Bride Price: Modern Day Female Enslavement? Essay examples

Dowries are extremely important to consider when it comes to arranged marriages. A dowry is a gift that could be goods, money, or land that a bride’s family will give to the groom to marry the bride. Dowries could be used to bring two powerful families together by having their children marry, for example, royal arranged marriages. In the Biblical sense, a girl who is still a virgin is more of prize than one who is not. In a way dowries make the daughter or son feel as property as told by Sara Smolinsky, “to [my father] I was nothing but his last unmarried daughter to be bought and sold” (205). Mr. Smolinsky stated, “It’s not enough to take my Bessie without a dowry. You must pay me yet” (47). Mr. Smolinsky, being the stubborn man he is, decided when Berel Bernstein asked for Bessie’s hand in marriage without the need of a dowry, that Mr. Smolinsky should get a bride price as well. A bride price

In certain communities in South Asia, the low status of girls has to be compensated for by the payment of a dowry by the parents of the girl to the husband at the time of marriage. This has resulted in a number of dowry crimes, including mental and physical torture, starvation, rape, and even the burning alive of women by their husbands and/or in-laws in cases where dowry payments are not met.

Gender inequality has maintained the suppression of women worldwide and unfortunately has impacted third world countries with the greatest magnitude. Everyday in these countries there are countless occurrences of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse that must be acknowledged as a primary concern for the world to help overcome. It is however important to recognize specific cultural and religious practices of gender hierarchy that are accepted by women in these countries. While keeping this in mind it is of paramount importance to keep sight of the consequences of abusing these cultural practices at the expense of women’s liberation and development.

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harriet Jacobs writes, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women" (64). Jacobs' work shows the evils of slavery as being worse in a woman's case by the gender. Jacobs elucidates the disparity between societal dictates of what the proper roles were for Nineteenth century women and the manner that slavery prevented a woman from fulfilling these roles. The book illustrates the double standard of for white women versus black women. Harriet Jacobs serves as an example of the female slave's desire to maintain the prescribed virtues but how her circumstances often prevented her from practicing.

The life of a slave woman is far more complex than that of a slave man, although understandably equal in hardships, the experience for a woman is incredibly different. The oppression that women have faced throughout their lives in the struggle to even be considered equal to men is more than evident in slavery, not only because they were thought of as lesser but in some ways many women actually believed it to be true. The experiences that Linda Brent, pseudonym for the author Harriet A. Jacobs, went through in her life story in Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl prove that the difficulties for slave women were more than significant in many different cases. For Linda Brent, her life had been a constant fight since she was six years old

America by far is the most diverse country on the face of the earth. America today is known for freedom, equality, democracy, and a defender against tyranny. The foundation of American values lay in a belief of independence, nationalism, capitalism, and religion. However, many conflicts have arisen over these values in the past. Capitalism and other characteristics have made America great, but they have brought about their own set of inequalities. Those inequalities have deep roots in race, culture, gender, and wealth. In the 1800s two of the biggest conflict lies with the issue of slavery and women’s rights.

Her dowry is more if she is an educated girl, but that education will not seem apparent anymore once she is abroad. “I was given away to this man who paid two white cows, four healthy goats, four lengths of cloth, beads, gold jeweler and two bottles of London Dry Gin to my family, and took me off as his wife from my little African village, Naka, to him in the city”. (Darko p3) “When those so-called traditional courts ask him what gives him the right, his self-righteous excuse is, ‘I bought her.’ Why, he can even quote the amount! That’s just too much. What is a woman worth, after all? And who has the right to make such audacious calculations?” (Maraire p34) She would only be known to work and provide for her family with no questions asked or help provided. Even the field of work is already picked without knowing or without consent. There is no equality in which she may know from her home. Traditions are left behind as a part of her adapting to the new life and ways even if she tries to follow them, they are considered wrong in that country because they do not understand. “You must not take the Western anthropologists’ view of our culture. They perceive our customs through their lens. There are terms and customs that cannot be translated adequately into their language and so become distorted”. (Maraire p32) When she arrives at this grand place of opportunity, she is thrown into a glum future.

