research question in this paper is: to what extent is past marital choice associated with

the current distribution of decision-making power within the household? We use data from the Indian

Human Development Survey (IHDS 2005) to evaluate this association because of its wealth of data on

both marital choice and decision-making as well as on variety of other marriage dimensions. The IHDS is

a survey of 41,554 households across 31 states in India (the exceptions are the small island states of

Andaman and Nicobar & Lakshadweep). This nationally representative sample is drawn from 1,504

villages and 970 urban blocks (Desai et al 2009). In each household the survey asked one ever-married

woman between 15-49 years old (N=33,477)1 a wide range of questions on education, health and most

importantly for this paper, on the mate selection process that began their marriage and on their role in

current household decision making.

Life course perspective typically uses longitudinal data. IHDS, 2005 is limited in this respect,

since it is not yet a full panel. But it is unique in being the only nationally representative survey which

collects detailed retrospective information on marriage and the mate selection process. Thus, it offers an

opportunity to examine how earlier patterns of spousal choice within marriages may have implications for

subsequent gender and generational relations surrounding household decision making. Two previous

1 If the household included two or more eligible ever-married woman 15-49 one was chosen randomly. The

analyses reported here are weighted by the number of eligible women in the household to correct for the resulting

under-representation of women in joint households – an important determinant of decision-making authority.


8

surveys (Mathur 2007 and Status of Women and Fertility, SWAF, Jeejebhoy and Sathar 2001) on parental

involvement and spouse choice in India also have detailed questions on spouse selection patterns. But

neither of these are nationally representative surveys. SWAF (1993- 94) was fielded in two villages each

in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu while Mathur’s investigation is based in Mumbai. A recent, more

nationally representative survey by the IIPS and Population Council (2010) has information on the extent

of choice in spouse selection, but the focus of this survey is exclusively on youths so it is not

representative of all age cohorts.

The sample in this analysis (N=29,026) is restricted to currently married women in their first

marriages with children. The currently married restriction, which excludes 1360 women, is necessary

because the decision-making indices compare the woman’s power to her husband’s. The second

restriction (women in first marriages) further excludes 673 women. Finally, a restriction to women with

children, which excludes 2418 respondents, is required because two of the four questions used in the

decision-making index refer to the respondents’ children.

The empowerment variable is an index of who has the most say in a series of four typical family

decisions, similar to the SWAF questions (1993- 94). Women respondents were asked:

Please tell me who in your family decides the following things: whether to buy an

expensive item such as TV or fridge; … how many children you have; …what to do if a

child falls sick; …and whom your children should marry.

For each decision, a “yes” or “no” was recorded for each of four types of household members: the

respondent herself, her husband, a senior male, and a senior female. A fifth alternative, “somebody other”

was also included in the survey but was chosen so rarely that we ignore it in these analyses. When the

respondent identified multiple decision makers, as was often the case, she was asked who had “the most

say” for each decision.


9

In this paper, we use only the responses for which person had the most say. We construct four

ordinal indexes, one for each possible decision maker, which count for how many decisions that person

was the primary decision maker. Each index ranges from 0 to 4, with 0 indicating that person was not the

primary decision-maker for any of the four decisions and 4 indicating that person was the decision maker

for all four decisions.

Our initial focus is on the index for the respondent herself. But, because she can have the most

say for a decision only if the others in the household do not, the four indices – for the respondent, her

husband, a senior male, and a senior female – are not independent. If the empowerment score for the

respondent is low, the score for one of the others must be high. In a second analysis we show that much

of interesting differences in marriage types lies not just in their consequences for the woman’s power, but

also in who else in the household is empowered or disempowered by each marriage type.

