of the developing world, yielded a strong negative association between female literacy and fertility rates. ‘Women’, during this time (the ’70s), were emerging as a recognized constituency in the development effort and this relationship helped in strengthening the conceptual links between women’s issues and economic development (Kabeer 1999). Literacy, together with non-domestic employment, which gave women access to independent sources of income, came to be regarded as important components of women’s ‘status’, which affected fertility and mortality outcomes (Mason 1985). Since Kerala women have on average, been among the most literate compared to women in other states of India (though the same can not be said of female work-participation rates), much was written about the ‘high status’ of women in Kerala (see Table 1) and their central role, historically, in social development (Jeffery, 1992). Later research questioned this straightforward relationship between girls’ education and fertility, emphasizing the need to focus on the social context within which women make decisions (see Heward and Bunwaree 1999). For instance, how is a macro outcome like the decline in fertility negotiated at the micro level of the family, riddled by gender differentiated authority, roles and responsibilities, giving younger women, particularly, very little power to make decisions?

The growing uneasiness with Kerala’s social development outcomes, with the rising visibility of gender-based violence, particularly domestic violence, mental ill-health manifested increasingly as suicide, and the rapid growth and spread of dowry and related crimes, reinforced the need to study family structures and practices. It might be suggested that the growing dowry demands and the visibility of domestic violence, indicated that women had internalized subordination, sustaining inequitous gender relations within the household. We attempt to understand the contradictions in social development in contemporary Kerala by focusing on families (used interchangably with households) as microcosmic sites of such contradictions, where unequal relations of power between men and women are shaped. Changes in the structure and practices of families in Kerala in the past century, themselves shaped by wider social processes, had wide-ranging implications for gender relations. We will attempt to show that the dominant persuasion of families today, particularly in terms of their role in regulating access to material and social resources is patrifocal,

(one that gives precedence to men over women).³ While on the one hand alterations in marriage, inheritance and succession practices, changing dramatically the practices of erstwhile matrilineal groups, have weakened women’s access to and control over inherited resources, on the other, the changing levels of female employment and persistence of a gendered work structure have limited their claims to “self-acquired” or independent sources of wealth. At the same time, it is in the norms of masculinity and femininity taking

³This is a term used by Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (1994). They distinguish “patrifocal” from “patriarchy” which tends to imply a monolithic system in which males always predominate in all settings and socio-economic contexts and at all stages of the life-cycle. The patrifocal concept is more “flexible” and adaptable creatively to both internal/external pressures for change.

shape in the context of emerging consumer practices, that the details of a patrifocal ideology are being consolidated and reinforced. Importantly, this consolidation of ‘conservative’ change also invests men with forms of control over property/resources and over women’s sexuality.

This essay is divided into five sections. In Section 1 we discuss the concepts of patrifocality, bargaining power and fallback position, status, autonomy, agency and empowerment, used to understand gender relations and discern the need to focus on families and their social contexts. Changing family structures and practices and their implications for gender relations are analysed in Section 2. The indications emerging from the non-conventional indicators, domestic violence and mental distress are presented in Section 3. In Section 4 we explore the less known aspects of the relationship between literacy/education, conventional indicators of the high status of women in Kerala, and employment linked to patrifocal family practices. We conclude with the suggestion that education and employment have not played the transformative role so generally expected of them, a ‘discontinuity’ that is shaped by their mediation by patrifocal families on the one hand and that is evident in non-conventional indicators on the other. The study is based on secondary, published material and is exploratory in nature and underlines the need for more research. It also draws insights from ‘reconstructing the past’ through life histories of 15 ‘ordinary’ women, that is, women not marked by any level of social visibility in the state. We have categorized these respondents into three age groups: five were elderly (60 years and above), two were middle aged (in their 40s) and eight were young (roughly between 25 and 40).⁴

⁴The life histories were documented and compiled by Dr T.K. Anandi, a sociologist based in Kozhikode, with contributions from Sandhya Chandrasekharan, Geetha, and Bindu in Trichur; Deepa Shankar and N. Meera in Trivandrum. The names of our respondents have been changed. Not all of them were able to recall their age accurately. The elderly respondents, P. S. Nair, 72, and Uma Antarjanam, 76, had not worked outside the home and lived in middle class households; Mariamma, 60, (Christian) is a nurse; Karthiyayini amma, 65, (Nair) stopped working as a domestic help recently and lives with her daughter and husband; Pathumma, 65, (matrilineal Muslim), manages her household in Malappuram district, while her husband and three sons (of four sons and four daughters) run

