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Performing Marriage? Gender Scripts and the
Marital Timing in India
Lester Andrist
Manjistha Banerji
Sonalde Desai
India Human Development SurveyWorking Paper No. 9
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Performing Marriage? Gender Scripts and the
Marital Timing in India
Lester Andrist
University of Maryland College [email protected] BanerjiUniversity of Maryland College Park
[email protected] Desai
University of Maryland College [email protected]
Version:
August 2008
India Human Development Survey
Working Paper No. 9
Views presented in this paper are authors personal views and do not reflect institutional
opinions.
The results reported in this paper are based primarily on India Human Development Survey,2005. This survey was jointly organized by researchers at University of Maryland and the
National Council of Applied Economic Research. The data collection was funded by grants
R01HD041455 and R01HD046166 from the National Institutes of Health to University ofMaryland. Part of the sample represents a resurvey of households initially surveyed by NCAER
in 1993-94.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected] -
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Introduction:
While it is well recognized that marriage in India is more or less universal for both males
and females and tends to occur at an early age (Oberoi 1998), it is often overlooked that women
in India (and neighboring Bangladesh) typically enter into marriage at an earlier age when
compared to most other regions of the world (See Tables 1 and 2). However, while age at
marriage in India has been increasing for both men and women, increases have been fairly slow
with much of the change coming through elimination of marriage for girls under 14 years of age
rather than actual delays in marriage for older teenagers or women in their twenties.
Interestingly, in a 30 year period spanning from 1961 to 1991, women on average delayed their
marriages only by about 3 years, from a mean age of 16 to about 19 years of age (International
Institute for Population and Macro 2000). In contrast, average age at marriage in Bangladesh was
delayed by a full year more during the same three decades (Islam and Ahmed 1998).
It is important to think about this slow change in marriage in the context of rapid changes
observed in other aspects of Indian society and economy. The economy has grown annually at a
rate of 7-9 percent over the past 15 years and education has expanded rapidly for all segments of
the society (Desai and Kulkarni 2008). Not even families have remained immune to these
changes, evidenced by rapid declines in the Total Fertility Rate from 4.8 in the 1960s to 2.7 in
recent years (International Institute for Population Sciences and Macro International 2007). Thus
this relatively slow change in age at marriage remains a puzzle, and one worth examination,
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particularly since marriage forms the cornerstone of other aspects of Indian life such as caste and
gender relations.
We argue that a structural or modernization perspective may not be enough to
understand the marriage process in India. In other contexts, when structural models are deemed
less than satisfactory, focus often tends to turn to culture to emphasize changing roles and norms
as the driving source of observed changes in behavior (Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura
2001). However, this residual focus on culture as a structure which is seemingly indifferent to
the inputs of actors runs the danger of seeing culture as a stagnant or fossilized backdrop
(Hammel 1990).
Research on marriage patterns in modern India is faced with a similar dilemma. Much of
the classical research on marriage in India begins with kinship norms and patterns with emphasis
on suitable marriage partners, dowry and other forms of exchange. In this work, marriage often
forms the key through which social hierarchies are built and articulated (Dyson and Moore 1983;
Dube 2001; Oberoi 1998; Karve 1965; Dube 1996; Srinivas 1977). While these classical studies
of kinship originating out of a long tradition of village studies, have contributed enormously to
our understanding of intricate web of social relationships and hierarchies, they fail to illuminate
marriage patterns in a changing India.
Developing nuanced theoretical models for studying social change particularly in such
intimate domains as marriage behaviour remain challenging. While structural forces inform
individual behaviour, the behaviours of similarly located individuals aggregate as patterns
capable of continually modifying that structure. In a sense, then, agency collapses into structure
and nowhere is this more apparent than when looking at the corporate family in Indian society
and the role it plays marriage patterns. Typically, the family is treated along side social
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structures, such as labour markets, educational systems, kinship, and caste structures. For our
purposes, it is important to also recognize the corporate family as an embodied agent, which is
able to negotiate competing demands placed on it.
In deciding on an appropriate time to arrange marriage for their sons and daughters
particularly daughters parents are faced with many difficult decisions. Some of these forces
push toward an early age at marriage, others toward a later age. Finding a good match depends
on the availability of eligible mates and this pool rapidly dwindles once a girl reaches an age
threshold where most of her peers are married. Social pressure to arrange a match begins to
mount as a girl gets older, affecting parents of the bride, the bride herself and the way in which
the potential groom and his family view the bride. In some ways this is not very different from
the kind of pressures American women face as they approach age markers such as 35 or 40
without having a child. At the same time, the pressures against marriage at very young ages are
also strong. With strong media propaganda and laws against child marriage defined as under
age 18 for women and 21 for men the Indian state has set out clear expectations which are
reinforced by a changing social discourse regarding how one lays claim to modernity. Moreover,
most parents wish their daughters to be happy and are concerned about thrusting the
responsibilities of married life onto them at too early an age.