Data from Taiwan provide some support that there is an inter-generational shift in power balance

as love marriages replace arranged marriages (Wolf 1975). In an era of arranged marriages, the early

years of marriage was stressful for the young bride as she was a stranger in her husband’s household. She

had to cope with household drudgery so that her mother-in-law could enjoy increased leisure time. This

resulted in higher suicide rates among younger brides as compared to older women. But with a shift

towards greater self-choice in marriage and greater participation of women in the labor force, the burden

of household work and child care shifted to older women. As a result, suicides became more common

among older women than young brides.

Table 1 gives the distribution of “most say” for each of the four decisions across four types of

household members. The table also reports the distribution of scores for each of the four indices. The

distributions clearly reveal a substantial gendered and generational pattern of authority. A majority, 61

percent, of the women reported never having the most say on any of the four decisions, and thus scored

themselves as 0 on this index. Only 3 percent of women reported full power in all four decisions. In all

four decisions, husbands usually have the most say; 44 percent of husbands were scored as having the

most say on all four decisions. Less than 1 per cent of senior men and senior women were reported as


10

having the most say. Interestingly, senior men more often have the most say in the choice of a child’s

marriage partner and purchase of an expensive item than for other decisions. Nevertheless, despite these

lower frequencies, the associations with spousal choice are greatly enriched by investigating the full range

of household members’ power.

[Table 1: Percent having the “Most Say” on Four Household Decisions, by Household Member about

here]

The main variable of interest on spousal choice expands a self-arranged versus parent-arranged

dichotomy into a more complex set of four types of marriage choices:

1. Parent-arranged marriages with no consent of the respondent,

2. Parent-arranged marriages with consent from the respondent,

3. Jointly-determined marriages and

4. Self-arranged marriages.

While these four alternatives would seem at first to fit neatly along a continuum of self- versus

parental choice, in fact, the results will show that the intermediate choices diverge from the two endpoints

in interesting ways.

The four categories were created from responses to two survey questions. Women were first

asked “Who chose your husband?” with three possible responses: the respondent herself; the respondent

and parents together; or parents alone. Women who had parent-arranged marriages were further probed if

they had a say in choosing their husband. These responses permitted a subdivision into parent-arranged

marriages with consent and parent-arranged marriages with no consent. Overall, only about 5 per cent of

the marriages are self-arranged, 37 per cent are jointly arranged, 23 per cent are parent arranged marriages

with consent of the woman and 35 per cent of marriages are parent arranged without the consent of the

respondent.

Ordinal logistic regression is used to model the relationship between marriage choice and the

decision-making indices since the decision-making indices are each an ordinal index from 0 to 4. The four


11

marriage choice categories are modeled as three dummy variables with self-arranged marriages as the

comparison category. The analysis proceeds stepwise to analyze to what extent the marriage choice -

decision-making authority relationship may be a consequence of prior statuses or other life course events.

Model 1 is the simple association of the four marriage choice types and the decision-making index.

Model 2 adds basic background controls: age, years of education and place of residence (rural or

urban) that previous work (Fox 1975; Ghimire et al. 2006) suggests account for some of the marital

choice – empowerment relationship. The age “effect” captures both changes over the life course as well

as cohort differences which cannot be easily separated in a cross-sectional survey such as the IHDS. For

household decision-making authority, age and cohort effects may offset each other as past research has

suggested that women gain authority as they age (Das Gupta 1995) but that more recent cohorts may

follow more “modern” egalitarian norms. Age and years of education in the survey are measured as

continuous variables.

In these regressions, model 2 also adds controls for the respondents’ caste and religion given their

importance in Indian society and past research showing their relationships with both marital choice (Self

citation 2008) and decision making (Self citation 2006). Caste is divided into five self-reported categories.

Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes), Dalits (Scheduled Castes, ex-untouchables), and Other Backwards Castes

(OBCs) are officially designated categories that carry some employment and education advantages

specified by the Government of India. Among the remaining groups, the IHDS asked respondents

whether they were Brahmins, traditionally at the top of the caste hierarchy, who are the reference group.