Concepts

Families regulate gender differentiated access to and control over resources, both material and social, including education, health and property rights and are an important arena where gender relations are structured. Mukhopadyay and Seymour (1994: 3) use the term patrifocal to understand a family that is in important aspects focussed on the interests of men and boys. ‘As in most intensive agricultural, socially stratified, state-level societies, there have evolved in India a set of predominant kinship and family structures and beliefs that give precedence to men over women — sons over daughters, fathers over mothers, husbands over wives, and so on’. These male oriented structures and beliefs, they argue, constitute a socio-cultural complex that profoundly affects women’s lives. The structural features of patrifocal families include patrifocal residence; patrilineal descent; patrilineal inheritance and succession, all of which emphasize the centrality of males to the continuity and well being of families. In association with this is the relative marginality of females centered in the expectation that upon marriage they will shift residence and affiliation to the family of their husband. Importantly, when speaking of Kerala, these structures were not so clearly given even as far as the early twentieth century. The different regions of Kerala sustained diverse forms of matrilineal and patrilineal families, that with the exception of the Nambudiris

a provision store in Mysore. The middle aged respondents Fathima, 40, (patrilineal Muslim) whose husband sells fish for a living doesn’t go out to work; Chandrikakumari, 43, is from a middle class Namboodiri household. Of the younger respondents only two are from middle class households, Kala, 33, (matrilineal Nair) employed in a government welfare scheme and Arifa, (matrilineal Muslim) in her thirties, unemployed and married to a Gulf migrant; Shanti, 35, (matrilineal Nair) recently joined a self employed women’s scheme and depends largely on the proceeds of coconut and cashew on 50 cents of land and livestock; Nafissa, 26, (patrilineal Muslim) works irregularly as a domestic help; Anitha, 28, (patrilineal Ezhava), is a wage labourer; Lakshmi, 38 (Ganaka, a backward caste) is a domestic help, Omana, 35, who converted recently to Christianity, works as a sweeper; Sindhu (patrilineal Hindu) in her twenties and the only never married woman among our respondents, works on a daily wage in a tile factory. (Life Histories).

(Brahmins, mostly patrilineal), clearly excluded some of the more extreme forms of discrimination against females.

Following Sen’s (1990) exposition of the household, it is suggested here that gender relations within the family are characterized both by cooperation and conflict and their hierarchical character is maintained or changed through a process of bargaining between men and women with differential access to and control over resources. We will also draw upon his analysis of the household in terms of bargaining power, fallback position and perceived interest response. Gender disparity is maintained in the household through the association of men with ‘productive’ work and the ‘outside’ and women with the ‘inside’ or ‘reproductive’ work. A member’s bargaining power is defined by a range of factors, in particular the strength of his/her fallback position (outside options which determine how well off he/she would be if cooperation ceased) and the degree to which his/her claim is seen to be legitimate. Since women’s perceived interest is so intimately linked to the family’s welfare, it could influence bargaining outcomes such as making a perceived interest choice, weakening their individual well-being.

Given such a social context, defining women’s ‘status’ in terms of schooling and labour force participation, is at best partial. No doubt the two are important variables as potential sources of ‘autonomy’ for women. Together they enhance choice and opportunity in women’s lives; provide an independent source of income, strengthen the fallback position, the perception of individual interest and help to raise their perceived contribution to the household. However, indications are that education alone does not enable women to challenge gender relations; much depends on channeling education towards engendering critical attitudes. Crucially, domestic violence and dowry deaths went alongside rising levels of education. Nor did work by itself ensure women’s control over earnings or their ability to take ‘self interested’ decisions. Importantly, ‘status’ here, was not necessarily distinguished from women’s position in society reflecting the values of the community and evoking some idea of esteem (Dyson and Moore, 1983; Mason, 1985; Mason, 1993; Jeffrey and Basu, 1994). In this sense, it could also go against women’s ability to make independent choices, against societal values (Kabeer, 1999). There may sometimes be a strong rationale for women to make choices which are

disempowering. Deeply entrenched social rules, norms and practices, which shape social relations within households as one arena, influence behaviour and shape choice (Kabeer, 1999).

Clearly, there was a need to focus more broadly on socio-cultural institutions such as family and kinship, which regulate gender relations. Sociological studies using kinship systems across India as proxies for autonomy, found that south India, including Kerala, represented ‘greater freedom for women’ (Karve, 1953) or greater female autonomy defined as ‘the ability to manipulate one’s personal environment’ (Dyson and Moore, 1983). The prevalence of matrilineal kinship among sections of the population in Kerala with its patterns of inheritance, marriage and post-marital residence seemed to indicate greater decision-making power for women vis-a-vis women in patrilineal families of north India. It appeared therefore that Kerala women enjoyed not only a high status but also a more egalitarian gender regime. However, studies, which use access to land (women’s rights to land under specific kinship systems) as a measure of autonomy or empowerment, reflected a simplistic relationship (Kabeer, 1999). It was seldom demonstrated how such access translated into actual control and hence the power to make decisions. Moreover, that autonomy, not easily measurable, could be severally constituted and indications that more direct measures of autonomy could yield different results, were being thrown up (Visaria, 1996; Rajan et al., 1996). Visaria’s (1996) measure of economic autonomy in terms of women’s access to and control over household income, suggested that women in Gujarat had higher levels of autonomy than those in Kerala despite much lower levels of literacy. The recent National Family Health Survey, 1998-99 (IIPS 2000), which incorporated measures of autonomy for ever-married women for the first time, also revealed that Kerala trailed Gujarat in terms of all the measures of autonomy — household decision-making, freedom of movement and access to money. However, these studies relied on understanding empowerment through a number of questions on decision-making by women, some strategic to their lives and some not so relevant. Such ‘statistical’ perspectives on decision-making should be taken for what they are: simple windows on complex realities, revealing very little about the subtle negotiations that go on between men and women (Kabeer, 1999). In fact gender empowerment measures (GEM), like the UNDP’s measure (1995) and the alternative