Thus, the central problematic facing research on marriage timing in India relates to two
issues: (1) How is optimal timing for marriage established? (2) How do families negotiate
competing demands regarding appropriate age at marriage?
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Gender Performance and Marriage Timing:
This paper argues that recent literature on the performative aspect of gender offers an
interesting avenue for studying marriage patterns in the Indian context. Goffman (1976) first
argued that men and women engage in a visible display of gender where a stylized mode of
interaction may indicate deference or dominance. This concept was further elaborated in a
provocative paper by West and Zimmerman (1987), titled Doing Gender, where the authors
argue that gender is a powerful ideological device which shapes choices and limits actions based
on the actors sex and leads individuals to consistently act in a way that produces gendered
behaviors in day-to-day interactions between individuals. In anthropology these ideas have been
carried forward in the form of performance theory where gender is constituted through symbolic
enactment in a highly visible manner (Morris 1995). Steve Dern (1994) in his qualitative work
in Banaras (Varanasi) in north India, similarly finds that in every interaction in which a
husband gives his wife permission to go outside the home, he reconstitutes the normal state of
affairs in which restrictions on women are necessary (p. 210).
The synergy between this performative approach and classical social anthropology of
M.N. Srinivas and colleagues is striking. Srinivas first identified the role of women as custodians
of family status and caste purity (Srinivas 1977). But while focusing on the notion of
sanskritization, the process through which castes manipulated their ritual status by embracing
gendered practices such as prohibition of widow remarriage, he also acknowledged that this
might conflict with other forces such as modernization and Westernization. Srinivass work has
been highly influential for several generations of scholars working within this framework.
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However, it seems that the original insight on the performative aspect of culture has been
obfuscated by village studies of caste structure.
The concept of gender performance has many potential uses in social science research
that have not been fully exploited given the roots of performance theory in day-to-day
interactions and enactments in an interpersonal setting away from a study of structural
relationships. Some exceptions are interesting, however. In a highly controversial essay titled
Doing Difference, West and Fenstermaker (1995) expand this notion to incorporate
performance of other forms of difference, particularly race, in this framework. In a paper titled
Performing Modernity, Schein (1999) approaches the issue of constitution of modernity
through its enactment in China. For our purposes, seeing performance theory as a subset of the
new semiotic school of sociology of culture is fruitful because it allows us to focus on the way in
which social actors use culture to fabricate meaning in and of their own lives (Kaufman 2004).
We argue that a notion of scripts that frame actors day-to-day behavior and yet are
constantly modified as actors face competing demands provides an interesting framework for a
study of marriage in India. Travels across India document wide diversity in the way gender is
performed. Purdah or ghunghatis probably the most visible marker or public performance of
gender and it varies from a sari pulled over the face to make women virtually invisible to prying
eyes in north-central India to a polite nod at segregation when an older relative is present in
Gujarat to a total absence ofpurdah in southern India. While ghunghatorpurdah is the most
visible marker to an outsider, there are many other more subtle markers of gender segregation. In
some parts of India, it is common for men and women to eat together, in others segregation
within the family would make it unthinkable for a young daughter-in-law to eat with her father-
in-law. Restrictions on womens physical mobility is yet another marker of gender segregation
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where women must seek permission from family elders before venturing outside the home to
visit health centers, friends or bazaar.
This gender segregation is not necessarily a marker of gender inequality in the household.
Secluded women may retain substantial power in the household and women with considerable
freedom of movement may not find this freedom translating into control over economic
resources. This observation is consistent with a host of demographic studies of gender which
have remarked upon the multidimensionality of gender inequality (Kishor 2000; Mason 1986).
For our work, the focus on value placed on performance as measured through gender
segregation is particularly important.
Linking of gender scripts to age at marriage must also be viewed in the historical context
of the late 19th
and early 20th
Century conflicts between the colonial state which set itself up as
the protector of Indian women and the nationalist movement which needed to find an alternative
construction of Indian women in order to deflect the colonial discourse. Opposition to the Age of
Consent Act of 1891 proved to be one such turning point (Heimsath 1962). This act set a
minimum age for a consenting bride to be 12. Nationalist Indians saw this as an attack on
Indian religious autonomy and a vigorous protest emerged, led by a charismatic Indian politician,
Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak. A subsequent increase of minimum age at marriage to 14 in
1929 in an act that came to be known as the Sarda Act also led to significant protests. Partha
Chatterjee has written persuasively about the process through which the nationalist movement of
early 20th Century created a vision of modern Indian womanhood that was at once modest,
decorous, spiritual and refined (Chatterjee 1989, 1993). This positioning of Indian women of
refinement against their Western counterparts emerged as a response to the colonial state and
Western discourse which continually saw Indian women as dispossessed and subjugated.
