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.
Highlights
Marriages in South Asia are predominantly arranged by family elders
As we argue in this article, agency is not always overt and young women’s reflections and assessment of the implications of taking a particular stance may result in their appearing to go along with decisions that might seem contrary to their interests
All the study participants regarded marriage as a source of security, especially after their parents’ demise, and they reiterated the social desirability of marrying at a socially defined correct age. Their views were entirely consonant with those expressed throughout South Asia: that a daughter remains under parental care and control until marriage and afterward is her husband’s responsibility, that marriage is essential for all woman, and that any woman who remains unmarried in her natal home beyond the marriageable age is not seen in a good light
Summary
Marriages in South Asia are predominantly arranged by family elders One Muslim woman with 5 years of education said that she was already 22, which was a “marriageable age.” The other was a Hindu woman with 5 years of education who used convinced agency because “parents know what is best for me.” Four of these women’s parents asked for their consent in marriage and this might have contributed to their satisfaction with the marital arrangement.
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