The remaining castes are designated here as “forward castes”. Although these caste distinctions originate

in Hindu social practice, they are now commonly applied to Indians of all religions so we also include a

separate set of dummy variables for religion: Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and a small but heterogeneous

group of “other” religions (e.g., Jains, Buddhists, tribal religions); Hindus are the reference group.

Model 3 adds additional controls for family and marriage events and characteristics that are often

co- determined with spouse choice. Age at marriage, joint family residence, customary dowry practice,

husband’s age, and his years of education are often jointly determined with marriage choice.


12

Nevertheless, the additional controls can suggest which other aspects of marriage are associated with

decision-making power and might explain a relationship with spousal choice.

Early marriages are more likely to be arranged, while the older the person the more likely they are

to exercise a choice in spouse selection (Fox 1975; Ghimire et al. 2006). Arranged than “love” marriages

are more likely to result in joint household residence. Financial transactions in the form of cash payments

from the bride’s to the groom’s family is a common feature of marriage practices in parts of India with

evidence of its increasing prevalence even among communities that did not previously practise dowry as

well as increases in the dowry amount. In general, the more educated a man is, the higher the family is in

the caste and social hierarchy, the better his employment prospects, the higher is the expectation for

dowry at the time of marriage. Thus, one the one hand, bride’s parents’ financial potentials has direct

bearing on spousal selection. On the other hand, bride’s parents’ financial ability to match the groom’s

family demand influences how the newly-wed bride is perceived in groom’s household. While in extreme

cases failure to meet dowry demands of the groom’s family may lead to bride burning or the groom re-

marrying another woman, it is not at all clear if meeting dowry demands enhances the bride’s autonomy

because it also sets the context in which the bride and her family is considered subservient to wishes of

the groom and his family (Anderson 2007, 2003; Mulatti 1995, 1992).

Age at marriage, husband’s age and his years of education are all recorded in the survey as

continuous variables. Residence in non- nuclear households is defined as the presence of more than 1 ever

married couple in the household. The IHDS did not collect information about dowry at the household

level, instead respondents were asked about the customary marriage practices in their community,

including that of dowry. Based on the response to the question if there are any cash transactions at the

time of the daughter’s marriage in a community, we constructed a dummy for dowry transactions that

takes a value 0 if such transactions are “rare” or “never” and 1 if they are reported as “sometimes” or

“usually”. Table 2 provides distributions for each of these control variables.

[Table 2: Means of Variables in the Regression Models about here]


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Results

Marriage type and women’s empowerment

We begin with the stepwise ordinal logistical analyses of the female respondent’s decision-

making power based on her past history of marital choice, adding important controls in models 2 and 3.

We have computed similar stepwise analyses for husbands’, senior men’s and senior women’s decision-

making power with similar conclusions so we limit the stepwise discussion here to the women’s results.

The final models for these other household members’ authority are discussed in more detail in the next

section.

[Table 3: Ordinal Regression Models on Decision-Making Authority of the Female Respondent

about here]

Model 1 shows that, as was expected, women who had self-arranged marriages now have more

say in household decisions. All the coefficients are negative indicating that all other categories of spousal

choice have significantly lower levels of decision-making power than the reference self-arranged category.

Over half (50.3%) of the women with self-arranged marriages had the most say for at least one of the four

household decisions. The least powerful women are, again not surprisingly, those who had parentally

arranged marriages and who had no role in consenting to the choice of their husband ( = -0.763).

Almost two-thirds of these women failed to have the most say in any of the four household decisions.

In the middle of the spousal choice spectrum, women with parentally arranged marriages but who

reported some role in consenting to the choice of their husbands have more household authority ( = -

0.288) than women who report no consent and more even than women who report their marriages were

jointly arranged by themselves and their parents ( = -0.471). This modest reversal in expected power is

the first indication that the “consent” these women report may have had real consequences for their

subsequent household power. This sheds a somewhat different light on the earlier reported result that it is

these “consent” marriages rather than jointly arranged marriages that have been growing in recent years.