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While the resistance to colonial construction of early marriage is probably less relevant
after sixty years of independence, other practical concerns persist. One of the greatest concerns
for most parents is to arrange a marriage for their daughter in a good family where she would
thrive. While the definition of good marriage may vary across families, there is a universal
concern that nothing should damage the value of a daughter in the marriage market. Popular
literature, films and social science literature all emphasize a fear of womens sexuality,
particularly among upper class, upper caste families, and argue that even a possibility that the
bride may not be a virgin reduces her desirability to her prospective parents-in-law. In practice, a
girl does not even have to be sexual active to be labeled promiscuous. Simple contact and
platonic friendship with the opposite sex can be enough to damage her reputation (Caldwell et al.
1998; Caldwell, P. H. Reddy, and Caldwell 1983; Lindenbaum 1981). Thus a long gap between
puberty and marriage is seen as a risky period by parents who seek to minimize this risk by
arranging an early marriage. Based on fieldwork in Hyderabad, Leonard argues that while all
castes of Kayastha in her study had preferences regarding normative age at marriage, deviation
from this normative age was permitted for men far more readily than for women (Leonard 1976).
However, this concern with womens sexual purity is neither universal nor predominant
across class and geographic boundaries (Mendelbaum 1988; Papanek 1973). Reification of
womens modesty is the privilege of upper social classes, and higher caste status is often
demonstrated through such reification (Sharma 1980; Dube 2001). Lower class and lower caste
women rarely have the privilege of secluding themselves. Similarly, casual contact with men is
viewed with much greater fear in certain areas of the country than others. We seek to better
understand the role this fear of womens sexuality and immodesty plays in shaping marriage
patterns via an examination of these differences across different cultural contexts. Fortunately for
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our purposes, India provides a fascinating laboratory of different gender scripts, allowing us to
test our hypothesis that early marriage is a part and parcel of gender scripts in which public
performance of womens modesty is valued.
Our focus on gender scripts emphasizes a concern with public performance of modesty
and implied control over womens sexuality but is quite distinct from other measures of womens
empowerment such as their control over resources or general power in household decision
making (Mason 1986; Mukhopadhyay and Higgins 1988). Thus, we argue that age at marriage
will be lower in areas and in communities where there is a greater concern with womens
sexuality indicated by greater segregation of men and women in separate spheres but other
dimensions of gender relations will not have an impact on age at marriage.
It is important to also note that a deference to gender scripts embodied in early marriage
often collides head on with parental desire to let their daughters mature before facing the
pressures of the married life and increasing public consensus about the undesirability of child
marriages. Most importantly, early marriage is often associated with curtailment of education.
Since education is one of the most important claims to modernity in India, early marriage is not
something parents enter into lightly. One of the interesting ways these two conflicting demands
may be combined is by arranging marriage early but then delaying consummation.
The Indian marriage system is characterized by a disjunction between formal marriage
and cohabitation and initiation of sexual activity. Historically, marriage was quite different from
gauna or effective marriage where the bride was sent to her husbands home to begin a
married life. A gap between marriage and gauna was common for child marriages. But we
suggest that above and beyond, ensuring a mature age at sexual initiation, this tradition may also
be used by parents with claims to modernity to ensure their daughters do not curtail their
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education. The grooms family must also acquiesce in this for the process to work, but frequently
a desire for this obvious marker of modernity higher education is shared by both parties.
Data:
Results presented in this paper come from India Human Development Survey 2005,
spanning 41,554 households over all 25 states and union territories of India (with the exception
of Andaman/Nicobar and Lakshadweep). The survey was conducted by researchers from
University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic research and was funded
by the U.S. National Institute of Health. It was specifically designed to study various dimensions
of gender relations and since the data are collected in structured interviews, considerable
attention was directed to framing questions which would provide information that would
meaningfully tap into womens experiences within the Indian context.
For this analysis, we restricted our sample to 27,932 ever married women age 25-49 for
whom complete data was available. Results from 2001 Indian census indicate that nearly 95
percent women are married by age 25 and restricting our sample ever married women aged 25
and above allows us to minimize the selection bias due to the omission of women who marry
late. These women were interviewed in their homes by female interviewers in local language.