measures developed by Hirway and Mahadevia (1996) for the Indian states, which did not include the household dimension due to non-availability of data on gender inequality within the household, continued to place Kerala women at or near the top.

The concepts of ‘autonomy’ and ‘empowerment’ were expected, nevertheless, to shed critical insights on power relations (Batliwala, 1994, Kabeer, 1999). Differential access to and control over resources, reflecting constraints imposed by the extant social order, deprives women of the ability to make decisions/choices and exercise agency. Agency or the ability to define one’s goals and act upon them tends to be operationalized as decision-making (Kabeer 1999), but it is important to note that it may take other forms like bargaining, negotiation or manipulation or the more intangible cognitive process of reflection. Empowerment alludes to a recognition by women of the ideology that legitimizes and sustains male domination (Batliwala 1994). However, if rights in property customarily enjoyed by women get eroded over time and women’s work expands only slowly or into selective and relatively lower paying occupations, their control over resources is weakened and so also their relative position within the household.

Changing Family Structures and Practices

In the last few decades there has been a gradual but concerted shift in the understanding of women’s property rights in Kerala. The shift, which has involved the major social groups in the state — patrilineal and matrilineal — has been towards a convergence on property practices usually associated with patrilineal forms of families. Conventionally and very generally women’s property rights in patrilineal societies tended to be organized around marriage, in a range of practices including the transfer of women and change in their kin identity, residence, dowry, exchange of gifts, and obligations at childbirth. These practices framed the denial virtually of inheritance rights for women. Though not uniformly, this combination of practices went along with a preference to transfer to women movable rather than immovable property. This is perhaps most sharply delineated in north and north western India where village exogamy was observed and close kin marriages prohibited. In sharp contrast to this picture, women’s property rights in

matrilineal societies in Kerala were clearly delinked from marriage, emerging instead from a birthright in the family property not unlike (though distinct from) the manner of males in the Hindu Undivided Family. However it is notable that the convergence on a set of practices usually associated with patrilineal groups has involved changes in women’s property rights among the dominant patrilineal groups as well. That is to take one instance, if dowry (otherwise associated with patrilineal groups) is becoming a very general practice, it has failed to retain its characteristics (linked to social sanction and regulation) of the mid-twentieth century even among the patrilineal groups. It is in this sense of a convergence of practices that we speak of the dominant persuasion of families in Kerala today being patrifocal. However, this section is limited to examining the basis of changes in gender and property relations in families through alterations, broadly, in the organization of marriage and linked to it, of the contours of masculinity and femininity, in the latter part of the twentieth century. Though it is conceivable that family practices have seen important changes across social groups, this section will focus on the major matrilineal social groups, the Nairs and Ezhavas⁵ and the major patrilineal groups, the Christians and Muslims. This choice is dictated as much by availability/scarcity of material as the visibility of these groups.

Social and legal reform

Processes of reform of matrilineal and patrilineal families leading to legislation in the first half of the twentieth century established the basis of patrifocal families in Kerala.⁶ Until 1986 when the Supreme

⁵The Nairs are a forward and the Ezhavas a backward caste and both were conventionally associated with land holding and cultivation. Besides the Ezhavas were associated, widely in colonial narratives, with toddy tapping as an occupation.

⁶As many as 20 legislations were enacted between 1896 and 1976 which marked the gradual revocation of a legal framework for matriliny. The processes of reform however were of two kinds — (a) legislative reform and (b) reform of caste/social practices involving local level mobilization and campaigns — and were crucial in terms of their implications for gender relations within the family. Legislation in the early twentieth century also set forth property rights among patrilineal social groups, the Christians and the Nambudiris.

Court held that the Christians of Travancore and Cochin were to be governed by the provisions of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, they were governed by highly gender discriminatory laws, which came into force in the early twentieth century.⁷ In fact, the Travancore Christian Succession Act, 1916 has been described as an outcome of the expression of fear and anxiety on the part of the Christian community over certain decisions by the courts in Travancore applying the British Indian law for Christians to adjudicate on the rights of widows. The denial of women’s rights to property rested on ‘fears’ of domestic disharmony and ruin arising from frequent litigation and fragmentation of property.⁸ Under the Travancore Act, women were eligible to receive one fourth the son’s share or five thousand rupees whichever was less as stridhanam (dowry) and did not inherit paternal property. The Indian Succession Act, 1925 does not discriminate between the sexes in matters of intestate succession.