After reading the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs, I was inspired to read the story of Frederick Douglas. It was amazing to see how similar their stories were but yet they were so different. They both communicate their experiences as slaves in southern American. The two also describe the relationships they had with their owners of the plantations on where they lived, the talk about the way of life for the slaves while on the plantations, and the adversities that they fought to bear.

“Government statistics in South Sudan show half the girls there aged 15 to 19 are married, with some brides as young as 12 years old.” Many girls in countries such as South Sudan and Trinidad are married off at a young age and later face abuse from their husbands. Many of these cases go unnoticed, unpunished and numerous girls die because of birth complications. Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, emphasizes the issue of marriage rights and household equality that affect real people in countries such as the United States, South Sudan and Trinidad.

This joint family, like any social organization, must face problems such as acceptable division of work, relationships and specific family roles. These familial relationships are managed on the basis of a secular hierarchical principle. In fact, all Indians owe respect and obedience to the head of the family, who usually is the father or the oldest man of the family community. In The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder by Nanda and Gregg, it is explained that, “females [are] placed under the perpetual guardianship of first their fathers and elder brothers, then their husbands.” (Nanda & Gregg 22) Thus, all the spending decisions, studies and profession, or marriage, are exclusively the responsibility of the father after the possible discussions with the other men of the family. Age and sex are the basic principles of this hierarchical system. The eldest sons enjoy greater unchallenged authority than their cadets. Of course men have more authority than women, but older married women have an important role within the family. In fact, the authority of a woman depends on the rank of her husband inside the group. Traditionally, the wife of the patriarch rules over domestic affairs and has considerable power over the other women in the community, especially her daughters- in-law.

“SLAVERY was abolished 150 years ago, right? While it is true that slavery is illegal almost everywhere on earth, the fact is there are more slaves today than there ever were…” Despite the grim reality described in this quote, I believe Robert Alan successfully undermines a common misconception held by Americans, both young and old. Although we are brought up thinking that Abraham Lincoln with his Emancipation Proclamation along with the Civil War Amendments brought an end to the enemy known as slavery, in today’s society, however, that is sadly not the case. The harsh reality is that this problem never truly

In this first unit, one of the readings that really caught my attention was John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women. In his essay, Mill’s presents a very compelling argument that the subordination of one sex to another is wrong and that there should be instead, perfect equality amongst the sexes. Having previously studied about gender inequality issues from another class, I have a broad understanding of how and why gender inequality has been perpetuated through various historical, political, and social contexts. Incorporating this knowledge as well as information learned through the readings and lectures, I hope to share my thoughts on the subjection of women and its relationship to slavery in this personal response paper.

The simple fact is that everybody has heard of the Underground Railroad, but not everyone knows just what it was. First of all, it wasn=t underground, and it wasn=t even a railroad. The term AUnderground Railroad,@ actually refers to a path along which escaping slaves were passed from farmhouse to storage sheds, from cellars to barns, until they reached safety in the North. One of the most widely known abolitionists in history is a slave by the name of Harriet Tubman. She is best known as the conductor of the Underground Railroad and risked her life to help free nearly 300 slaves. The primary importance of the Underground Railroad was the ongoing fight to abolish slavery, the start of the Civil War,

     “April third has been declared by Feminist and labor groups as ‘Equal Pay Day’ because it supposedly takes 93 calendar days for women’s wages to catch up to men’s.” 3 Many people believe that sex discrimination is the main reason for the pay gap. However, several factors must be taken into consideration.

The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta follows the story of Aku-nna, a young girl from the Ibo people of Nigeria, who reaches the marrying age after her father’s death. While anticipated to bring in a large sum of money from marriage, she refuses to date any of the suitors presented to her, instead choosing her lover, a descendant of slaves, and bringing dishonor upon her family. A suitor then kidnaps her, but she manages to escape him and elope with her lover; she eventually dies in childbirth with their conceived daughter. In the novel, Nigerian culture, specifically of the Ibo people, establishes a patriarchal society. Because of this, women are treated as inferior, as evident by expectations and marriage/dating customs that infringe upon their freedom and dignity. The role of women in Ibo society is demonstrated in The Bride Price by the expectations to be obedient under the ownership of older males, to fulfil motherhood as early and fruitfully as possible, to abide by menstrual hygiene rules, to be pure through chastity, and to follow such standards or else bring shame upon their family.