Marriage Patterns in Modern India:
Given a lack of national information on marriage patterns in India we start with
descriptive statistics from IHDS. Table 3 shows that average age at marriage varies considerably
across demographic characteristics among ever married women aged 25 years and above in our
sample. Regional differences in age at marriage are striking, with average age being 15-17 years
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in central states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and higher age at marriage in Punjab and
Himachal Pradesh as well as in the southern states. Women in poor and less educated households
often marry around 16 years of age while women from better off and more educated households
get married around age 19-20 years. Average age at marriage is 19.2 years in metro cities and is
considerably lower in less developed villages.
Not surprisingly many of the young brides were physically immature and had not attained
puberty at the time of marriage. For instance, in Bihar and Rajasthan, states with earliest age at
marriage, around 25 percent of girls had not attained puberty at the time of their marriage. At the
same time, a focus on formal age at marriage may well be mistaken in a context where early
marriage is not synonymous with early age at entry into a sexual union. As documented by many
anthropologists, early marriage is often associated with a delay in consummation and the bride
remains with her parents until a formal gauna or bidai ceremony occurs. States with very
early age at formal marriage also follow the custom of a gap of a year or more between gauna
and marriage. Table 3 indicates proportions waiting at least six months following the wedding
before cohabitation. In Bihar about 65percent of women waited for six months or more to beginliving with their husbands as did about 43 percent of women in Rajasthan. As Figure 1 shows,
this waiting period is often associated with the relative youth and immaturity of the bride and
tends to decline as the age at marriage increases. But it is important to note that regardless of the
age at which formal marriage occurs, average age at which cohabitation or effective marriage
begins is barely about 18-19 years in many states and even younger in others.
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Most marriages are arranged. In spite of the Valentines Day articles in English
newspapers emphasizing the importance of love in marriage among urban elites, in our sample
less than 5 percent of the women said they chose their husbands independent of their parents (see
Table 4). The rest reported a variety of arrangements through which their families made marriage
decisions. Most reported a very limited contact with their husbands before marriage; 68 percent
met their husbands on the day of the wedding or shortly before; an additional 9 percent knew
their husbands for a month before the wedding. Only 23 percent knew their husbands for more
than a month when they got married. While educated women are more likely to have a longer
acquaintance with their husbands, as Figure 2 indicates, even among women with college
education, a long period of acquaintance is not normative. It is important to note that since our
data were collected from women only, much of this discussion has focused on womens choices
and lack thereof. However, much of this discussion also applies to males who have little
opportunity to get to know their wives.
Yet, in spite of the popular stereotype of women getting coerced into arranged marriages,
about 65 percent felt that their wishes were considered in selection of their partners. Perhaps the
most striking change in Indian marriage patterns is the extent to which womens consent is
sought in marriage arrangements. A glance at Table 4 indicates that women between the ages of
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25 and 29 reported that more of their marriages were self-arranged than any earlier birth cohorts.
Indeed about 6.3 percent arranged their own marriages, as opposed to 4.5 percent of women
between the ages of 45 and 49. Similarly, when compared with older cohorts, fewer 25 to 29 year
olds reported that their marriages were arranged without their consent.
While women appear to be more inclined than older cohorts to emphasize for themselves
their choice and efficacy in determining their marriage partner, one can still argue that
entrenched marriage patterns make some choices more probable than others. In parts of India,
especially in the north, the practice of exogamy prevails. As demonstrated in Table 5, in the
northern states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, women who married in the same village or
town numbered barely 5 percent. An even smaller percentage of women from these states
reported marrying cousins or close relatives. In contrast to the north, women in the south may not
only be encouraged to marry within the natal village, custom may prescribe that marriage to a
close cousin or uncle is preferred. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, nearly 27 percent of women
married within the same village or town, and about 26 percent of women reported marrying a
close relative.
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Gender Performance and Marriage:
If age at marriage is a component of a gender script that views early marriage as a marker
of decorum and propriety, we would expect it coincide with other markers of gender
performance. Specifically, we highlight the relationship between age at first marriage and the
practice ofpurdah, an eating order during meal times, and restricted mobility.
Purdah or ghunghatis probably the most visible marker or public performance of
gender. In the IHDS, women responded yes or no to the question, Do you practice
ghungat/purdah/pallu? Only about half of women between the ages of 25 and 49 reported they
practicedpurdah; however, Table 6 demonstrates marked regional variation. Dividing India into
northern and southern halves by the Satpura hill range, purdah practice is nearly ubiquitous in
the northern states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Indeed 93 percent of women
claimed to practicepurdah in Rajasthan and in the northeastern state of Bihar nearly 87 percent
of women claimed to practice. In contrast, women in south India practicedpurdah far less. In
Tamil Nadu only 10 percent of women claimed to practicepurdah.