A series of legislations in the early twentieth century introduced measures ‘recognizing’ the conjugal family (as against the matrilineal family which did not centre conjugality) and defining relations of protection and dependence between husband and wife and father and children, facilitated a patrifocal family among the matrilineal Hindu groups. Hindu women now had individual rights over their share of family property but this right was achieved within a legal framework of dependence on men as husbands. The Hindu matrilineal social groups today come within the ambit of the Hindu civil code, with some special provisions such as their exclusion from the mitakshara (Hindu Undivided Family) coparcenary. The Kerala Joint Hindu Family (Abolition) Act, 1976 eliminated the legal conception of joint family property among the Hindus by replacing joint tenancies with ’tenancies in common’ as if partition had taken place among members on a per capita basis.

⁷The state of Kerala was constituted in 1956 of territories from the princely states of Travancore, Cochin and the erstwhile British district of Malabar.

⁸“If daughters are given share along with their brothers and the widow is allowed to have any claim whatever, except maintenance in the property of their husband, it would destroy the domestic tranquility, throw open the flood-gates of litigation, bringing all sorts of calamities and eventually ruin the community” (Tharakan, 1997: 125 citing ‘Original Appendix No. 1’, Dissenting Minute to the Christian Committee, c 1916).

Legal changes went alongside ritual and material reorganization of marriage. Marriage was streamlined and consolidated in one rite, where earlier there were two, that established its sacred aspect.⁹ It is not without import that marriages among the matrilineal groups today emphasize the tali rite (rite investing women with a small gold ornament worn around the neck and considered symbolic of marriage) and considerable thought has gone into the fashioning of the tali (the Ezhavas have also incorporated the caste Hindu rite of kanyadanam which symbolizes the gift of the virgin) (Osella and Osella, 2000: 105).

In phases Islamic law was made to apply to descent of property among the Mappillas of north Malabar. The Mappilla Marumakkatayam Act, of the late 1930s provided individual rights to partition of the taravad (matrilineal joint family) and a Kerala amendment in 1963 brought the share of any member of a Mappilla taravad under the purview of Islamic law, while also substituting Muslim for Mappilla (Agarwal, 1994: 233). Muslim women’s inheritance rights among the patrilineal groups of south Malabar, Cochin and Travancore were generally on the lines of Islamic law, moderated by local custom as anywhere else in India.¹⁰

Matriliny and women’s rights

A question that inevitably arises in the context of discussion of matriliny is whether the system allowed women effective rights (as in control) to property. Matriliny under colonial law was unabashedly patriarchal, investing the right to manage and regulate property in the senior male. This has led to the easy dismissal of matriliny as affording little by way of effective property rights to

⁹Among the Nairs and Tiyas and Ezhavas, it was in a pre-pubertal rite called the tali kettu kalyanam that the tali was tied. While this rite was in several aspects symbolic of marriage, it did not lead to cohabitation. After attaining puberty women could enter into sambandham (one of several terms used for conjugal relations) following customary ceremony. The tali rite was the more elaborate and expensive one as also the rite targeted for elimination by social reformers. Gradually the ‘tying of the tali’ came to be observed as part of one consolidated marriage rite, and to be invested with the sense of ‘wifehood’.

¹⁰A large majority of Muslims in Kerala are Sunni and are governed by the provisions of the Hanafi school of Islamic law.

women. In this context, it is imperative to ask whether property rights could ever be complete without descent of property and lineage. There has also been no engagement with the cleavage or ‘tension’ emerging from vesting descent/lineage in the female members of the taravad and significant management rights over property in the male members. Even at the risk of a degree of generalization, it needs to be stated that property rights, characterized by descent/lineage on the one hand and managerial powers on the other, flowing among different sets of people — senior and junior male members and mothers and daughters respectively — should not be confused with patrilineal forms of family in terms of their implications for women. The implications of the cleavage or ‘tension’ for the distribution of authority were completely ignored in colonial law, more concerned with identifying and enforcing a rigid set of rules. Besides, the tendency to dismiss matriliny, on the grounds that authority was gendered in favour of males, masks from view the less dramatic but equally important gains resting in greater sexual choice, positive attitudes towards girl children, and social support and security from residence in the natal home. Positive factors emerging from matriliny may be grouped into three: (a) emerging from differences in regulation of women’s sexuality, (b) from positive attitudes towards girl children, and (c) in terms of kinship (social) identity.