14

This pattern of differences across marriage types is little changed by controls for background

characteristics (model 2) or even for other marriage characteristics (model 3). Not only is the same

relative order of household authority constant across models, the coefficients reflecting the size of the

differences in decision-making power are little changed. Women in self-arranged marriages have more

household power than women in parentally arranged marriages (and women in parentally arranged

marriages with daughters consent have more power than women in jointly arranged marriages) not

because they are more educated, or more urban, or more likely to be scheduled caste. Nor are other

important aspects of family structure and marital history likely to explain the spousal choice – decision-

making authority relationship. The differences in household power across marriage types are robust to

these controls.

The background control variables do have the expected relationships with household power that

have been found in previous research. Women with some education ( = 0364), women in towns and

cities ( = 0.133), women who have been married longer ( = 0.014), and women in nuclear families ( =

-0.346) all have greater say in household decisions. “Lower” caste women ( = 0.320) and OBCs ( =

0.130) women have more decision-making power in their households then do Brahmin (reference

category, = 0.000) and other forward caste women ( = 0.042). Muslim, Sikh and Christian women

make more household decisions than Hindu women.

While as is true elsewhere (Bloom, Wypij and dasGupta 2001; Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001; Balk

1994), older Indian women have acquired more household power than younger women (Model 2, =

0.020), it is actually the duration of their marriage and their husband’s age (Model 3, = 0.014) that are

better predictors of women’s household power (because her in-laws’ power declines, see Table 4 and

discussion below). Contrary to the usual assumptions, women who have married older men have more

decision-making power holding constant her age. Thus, large age differences between husband and wife

do not disadvantage the wife’s authority in the household as sometimes assumed (Cain 1993). However,

large spousal education differences do disadvantage women’s household authority; holding constant her


15

educational level, the more educated her husband is, the less authority she has ( = -0.011). Interestingly,

practice of dowry in the community is associated with greater decision making power of senior members

but lower authority of husbands (see Table 4).

The marriage type results confirm differences in a woman’s decision-making power by how she

began her marriage. Overall, women in self-arranged marriages enjoy greater decision-making power than

women in parent arranged or jointly arranged marriages. In fact, women in jointly arranged marriage are

only slightly better off than women in marriages that were arranged solely by their parents without their

consent. But women in marriages that were arranged by their parents but where they were asked for their

consent have only somewhat less decision-making power than women in self-arranged marriages, and

significantly more than even those women in jointly arranged marriages.

Marriage type and the household distribution of decision-making

To whom do women in marriages arranged without their consent lose decision-making power?

The main beneficiary may not be their husbands but other senior members of the household such as the

husbands’ parents. Conversely, whose power is diminished in self-arranged marriages? Again, it may be

the in-laws rather than the husbands who end up with less say in these marriages.

[Table 4: Ordinal Regression Models on Decision Making Authority of Four Types of Household

Members about here]

Table 4 shows results from four logistic regressions for which the four decision-making

alternatives (respondent, husband, senior male and senior female) are considered jointly. The first

column, for the respondent’s own decision-making power, repeats results from model 3 in Table 3.

Women in self-arranged marriages (the omitted category) have the highest decision-making power;

women in parent-arranged marriages with consent are next, followed by women in jointly arranged

marriages. Women in parent-arranged marriages without consent make the fewest household decisions.

The second column shows the results for the husband’s decision-making power. In general,

marriage types that have lower women’s empowerment favor more decision-making by the husband.


16

Husbands in self-arranged marriages have the least decision-making authority – the kinds of marriages

that benefit their wives’ authority the most. Conversely, husbands make the most decisions in jointly-

arranged marriages ( = 0.449) – the kinds of marriages that disadvantage their wives’ decision-making

more than any other marriage type except those parentally arranged without the woman’s consent.

However, for husbands, parent-arranged marriages with or without the wife’s consent ( = 0.252 and =

0.249 respectively) are intermediate between jointly arranged and self-arranged marriages. For them,

there is little difference in these two types although for their wives parental arrangement without their

consent is associated with much less decision-making power in the eventual marriage.