Slightly less visible to public scrutiny are the behaviors of households associated with
meal time; and in some parts of India, a gendered eating order is followed. The IHDS asked
women, When your family takes the main meal, do women usually eat with the men? Do
women eat first by themselves? Or do men eat first? The options eating together and varies
were coded together, while the options women first and men first were coded together. In
the northern state of Gujarat only about 4 percent of women reported that their household
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practiced an eating order. Thus while there is a less discernable north-south pattern in eating
order, the percentage of families who ate separately during meal time was highest at 91 percent
in the northern state of Bihar. Neighboring Uttar Pradesh followed with nearly 70 percent of
women reporting they practiced an eating order with their families.
Finally, restrictions on womens physical mobility is yet another marker of gender
segregation where women must seek permission from family elders before leaving the home
alone to visit health centers, friends or the local bazaar. For each of these three destinations
interviewers asked women, Can you go alone? (yes or no)1. 71 percent of respondents could
travel unescorted to the local health center, while 73 percent of respondents could go to a
friends home alone. At 78 percent, most women reported being able to travel alone to the local
market or kirana shop. Table 6 shows a dichotomous mobility variable, where women were
counted as mobile if they could travel alone to all three destinations. 63 percent of all women fit
these criteria. The majority of women, 64 percent, reported being able to travel alone to all three
destinations, and 14 percent reported they could not travel alone to any of the three destinations.
In Bihar, about 30 percent of women reported being able to travel unescorted to all three
destinations, and in contrast, 88 percent of women in Northeast reported being similarly mobile.
Figures 3, 4 and 5 graph state specific markers of gender performance by age at marriage.
As the trend line indicates, the states with greater emphasis on gender performance are also states
with lower age at marriage. In results not reported here, we have undertaken multivariate
analysis using hierarchical linear models which control for womens age, education, household
economic status and place of residence (Desai and Andrist 2008). Even after controlling for these
1A preceding question asked the respondent whether she needed to acquire permission to travel outside the home. In
cases where women reported they did not need to acquire permission, interviewers often failed to ask whether she
could go alone to a particular destination. Because it is impossible to know whether women who did not need
permission to go out were allowed to travel alone, we have opted to drop these records from the analysis. In total,
there were 2,256 such cases.
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factors, the district level gender performance indicators seem to be significantly associated with
age at marriage.
These results suggest that in regions where gender segregation is more prevalent, early
marriage is also preferred. This bolsters our argument that for women, early marriage is part of a
pattern in which seclusion, segregation and modesty mark claims to refinement and status.
Competing Claims of Gender Performance and Modernity:In our theoretical discussion we noted that families are faced by competing demands of
gender performance and modernity. Whereas status claims based on sanskritization emphasizes
behaviors in which modesty and decorum on womens part mark the status of the family; status
claims based on modernity dictate emphasis on education and increased protection of childhood.
How families resolve this contradiction remains an interesting empirical question. We suggest
that a lengthy gap between marriage and cohabitation may be one avenue through which these
competing claims may be resolved. Thus one might expect variation in the gap between marriage
and gauna to be associated with the level of education a woman reports to have. That is, we are
arguing that women who have spent a substantial amount of time in and around educational
institutions are likely to extend the gap between marriage and gauna as a means of reconciling
the demands of these competing scripts.
In what follows we use ordinary least squares regression to analyze the gap between
marriage and cohabitation, and how it might vary by the degree to which women pursue an
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education2. Thus our principle explanatory variable is the eligible womens education level,
broken down into five discreet categories: "Illiterate, 1-6 years, 7-9 years, 10-11 years,
and 12 or more years. The category Illiterate is dropped from the model and used as the
reference category.
We include controls for caste, tribe and religion to mitigate against the conflating effects
of differential marriage and gauna patterns associated with these groups. As women living in an
urban setting may be more inclined to seize upon and enact the prescriptions of scripts associated
with modernity, we include a dichotomous variable indicating whether the eligible woman lived
in an urban setting. As we have demonstrated throughout this paper, regional diversity in India is
substantial, and we attempt to control for the conflating effects of that diversity by adding state
dummies to the model. Finally, because we know age at first marriage is associated with the gap
between marriage and gauna, we add age at first marriage as a control variable to the model.
After adding controls, the results indicate that higher education is associated with longer
gaps between marriage and cohabitation. Note that this is not simply a wealth effect. Other
variables measuring socioeconomic status and urban residence do not appear to be correlated
with the gap between marriage and gauna once controls are added. It is only higher education
that lengthens this gap.
Discussion:
The age in which a daughter or son marries is a pivotal moment of a process and is
undoubtedly the result of careful thought and planning. Perhaps the timing of a daughters first
marriage is conceived to hinge largely on what is perceived to be the depth of the pool of eligible
2The IHDS obtained information about first and second marriages. This analysis is restricted to age atfirst
marriage.