Greater sexual choice If matrilineal societies in Kerala had come in for shocked, surprised and even exaggerated comment historically for affording an unusual degree of sexual freedom to women (Fuller, 1976), its distinct organization of marriage and property made for very real differences in social attitudes towards women. It has been pointed out that Nair and other matrilineal women seemed to have had greater space for making decisions on marriage and sexual relations (Menon, 1996, Ramachandran, 1997: 279). However pressure could be brought to bear upon women to establish or continue marriages that were beneficial to the taravad or to discontinue those that were frowned upon (Puthenkulam, 1976, Gough 1961, 1993). This was evident from one of our elderly Nair respondents who felt forced to enter into a sambandham at the age of 15 but was able subsequently to get a divorce. “After four years, I took him and went to the Registrar’s office and nullified the marriage”. Given this constraint, the institution of marriage provided women with greater security. Notably, women’s ability to

walk out of a marriage was shaped by their permanent and uncontested right to subsistence in their natal home. Besides, women could remarry on termination of a prior connection or on the death of their husbands.¹¹ Importantly, in comparison with patrilineal societies the oppressive edge of widowhood was absent. An absence of the more stringent forms of sexual control made possible greater mobility and greater exposure of girls to locally available forms of literacy among women of matrilineal castes (Gough, 1961).

Security of girl children The birth of a girl was a welcome event in matrilineal families. This eliminated at least the more extreme forms of discrimination (Alexander, 2000, Jeffery, 1992). It also made available to girls even in the mid-nineteenth century, a level of education that was not to be found elsewhere (Jeffery 1992). However in recent years there are indications that the earlier advantages, reflected for instance in Kerala’s favourable female sex ratio, cannot be taken for granted anymore (Rajan et.al., 2000).

Familial (kinship) identities Inheritance and lineage were through women, which underlined their importance to family or kin identity. Hence women were members of their property group by survivorship, their maintenance and residence rights in their natal home were achieved directly, i.e., they were not mediated by marriage or derived from their husbands. More importantly, these rights marked a sense of continuity and security rather than rupture and vulnerability. It followed that senior women, particularly of competence, in the bigger taravads had an important role in making and/or influencing decisions regarding the household and property (Gough, 1961).

On the other hand, among patrilineal groups marriage (expressed through several ritual observations) marked the severing of a woman’s ties with the natal house/family.¹² Among the Christians

¹¹Menon (1996) gives more recent instances of women who chose break off their marriages and to live with men of their ‘choice’.

¹²Even as post marital residence and property transfers are central indicators in a material sense of a woman’s disinheritance and fractured identity; their symbolic expression is to be found in some of the key rituals of the marriage service (Visvanathan, 1993: 108). Visvanathan’s study is based on ethnographic work in

of Kerala, this severing of ties (and sense of fractured identity) is expressed in the payment of stridhanam, affiliation to husband’s family and church, and the specific character of her incorporation in the husband’s family. That is, upon marriage though a woman’s affiliation is to her husband’s family, she is not ever ‘fully’ incorporated, by which we mean that she is not incorporated as an individual with rights equal to her husband. Rather she is incorporated as a wife, which is to say that she does not even have control over her stridhanam, not to speak of a substantial right in her husband’s family property. A wife’s rights are restricted to the right of maintenance from her husband’s estate (Visvanthan, 1993). A separated woman had no place in Syrian Christian society (ibid, 112, Roy, 1999: 210, 213).

Family practices

Changes in the organization of marriage provide indications of changes in gender relations and erosion of property rights. Particularly since the 1970s these changes have been shaped in important ways by consumer practices and identities. With outmigration, specially to the Gulf countries and the inflow of remittances, Kerala has been in the vanguard of consumer trends (Osella and Osella, 2000, Kurien, 1994).¹³ Osella and Osella (1999: 992) argue that the characterization of consumption as an empowering and ultimately egalitarian act is severely limited. In our

the village of Puthenangadi, known for its ‘old Christian families’ near Kottayam in former Travancore.

¹³It has been estimated that there were around 1.7 million Indian migrants in the middle eastern region in 1983, more than 50 per cent of whom were in all likelihood from Kerala. (P R Gopinathan Nair cited in Kurien, 1994) Importantly, the turn-over of migrants is quite rapid and the number of people who have been involved over a period of time is much higher. Besides, in the state, Gulf migrants are concentrated in certain pockets reflected in the fact that remittances contributed up to 50 per cent of the gross domestic product of high migrant districts (ESCAP, 1987: 74 in Kurien, 1994). While the ripple effect on spending in non migrant households (communities) is quite evident in villages with large numbers of outmigrants and is documented, Kurien (1994) suggests that consumption patterns of non migrants (earning comparable income) in villages with little or no migration tended to be different from that of migrants.

context they point to caste status and income levels as constraints; that lower castes cannot hope to attain an entirely new identity by adopting new consumption patterns and that income levels exclude participation in specific kinds of consumption. Hence inequality is built into the politics of consumption. However, inequality can also be transmitted through the very act of ‘enforced’ consumption as against the process of exclusion. Gender-based inequality in the context of marriage practices emerges not by excluding women but by norming specific kinds of consumption — jewellery, consumer durables most visibly. By generating expectations on a wide scale through lavish marriages, expensive jewellery and large dowries, women are objectified in dangerous ways.