The third column of Table 4 shows how marriage type is related to the decision-making power of

a senior male in the household, most often the husband’s father. Most striking here is the large difference

for the father-in-law between marriages arranged without the wife’s consent ( = 0.921) and all other

types of marriages. Among the other three types, the father-in-law ends up with almost the same low

power in jointly arranged ( = 0.072) and self-arranged marriages, the reference category ( = 0.000).

There is only a small advantage of parental-arranged marriage with the wife’s consent ( = 0.351) over

self- arranged marriages. Apparently even this seemingly low level of choice buffers the woman from

later high levels of authority from the father-in-law.

It is mainly parentally arranged marriages without a daughter’s consent that seem to enhance the

father-in-law’s power. But husbands don’t fare especially well in this type of marriage either; it is only

somewhat more advantageous than self-arranged marriages but the husband has the most power in jointly

arranged marriages. Thus, while the wife has low power in the jointly arranged marriage, so does her

father-in-law; it is the husband who does best in this type of marriage. Fathers-in-law are most powerful,

not surprisingly, in marriages arranged by parents without the woman’s consent where wives are least

powerful.

The final column of Table 4 shows how marital choice is related to the decision making power of

a senior female in the household, most often the husband’s mother. Her pattern is similar to the senior


17

male’s pattern but the differences by marriage type are less dramatic. Like senior males, senior females

end up with the most power when parents arrange marriages without their daughter’s consent ( = 0.565).

But the benefits are less pronounced for senior females than for senior males. And, just as for senior

males, there are small differences among other types of marriages. The mother-in-law’s power is lowest

in self-arranged marriages but somewhat higher in jointly arranged marriages ( = 0.321) or marriages

arranged with the daughter’s consent ( = 0.380). Thus, when parents maintain some control over their

daughter’s marriage partner, the mother-in-law’s eventual power is enhanced – not as greatly as when the

parents have total control, but nevertheless more than when the marriage is self-arranged.

Thus, the four marriage types are associated with different configurations of decision-making

power in the household. This is illustrated in Figure 1 where the coefficients in Table 4 have been re-

scaled to give a new set of coefficients centered around 0. (The sum of the products of the coefficients

times their means equals zero.)

[Figure 1: Decision making power by marriage type and household member about here]

Self-arranged marriages are clearly the most empowering for the woman. Women with self-

arranged marriages have more decision-making power than women in any other marriage type; and their

husbands and in-laws all make fewer decisions in this type of marriage. Women in “jointly” arranged

marriages have low decision-making power; the benefits of this type of marriage accrue to their husbands

who have more power in jointly arranged marriages than in any other marriage type. But their in-laws,

especially their fathers-in-law, lose power in this type of marriage along with their daughters-in-law.

Despite the seeming egalitarianism of “joint” arrangements, it is both a generational and a gender dis-

empowerment. The husband gains at the expense of senior family members and his wife.

Marriages which the parents arranged are best for the in-laws; this should not be surprising. But

more interesting is how much of a difference marriage types mean for the senior male’s household

authority. Similarly, the differences for senior females are also great. In contrast, marriage type makes

smaller differences for the husband’s household authority. Thus, the enhanced authority of women in


18

self-arranged marriages or marriages to which they gave their consent comes more at the expense of her

in-laws than of her husband.

Discussion

The results confirm the expected life course relationships between early patterns of a woman’s

greater choice in marriage partners with her subsequent greater decision-making power in the household.

Self-arranged marriages, so-called “love” marriages, do result in the woman assuming more decision-

making power in the household. This relationship remains after holding constant other aspects of the

marriage such as her age at marriage, customary dowry practice, spousal age differences, joint family

residence, and the duration of the marriage.