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bachelors. Perhaps too, as some have argued, the size of the dowry a daughter is able to provide
at age 18 as opposed to, say, age 25 is a salient consideration. However, at base, these
explanations regard women and their persuasive families as calculative agents, but they are
agents seemingly devoid of culture. In this paper, we argue for a different understanding of
agency, one which can not be reduced to actors primarily incited by opportunities to maximize
profit or hedge against risk. Instead, they are embodied actors, and while they are capable of
taking account of the consequences of choosing particular courses of action, they are also subject
to the demands of dominant scripts.
What happens when the demands associated with one script seem to preclude ones
ability to meet the demands of another? If an early marriage reduces a womans ability to
complete ever higher levels of education, what then happens when an actor is encouraged to
retain respectability through an early marriage, while at the same time, achieve a greater measure
of respect through additional investments in education? We have argued that families in India are
utilizing and even expanding the space between marriage and gauna as a means of negotiating
these competing demands.
However, underlying the principle finding that the gap between marriage and gauna is
lengthened as a strategy to address the competing claims of scripts, is the notion that families
need to be taken seriously as embodied actors but they are also sites where discourse on
modernity, gender and even sexuality coalesce and manifest. Such a conception allows one to
move away from positing marital timing as strictly the product of simply structural conditions
which exert influence over household and daughter, social actors and the family in particular are
seen here as both subjects and authors of the social process in which they find themselves
immured.
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Data presented in this paper pose an interesting paradox. On one hand, they emphasize
the continuing relevance of traditional scripts in which gender performance continues to be a
significant marker of claims to status and culture. On the other hand they demonstrate that
competing claims of modernity lead to unexpected behaviors through which families seek to deal
with the onslaught of globalization. We have focused on one aspect of this novel behavior, long
gap between marriage and cohabitation as a way of increasing educational attainment.3
Other
studies focus on changing marriage arrangements in which arranged marriages coexist with
increasing input and participation of brides (and presumably grooms) (Banerji, Martin, and Desai
2008) and increasing cross-region marriages in context of bride-shortages associated with
declining sex-ratios (Ravinder Kaur 2004). These observations suggest that marriage patterns in
India may well be changing, however, this change may not necessarily involve a movement
towards a Western pattern of delayed marriage with dissolution of arranged marriage system.
Instead, new forms of marital arrangements may evolve and may deserve attention in future
research.
3We do not argue that the gap between marriage and cohabitation is novel in itself, just the use of this gap to
increase educational attainment. Interestingly, this has also been noted by some activist groups and delayed
cohabitation is seen as one of objectives of programs such as Doosra Dashak in Rajasthan.
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Table 1.
Singulate Mean Age at Marriage of Females
in India and Bangladesh, 1961-1991
age atmarriage 1961 1971 1981 1991
India* 16.1 17.2 18.4 19.3
Bangladesh** 13.9 -- 16.6 18.0
sources *International Institute for Population and Macro 2000;
**Islam and Ahmed 1998
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Table 2.Percent of Married Women Aged 20-24 in Various DevelopingRegions
Eastern/Southern Africa 66Western/Middle Africa 79
Eastern Asia 46
Former Soivet Asia 54
Caribbean/Central America 56
South America 51
Middle East/North Africa 55
All India 77
Rural India 83
Urban India 63
Source: Mensch, Barbara S., Susheela Singh, and John B. Casterline. 2005.
"Trends in the Timing of First Marriage among Men and Women in the Developing World"
The Population Council Working Paper No. 202. for other developing countries.
Census of India, 2001, Table C-2 for India
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Table 3.
Marriage and Cohabitation Patterns by Selected Characteristics
percent not
mean age at cohabitating mean age at
marriage immediately cohabitation
All India 17.2 16.41 17.7
Woman's Age
25-30 17.4 14.71 17.8
31-35 17.1 15.64 17.6
36-40 17.2 18.09 17.7
41-45 17.1 17.48 17.6
46-49 17.3 18.39 17.9
Woman's Education
Illiterate 15.9 23.70 16.6
1-6 standards 17.1 11.69 17.4
7-9 standards 18.2 7.41 18.4
10-11 standards 19.4 7.40 19.6
12 and some college 21.6 3.84 21.7
Place of Residence
Metro Cities 19.2 2.94 19.3
Other Urban area 18.4 7.94 18.6
More dev village 17.0 16.67 17.5
Less dev village 16.3 24.38 17.0
Income
Lowest quintile 16.3 22.02 17.0
2nd quintile 16.6 19.02 17.1
3rd quintile 16.8 17.95 17.3
4th quintile 17.4 13.64 17.9
Highest quintile 18.8 9.20 19.1
Social Groups
High Caste Hindu 18.3 10.37 18.6
OBC 16.9 22.35 17.6
Dalit 16.3 19.13 16.9
Adivasi 16.9 13.44 17.3
Muslim 17.1 9.13 17.3
Other Religion 20.8 2.46 20.8
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Table 3 (contd).