Marriage, female roles and family status Two recent studies focusing on consumer practices in the context of ‘Gulf migration’ found that marriage formed a priority item of spending of remittances (Ibid, 1999, 2000, Kurien, 1994).¹⁴ ‘Marriages are occasions for dramatic staging of public performances of a family’s wealth, status and style They were also occasions when consumer goods change hands’ (Osella and Osella, 1999). This emphasis on marriage, as a consumer practice that provides access to social mobility, has had two kinds of effects. One, it effects changes in the idiom of marriage, both in terms of celebration — through ritual and feasting — and in terms of organization that is, preference to avoid pre-existing practices of matrilineal social groups such as village endogamy and cross cousin marriages. Linked to sustaining ties that already exist by marriage, these practices helped keep marriages at close distances, giving women and men constant recourse to their natal kin; called for less formality and expense (Aiyappan cited in Puthenkulam, 1977). It is significant then that cross-cousin marriages do not find favour anymore. Puthenkulam (1977: 93) also notes that the growing practice of demanding a dowry at marriage has led to a decline in cross-cousin marriages ‘as it is delicate to demand or receive a dowry from the mother’s brother’. If Puthenkulam (1977) records this trend among the Nairs, Osella and Osella (1999: 1010) note a ‘recent wholesale

¹⁴Osella and Osella (1999, 2000) are concerned focally with the Ezhavas, a backward caste, and their data is based on study of a village in the Kuttanad area of south Kerala. Kurien (1994) has studied three villages, a predominantly Muslim village in north Kerala, Christian in central Kerala and Ezhava in south Kerala.

disdain for village endogamy, and an increasing preference for marriage conducted outside the village’. Large dowries, dominant norms of femininity and extravagant celebration, which characterize the preferred forms of marriage make them inaccessible to poorer families (ibid, 2000: 89-97).

Two, marriage, raised to the level of a social imperative, mediates gendered interest and identity. Notably, families ‘husband’ scarce resources so as to achieve the best possible marriage for women, hence ‘family decisions’ regarding education and employment of women are specifically targeted towards marriage. Here dominant norms of femininity dictate that women use their education in the interests of marriage — as accomplished wives and better mothers (ibid, 2000: 41-46). In contrast while marriage is not unimportant for men, masculinity is not centered on it as it is on work. When a man goes to the Gulf it is to work, earn and gain social mobility, even if Gulf migrants are reckoned as preferred bridegrooms. One of our respondents indicated the dimensions that ‘masculinity’ could take in this context. She was considered old at the time of her second marriage at 23 years to a Gulf migrant, who already had a wife and three children. The marriage was arranged at his behest, because he thought he could ‘afford’ it. He told her that, ‘earlier, I never had money to buy even a beedi. But now I am in the Gulf and have got money. I can take care of two families’.

Post-marital residence of women In Kerala, perhaps more than anywhere else, changes in family practices are underwritten by comprehensive change in family structure across the spectrum of communities. Kerala has a very low incidence of joint families.¹⁵ It is in this context that we have to understand changes in post marital residence over the last half century. The general trend is towards adoption of nucleated residence (where a married couple sets up a household). We will denote this form of residence as patrifocal, informed as it is by gendered power relations. Mencher (1965)

¹⁵Kolenda (1987) estimated from Census 1961 data for all states and territories from a 20 per cent sample of households, that Kerala’s 9 districts came within the 62 districts showing the lowest incidence of joint families. Kerala was also a state with a low proportion of married sons and/or other married relatives in the sample households. Kolenda also points out that higher proportions of joint family could be associated with land ownership and forms of kinship and that most of the joint families in Kerala were of the Nairs.

found in her south Malabar village that 50 per cent of Nair households were small matrilineal branches (an average of 3.5 persons per household), 15 per cent were nuclear family units living in houses that were received by women from their taravad, 15 per cent lived in houses established by men and women after marriage and 20 per cent comprised an assortment of related persons. She noted that there was a great deal of flexibility in residence patterns among Nairs, whether poor or wealthy, in the villages. From a sample survey of 403 matrilineal households across Kerala, Puthenkulam (1977: 107) found that the general pattern was patrifocal residence (where a married couple moves to a new house).¹⁶ However this pattern was more dominant in south Kerala (85.7 per cent) followed by central Kerala (61.8 per cent) and north Kerala (59.7 per cent). The largest proportion of matrilocal residence was in central Kerala (29 per cent) and residence in either the natal or husband’s home while waiting to move to patrifocality was highest in north Kerala (16.9 per cent).