Even marriages arranged by parents but for which the woman was initially consulted about the

choice end up with more equal decision making later in the marriage. These “parent arranged marriages

with consent” are, in fact, far more common than true “self-arranged” marriages and are especially more

common for young women. It appears that if the marriage conforms outwardly to the prevailing norms of

parental arrangement but grants the woman some voice at the outset, her voice remains more forceful

later in the marriage.

In contrast, if the bride has no say at the start of the marriage, it is likely she will not be able to

make the decisions later about issues such as how many children to have or how to treat a sick child.

Once set in motion in a powerless position, it is unlikely that she will be able to turn power relations

around once married. Early events have consequences for subsequent relations within the household.

More surprisingly, the results show that jointly arranged marriages are not very empowering for

women. It is their husbands who derive the most decision-making power in these marriages, partly at the

expense of their wives but also at the expense of the older generation in the extended family. These less

normative arrangements may leave the wife at a disadvantage because the husband’s initial assertion of

power as an equal player in arranging the marriage confirms his important status while her status is not as

fully attained because she is more vulnerable to the non-normative arrangement. However, the wife who

lets her parents arrange the marriage after being consulted has asserted her role in the marriage but has


19

maintained appearances, thus getting the benefits of asserting her decision-making role without the costs

of defying prevailing norms.

Thus, a life course analysis of power relations within an extended family benefits from a more

multi-dimensional framework of both how the marriage was initiated and how power is shared within an

extended family. How Indian marriages are arranged is related to the subsequent decision-making power

of not just the bride and groom but of an older generation of family members as well. Nor is there a

simple single dimension of marriage types extending from self-arranged “love” marriages to parental

arranged marriages in which the children have not even the power of consent or rejection. The

intermediate types – jointly arranged marriages and parent-arranged marriages with a bride’s consent –

might seem close in meaning, but they are associated with quite different eventual power arrangements in

the household.

It is worth noting that autonomy is not equivalent to the quality of marriages or even the wife’s

satisfaction with the marriage. Previous research has found an association of marriage type with

subsequent marriage quality in predominantly arranged marriage societies (Allendorf and Ghimire 2011;

Fox 1975; Blood 1967). Greater autonomy may be a crucial link in this relationship: marriages founded

on some assertion of choice by the bride may enable her to maintain more autonomy throughout the

marriage leading to greater satisfaction. Further research might examine the association between the full

range of marriage types with marriage quality to see if similar patterns emerge and if enhanced decision-

making would explain those relationships.

There are other ways in which research on the linkages between initial spousal choice and later

autonomy might be extended. We would benefit by understanding better what the respondents mean by

these various marriage types. Arranging marriages requires many decisions: when to begin the

proceedings, suggestions of who might be eligible, enlisting others who might be helpful in finding a

partner, what characteristics of the potential spouse are most important, and evaluations of potential

names that arise. Sharing of decisions between parents and children can vary for any or all of these

elements of the final decision. Perhaps “joint decision” reflects some of these elements (e.g., timing and


20

initial suggestions) while “parental decision with consent” reflects mainly the daughter’s contributions to

the final evaluation. Whatever the process, we need more detailed accounts of how the marriage

negotiations proceed and who has a voice when and on what issues.

On the decision-making side, we need more specific knowledge of how a wife’s authority evolves

over time in a marriage. The cross-sectional results show increased authority with marital duration as

well as the association with initial marriage type. Longitudinal data might track those changes over time

to see how household authority evolves from the marriage negotiations through eventual decision-making

after marriage. Contemporaneous accounts of the marriage process would also provide stronger evidence

for a life-course analysis. Some of the consistency between reports of spousal choice and of current

authority may result from a woman’s efforts at a consistent self-presentation in an interview setting. It

would be good to know whether more contemporaneous reports of marriage choices were associated with

subsequent perceptions of household authority years later.