Marriage and Cohabitation Patterns by Selected Characteristics
States
Jammu & Kashmir 18.8 1.41 18.8
Himachal Pradesh 18.5 6.11 18.7Uttarakhand 17.4 5.19 17.5
Punjab 19.6 2.08 19.7
Haryana 17.3 16.40 17.9
Delhi 19.1 4.11 19.2
Uttar Pradesh 15.7 38.91 17.0
Bihar 15.0 64.83 16.4
Jharkhand 17.2 8.54 17.5
Rajasthan 15.2 43.02 16.9
Chhattisgarh 15.7 31.45 16.5
Madhya Pradesh 15.8 33.33 16.7
Northeast 20.4 2.14 20.5
Assam 19.2 1.10 19.3West Bengal 17.5 3.31 17.5
Orissa 18.0 1.23 18.1
Gujarat 18.0 9.64 18.4
Maharashtra, Goa 18.0 2.79 18.1
Andhra Pradesh 15.9 8.76 16.2
Karnataka 17.4 5.61 17.7
Kerala 20.7 1.29 20.7
Tamil Nadu 18.6 1.18 18.7
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Table 4.
Distribution of Marriage Types for Women (25-49) Entering First Marriage at Ages 15-24, bySelected Characteristics
Type of Marriage
Nself-
arrangedjointly-
arranged
parent- arrangedwith
consent from therespondent
parent-arrangedwith no consent
from therespondent
full sample 21,614 4.94 36.52 23.18 35.36
women's age
25-30 5,008 6.25 35.53 25.00 33.23
31-35 5,047 4.67 36.08 25.01 34.25
36-40 5,148 4.40 37.27 22.23 36.09
41-45 3,790 4.64 36.57 22.24 36.55
46-49 2,621 4.48 37.74 19.39 38.39
level ofeducation
Illiterate 9,648 4.10 33.31 15.68 46.91
Primary 3,704 4.79 36.54 24.33 34.34Upper primary 3,002 4.45 38.24 28.24 29.07Secondary 2,988 6.57 39.68 34.05 19.69Senior secondary 1,053 7.24 43.31 31.74 17.71
College 996 7.45 44.32 37.41 10.83
age at (current)marriage
15-16 years 7207 4.36 29.60 19.64 46.40
17-18 years 7063 4.04 38.61 21.81 35.54
19-20 years 4261 5.70 41.40 25.56 27.34
21-22 years 1955 6.60 39.35 30.46 23.5923-24 years 1127 8.59 44.36 32.71 14.34
current residence
Rural 14,815 5.07 34.50 20.34 40.09
Urban 6,799 4.66 40.93 29.36 25.05
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Table 4 (contd).Distribution of Marriage Types for Women (25-49) Entering First Marriage at Ages 15-24, bySelected Characteristics
statesJammu and
Kashmir 245 3.41 16.41 22.83 57.34Himachal Pradesh 159 6.43 8.90 49.55 35.12Uttarakhand 416 1.28 6.47 35.80 56.45Punjab 632 0.60 36.63 24.52 38.26Haryana 419 2.19 56.60 6.89 34.32Delhi 381 1.46 30.12 31.58 36.85Uttar Pradesh 2402 2.71 21.72 8.44 67.13Bihar 1117 2.86 15.24 3.64 78.26Jharkhand 818 6.56 17.91 12.60 62.93Rajasthan 825 0.21 15.89 7.09 76.82Chattisgarh 471 1.01 59.71 7.77 31.51Madhya Pradesh 919 0.69 43.53 8.17 47.61North-East 243 44.01 19.66 14.09 22.25Assam 582 7.87 52.25 35.72 4.16West Bengal 1675 8.21 28.55 41.11 22.12Orissa 929 5.56 19.18 14.40 60.86Gujarat 1283 9.83 79.86 5.13 5.17Maharashtra 2496 3.11 33.75 34.45 28.70Andhra Pradesh 1736 4.74 30.20 45.19 19.88Karnataka 1156 4.62 63.75 23.88 7.75Kerala 825 7.16 54.38 37.23 1.23Tamil Nadu
1886 6.46 52.70 29.04 11.80source: Banerji, Martin and Desai, 2008
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Table 5.
