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Contextualizing Women’s Agency in Marital Negotiations

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  • Biswamitra Sahu
  • Patricia Jeffery
  • Nakkeeran N

Abstract

We use 36 in-depth interviews, with 18 Muslim and 18 Hindu women in Karnataka, India, to explore the relationships between women’s educational attainments and women’s exercise of agency in spousal selection and the timing of marriage. We have outlined three kinds of agency, namely, convinced, resistance, and complicit, and the contexts in which they were deployed by our participants during their marriage negotiations. Our examination of the role of education across this spectrum of agential capacities during marriage negotiations suggests that the linkages between education and agency are not straightforward. Rather, the normative context, and how parents and daughters interact with it when fixing marriages, makes the use of agency by the woman and by their parents much more complicated than standard narratives that claim that “modern†education for girls will inevitably enable women to play decisive roles in realizing their personal preferences. Our data lead us to challenge this framework and we argue that the link between education and agency is not always positive and linear, as it widely thought to be.

Suggested Citation

  • Biswamitra Sahu & Patricia Jeffery & Nakkeeran N, 2016. "Contextualizing Women’s Agency in Marital Negotiations," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(3), pages 21582440166, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:6:y:2016:i:3:p:2158244016667450
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244016667450
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    1. Wolfgang Lutz & Jesús Crespo Cuaresma & Mohammad Jalal Abbasi‐Shavazi, 2010. "Demography, Education, and Democracy: Global Trends and the Case of Iran," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 253-281, June.
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    3. Srinivasan, Sharada, 2005. "Daughters or dowries? The changing nature of dowry practices in south India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 593-615, April.
    4. Basu, Alaka Malwade, 2002. "Why does Education Lead to Lower Fertility? A Critical Review of Some of the Possibilities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(10), pages 1779-1790, October.
    5. Naila Kabeer, 1999. "Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 30(3), pages 435-464, July.
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