Although this research might be extended in several new directions, our current results provide an

important new frontier for life course research. The life-course perspective that has proved so fruitful for

understanding the course of Western family life is equally adept in the non-Western setting. Even where

extended families play a far more important role in arranging, harboring, and supervising married life,

events reflect a path dependency that characterize marriages everywhere. The way in which an Indian

marriage begins sets limits for a woman’s ability to assert her authority within the family many years later.

Similarly, the results demonstrate the usefulness of a life course perspective for the large

literature on South Asian gender and family relations. Gender relations are now recognized to be more

multidimensional (Malhotra and Mather 1997; Mason 1986) than the initial regional associations

suggested (Dyson and Moore 1983). One step forward has been to recognize sub-clusters of family and

gender relations, for example a division between visible, publicly monitored gender practices and more

private relations within the family less scrutinized by normative authorities (Desai and Andrist 2010) or

between dimensions of decision-making, freedom of movement, and family violence (Agarwala and

Lynch 2006). A life course perspective provides another, temporal, possibility for understanding linkages


21

among gender and family relations. Some characteristics of family life such as spousal choice are

determined early in the marriage and have consequences for other dimensions of gender relations

throughout the marriage. The path dependencies in these power relationships suggest that various aspects

of gender relations are not discrete events but are organized in part by sequences over the life course.


22

Table 1: Percent having the “Most Say” on Four Household Decisions, by Household Member

Most say on decision by:

Decisions: Respondent Husband

Senior

Male

Senior

Female Total*

Treatment of sick child 27.7 59.4 6.8 5.4 99.2

Number of children 18.8 75.8 1.8 3.5 99.9

Purchase an expensive item 8.3 72.7 14.3 3.6 98.9

Choose child's marriage partner 7.1 71.7 15.5 3.7 98.0

Index (# of decisions with "most say")

0 61.8 6.9 79.0 89.2

1 23.4 11.4 10.1 7.1

2 9.5 17.3 6.0 2.4

3 2.3 23.6 4.2 0.9

4 3.0 40.8 0.8 0.4

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

N = 29,026

Source: Indian Human Development Survey, 2005.

*Percentages do not total to 100 because the small “others” category is not shown.


23

Table 2: Means of Variables in the Regression Models

Mean

Standard

Deviation

Marriage types:

Self-arranged 0.048

Jointly arranged 0.343

Parent arranged with consent 0.219

Parent arranged with no consent 0.390

Woman’s age 32.9 8.0

Woman’s years of education 4.07 4.63

Urban residence 0.276

Caste/religious affiliation:

Brahmin 0.052

Forward castes 0.157

OBC 0.367

Dalits 0.216

Adivasis 0.071

Muslims 0.113

Sikhs and Jains 0.011

Christians 0.013

Non- nuclear family structure 0.405

Age at marriage 17.0 3.4

Husband’s age 38.2 9.0

Husband’s years of education 6.49 4.84

Dowry is practiced in the community 0.697

N= 29,026

Source: Indian Human Development Survey, 2005


24

Table 3: Ordinal Regression Models on Decision-Making Authority of the Female Respondent.

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Marriage type

(Ref. category: Self arranged marriages)

Jointly arranged -0.471*** -0.490*** -0.477***

(0.0575) (0.0578) (0.0581)

Parent arranged with consent from the respondent -0.288*** -0.313*** -0.334***

(0.0591) (0.0595) (0.0599)

Parent arranged with no consent from the

respondent -0.763*** -0.708*** -0.649***

(0.0574) (0.0583) (0.0589)

Woman's years of age

0.0200*** N/A

(0.00159)

Years of education

0.0315*** 0.0364***

(0.00311) (0.00382)

Current residence

(Ref category: Rural)

Urban

0.185*** 0.133***

(0.0294) (0.0299)

Caste/religious affiliation (Ref category:

Brahmins)

Other castes

0.0689 0.0416

(0.0643) (0.0648)

OBC

0.181*** 0.130**

(0.0610) (0.0618)

SC

0.392*** 0.320***

(0.0641) (0.0652)

ST

0.139* 0.0544

(0.0763) (0.0779)