A casual comment made by Puthenkulam (ibid: 109) is insightful regarding gendered power relations and the division of roles. ‘[T]he common residence pattern now is generally virilocal. Today no self-respecting person [male] attaches himself to his wife’s house and lives on her wealth like a drone. Such husbands are derisively described as “Koil Thampurans”, the consorts of royal ladies who lived by their wives. There are cases however of the husband shifting to the wife’s home to assume the management of her and the children’s property’ (emphasis ours). The dice, it would seem, is heavily loaded against the woman-subject! Yet, rather than resorting to extreme characterization Puthenkulam’s (109) findings indicate a state of continued mediation of earlier forms of matriliny with the contemporary emphasis on conjugal residence. It is important here that the natal home continues to provide refuge and security greatly to women in north and central and considerably in south Kerala. On the death of the husband, more than 90 per cent (of 398 respondents) of wives

¹⁶Puthenkulam (1977) uses virilocal. We have preferred to use patrifocal for two reasons — to prevent confusing this with our earlier use of virilocal to mean ‘residence in the matrilineal home of the husband’ and because in the post reforms period (social reform and land reforms of the 1960s) the male-headed conjugal household has gained visibility.

returned to their natal homes in north and central Kerala and about 50 per cent in south Kerala. In south and central Kerala more than 70 per cent and in north Kerala more than 50 per cent of widows lived with married sons.

Inheritance rights Mid-twentieth century, Gough (1952) found that the taravad (matrilineal joint family) houses were inherited matrilineally but sons and daughters inherited other property. In Fuller’s (1976) study village in central Travancore, a distinction continued to be made between (i) taravad land inherited matrilineally, the alienation of which required the consent of all adult matrilineal descendents of the person holding it and (ii) separate land which was freely alienable. Recent research in central Travancore has shown that women continue to inherit a house but are less likely to receive agricultural land (Osella and Osella cited in Agarwal 1994: 177). More importantly, Osella and Osella (2000: 106), while not commenting directly on the inheritance rights of women, note that the transfer of their share of land is recorded in the community register of the Nair Service Society (NSS) and Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) for the Nairs and Ezhavas respectively, suggesting that inheritance has been replaced in a substantial way by transfer at marriage or dowry. It is also significant that this land is often sold and the cash equivalent given to the husband and that the dowry is not usually under the control of the girl. ‘While a newly wed bride living with her husband and his relatives is in no position to refuse to relinquish control over her dowry, her contribution may give her some leverage in the family’ (Osella and Osella, 2000: 102). It is possibly an effect of cumulative change that they (Ibid, 101) note that many women no longer have land to pass on to their daughters and mother-daughter inheritance is becoming rare.

Before the 1986 decision of the Supreme Court on Syrian Christian inheritance, women’s rights to paternal property were exhausted by the stridhanam. Given the evidence of resistance from entrenched social interests, church and community, there does not seem to have been a dramatic departure from existing custom, (Agarwal, 1994, Roy, 1999) though high rates of stridhanam go alongside the exercise of testation to safeguard patrimonial interests (Roy, 1999, Visvanathan, 1993: 146).

Stridhanam, dowry or disinheritance of women? An important indicator of the direction of change of women’s property rights is the very general visibility of dowry and the signs of its growing presence, including among groups that did not conventionally observe dowry. Yet empirical evidence of this is limited to a few micro studies. The practice of giving stridhanam at the marriage of a girl was customary among the patrilineal communities — the Christians, Muslims, Ezhavas and Nambudiris — and has been recorded among specific matrilineal groups as well — the Tiyas, Mappillas, and Ezhavas (Gough 1961). Importantly in the case of the latter, dowry did not exhaust women’s inheritance rights. However the custom varied widely among different groups and regions. Given this, village studies indicate that, across the spectrum of communities, the customary understanding of these practices is giving way to what Visvanathan (1993) terms a more ‘market’ approach. Among the matrilineal Hindu groups, there has been over the past century a very general shift to dowried virilocal monogamous marriages, conventional of the Christians (Osella and Osella, 2000: 85). Puthenkulam’s (1977: 104) survey recorded a fairly even presence of dowry in north (32.7 per cent), central (29.8 per cent) and south (24 per cent) Kerala among the matrilineal groups, which is somewhat contrary to the prevailing view that dowry is less prevalent in north Kerala.