Percentage of Marriage to a Relation and Village Endogamy
Percent of womenmarried within the
same village
Percent of
women marriedto a close
relative or uncle
All India 13.74 9.85
StatesJammu and Kashmir 23.13 17.91Himachal Pradesh 10.53 0.33Uttarakhand 7.69 0.63Punjab 4.75 0.77
Haryana 2.86 1.25Delhi 18.92 1.41Uttar Pradesh 5.26 4.09Bihar 6.13 5.01Jharkhand 8.38 4.99Rajasthan 10.52 1.49Chattisgarh 6.88 0.91Madhya Pradesh 10.37 3.20North-East 41.80 1.95Assam 27.37 0.92West Bengal 20.38 2.96
Orissa 17.01 7.56Gujarat 8.30 2.35Maharashtra 12.17 25.59Andhra Pradesh 16.67 27.49Karnataka 11.65 22.02Kerala 27.61 2.07Tamil Nadu 27.19 25.95
coefficient of variation 67.93 138.95
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Table 6.
Mean of Gender Performativity Variables by SelectedCharacteristics
purdaheatingorder
lessmobility
All India 0.532 0.344 0.359
Current residence
Rural 0.586 0.404 0.400
Urban 0.404 0.204 0.266
StatesJammu and Kashmir 0.766 0.201 0.373Himachal Pradesh
0.447 0.106 0.207Uttarakhand 0.423 0.404 0.238Punjab 0.310 0.231 0.277Haryana 0.799 0.099 0.314Delhi 0.429 0.142 0.248Uttar Pradesh 0.855 0.701 0.435Bihar 0.874 0.906 0.696Jharkhand 0.565 0.541 0.577Rajasthan 0.931 0.426 0.578Chattisgarh 0.554 0.467 0.571Madhya Pradesh 0.917 0.488 0.513
North-East 0.269 0.048 0.123Assam 0.668 0.336 0.490West Bengal 0.666 0.250 0.276Orissa 0.651 0.601 0.374Gujarat 0.743 0.045 0.236Maharashtra 0.364 0.175 0.171Andhra Pradesh 0.118 0.074 0.295Karnataka 0.116 0.264 0.312Kerala 0.138 0.088 0.141Tamil Nadu 0.102 0.147 0.249
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Table 7.
Coefficients from Ordinary Least Squared Model Predictingthe Gap between Marriage and Cohabitation
coefficients std. error
Women's Education
1-6 years -0.076 0.020 **
7-9 years 0.040 0.024
10-11 years 0.222 0.030 **
12 or more years 0.570 0.033 **
age at marriage -0.199 0.002 **
income 0.008 0.006
High Caste Hindu -0.037 0.037
OBC 0.176 0.035 **
Dalit 0.022 0.037
Adivasi -0.055 0.045
Muslim -0.273 0.040 **
Sikh, Jain -0.015 0.078
Christain 0.366 0.070 **
urban -0.035 0.019
States
Himachal Pradesh -0.134 0.116
Uttarakhand -0.394 0.091 **
Punjab -0.075 0.087
Haryana -0.020 0.090
Delhi -0.088 0.094Uttar Pradesh 0.349 0.075 **
Bihar 0.354 0.078 **
Jharkhand -0.277 0.082 **
Rajasthan 0.810 0.080 **
Chhattisgarh -0.016 0.085
Madhya Pradesh 0.062 0.080
Northeast 0.066 0.100
Assam -0.011 0.084
West Bengal -0.375 0.076 **
Orissa -0.380 0.082 **
Gujarat -0.062 0.079
Maharashtra, Goa -0.342 0.076 **
Andhra Pradesh -0.565 0.076 **
Karnataka -0.311 0.079 **
Kerala -0.062 0.083
Tamil Nadu -0.337 0.077 **
constant 3.892 0.092
p
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Figure 1.
Average gap between marriage and cohabitaiton by age
at marriage
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
10 12 14 16 18 20 25 26
Age at Marriage
Years
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Figure 2.
Women's Length of Acquaintance with Husband before Marriage by
years of woman's education
0
20
40
60
80100
0 years 1-4 std 5-9 std 10-11 std H. Sec College
graduate
Years of education
Percent
Since
childhood
1+ years
1-12 month
< 1 month
Around Wedding
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Figure 3.
Age at First Marriage and Purdah by State
0
20
40
60
80
100
12 14 16 18 20 22
age
percentpracticingp
urdah
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Figure 4.
Age at First Marriage and Eating Separate by State
0
20
40
60
80
100
12 14 16 18 20 22
age
percenteating
sep
arate
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Figure 5.
Age at First Marriage and Mobility by State
0
20
40
60
80
100
12 14 16 18 20 22
age
percentunable
to
go
alone
to
three
destinations