Muslims

0.197*** 0.111

(0.0696) (0.0707)

Sikhs/Jain

0.298** 0.307**

(0.121) (0.122)

Christians

0.0825 -0.0286

(0.122) (0.123)

Husband's years of education

-0.0113***

(0.00336)

R's age at marriage

-0.00138


25

(0.00555)

Husband's age at marriage

0.0296***

(0.00356)

Duration of marriage

0.0138***

(0.00165)

Family structure

(Ref. category: Nuclear

families)

Non- nuclear families

-0.346***

(0.0273)

Dowry

(Ref. category: Dowry is not a practice in the

community)

Dowry is a practice in the

community

-0.0166

(0.0278)

N= 26, 623

Standard errors in parentheses

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1


26

Table 4: Ordinal Regression Models on Decision Making Authority of Four Types of Household

Members.

Woman Husband

Senior

Male

Senior

Female Marriage type

(Ref.: Self arranged)

Jointly arranged -0.477 *** 0.449 *** 0.072 0.321 ***

(0.058) (0.055) (0.094) (0.122)

Parent arranged + consent -0.334 *** 0.252 *** 0.351 *** 0.380 ***

(0.060) (0.057) (0.097) (0.126)

Parent arranged no consent -0.649 *** 0.249 *** 0.921 *** 0.565 ***

(0.059) (0.055) (0.093) (0.122)

Years of education 0.036 *** -0.015 *** 0.005 -0.026 ***

(0.004) (0.003) (0.005) (0.006)

Urban Residence 0.133 *** 0.002 -0.210 *** 0.008

(0.030) (0.028) (0.045) (0.055)

Caste/religious affiliation

(Ref.: Brahmins)

Forward castes 0.042 0.189 *** -0.151 * -0.264 **

(0.065) (0.058) (0.083) (0.103)

OBC 0.130 ** 0.101 * -0.320 *** -0.271 ***

(0.062) (0.055) (0.079) (0.097)

Dalits 0.320 *** 0.077 -0.379 *** -0.378 ***

(0.065) (0.058) (0.085) (0.105)

Adivasis 0.054 0.277 *** -0.390 *** -0.574 ***

(0.078) (0.069) (0.105) (0.131)

Muslims 0.111 0.145 ** -0.234 ** -0.429 ***

(0.071) (0.063) (0.093) (0.116)

Sikhs/Jain 0.307 ** -0.330 *** 0.533 *** 0.221

(0.122) (0.111) (0.152) (0.191)

Christians -0.029 0.323 *** -1.686 *** -1.255 ***

(0.123) (0.116) (0.297) (0.362)


27

Husband's years of education -0.011 *** -0.020 *** 0.051 *** 0.022 ***

(0.003) (0.003) (0.005) (0.006)

R's age at marriage -0.001 -0.002 0.025 *** -0.007

(0.006) (0.005) (0.009) (0.011)

Husband's age at marriage 0.030 *** 0.017 *** -0.095 *** -0.060 ***

(0.004) (0.003) (0.006) (0.007)

Duration of marriage 0.014 *** 0.033 *** -0.076 *** -0.084 ***

(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003)

Non- nuclear families -0.346 *** -1.059 *** 2.369 *** 1.660 ***

(0.027) (0.025) (0.042) (0.052)

Dowry is practiced

in the community -0.017 -0.040 0.180 *** 0.121

(0.028) (0.026) (0.040) (0.050)

N 26, 623

Standard errors in parentheses

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1


28

Figure 1: Decision making power by marriage type and household member.

Respondent Husband

Senior

Male

Senior

Female

0.6

self no consent

0.4

0.2

consent joint no consent

0.0 joint consent

consent

no consent joint

no consent consent

-0.2

self

joint

-0.4 self

self

-0.6

Note: Marriage type positions represent distances from the grand mean of the

household member’s decision making power.

Source: India Human Development Survey, 2005. (N= 26, 623)


29


30

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