To get a sense of change, customary regulation is fast giving way to ‘competition’. An agreement on the stridhanam ’due’ to the husband and/or his family was an essential part of the conventional arrangement of marriage among the Christians. Customary regulation was evident in its ‘public’ character. At a ritual event before the marriage, the amount of stridhanam was announced publicly among other details of the marriage. Also the marriage was solemnized only after the girl’s family gifts four per cent of the stridhanam amount to their church and a share to the bridegroom’s church (Visvanathan, 1993: 112).¹⁷ If stridhanam was understood

¹⁷If Visvanathan’s informants pointed out that it was not unusual for people to ‘trick’ the church by stating a much smaller amount than is actually paid, Kurien (1994) notes complaints by the church that with the influx of Gulf money people have tended to turn away from it. Could this be an indication of the ‘tightness’ of the marriage market, the need to concentrate all resources on ‘getting the best’ even at the risk of former community ties?

as a woman’s share of her father’s property, indications are that it is lending itself to a process of disinheritance of women. Visvanathan (1993: 111) argues that its manipulative aspect has become dominant empirically and money is used to contract marriages with desirable families. Hence, the resemblance to a form of groom price in that a) only on payment of stridhanam is it possible to agree on a marriage, b) the money or property that changes hands is not controlled by the woman but by her husband and/or his kin, prominently his father, c) consequently a woman has only a right to maintenance in her conjugal home (Ibid: 113). The need to pay stridhanam is frequently a financial strain on a girl’s parents leading sometimes, particularly in middle class families, to sale of property and the pressure is such that the stridhanam sometimes (though not usually) exceeds what the son/s receive. The rate of stridhanam varied according to socio-cultural factors including educational qualifications and the employment status of men and women, and factors of considerable importance such as a woman’s complexion and ‘beauty’ (Visvanathan 1993: 111, Osella and Osella 2000: 101).¹⁸

Kurien (1994) found that dowry was a major head of expenditure in two of three villages, studied in the context of migration-induced spending. In a Muslim village, where migrants were from the lower income groups, she finds that ‘the value placed on the purity and seclusion of women manifested itself in several ways in the expenditure patterns of this area’. This had led to a tremendous increase in dowry rates as well as the use of taxis, considered the more appropriate mode of travel for women. In the second, an Ezhava dominated village, while dowry is not mentioned, the major heads of expenditure were life cycle rituals and festivals. ‘Marriages were the biggest of such celebrations and migrants spent a good proportion of their Gulf money on the weddings of their sisters, daughters and close relatives’. In a relatively affluent Christian village, the largest heads of expenditure were education (donations to professional colleges) and dowries. ‘Status in this community accrued from having a large bank balance, professionally educated family members (the large dowries were often ways of securing such

¹⁸Notably dowry and education (or employment) are posed as competing demands for cash within families (Morrison, 1997).

sons-in-law) . . .’. Our elderly Christian respondent revealed that at her marriage in 1970 (between a nurse and a government employee) her dowry was Rs 3,000 ‘a big amount then’. More recently she paid Rs 3 lakhs as her elder daughter’s dowry.¹⁹

There are indications of significant escalation in dowry rates in the state. Dowries for mid-status middle class marriages (as between children of Ezhava primary school teachers or local factory workers) were up to Rs 200,000 in 1996 and rising. Besides, dowries include a combination of cash, gold, land and consumer durables. A high prestige, high wealth dowry could include up to 101 sovereigns of gold, a preferred form of dowry (Osella and Osella 2000: 101). Among the Ezhavas, the bulk of the dowry consisted of land given by the father, cash and gold. Though some notional distinction was made between land and gold to remain in the bride’s name and cash and goods going to the husband and his family, in practice most women lost control over the entire dowry, which is used to support the needs of the husband’s family. Osella and Osella (2000: 106) seem to suggest that the Nairs and Christians share these practices, for the Ezhavas are described as adopting the formers’ practices in a bid towards upward mobility. One point of difference cited, however, is that of public registration of the dowry paid and cash gifts received at the marriage of a girl with the SNDP. Ezhavas consider this important to guard against loss in case of a break up of the marriage while Nairs and Christians are noted to consider this shameful. Hence a Nair bride has proof of only her share of land via the NSS register.

It is important to note that property transfers are being made increasingly at the time of marriage of a girl and that there is an element of force associated with such demands. Two of our younger respondents, who are Nair, reported that dowry was not demanded or given at their marriages. However one of them mentions that her husband who later deserted her, would point out that she had not ‘brought’ anything, despite the fact that they lived in her natal home. While expressing herself against dowry, she added that she would be forced to pay dowry for her girls, if demanded, for fear

¹⁹Mariamma views dowry as a woman’s rightful share, “because we won’t give them money anymore”. Besides, “I have given my land and house to my son. I am not partial. She can come to my house at any time but she is not supposed to show any authority over my house”. (Life Histories)

that otherwise they may be harassed. The unmarried respondent pointed out that dowry was a factor blocking her marriage — very recently a construction worker and wage labourer like herself demanded Rs 50,000 and 50 sovereigns of gold as dowry for his marriage.²⁰ Among the matrilineal Muslims too there seems to be a gradual shift towards dowry. Our younger respondent from this group pointed out that while dowry was not paid at her marriage, they may not be able to stop their son (now 13) from taking it, ‘because they are the new generation’.²¹ It was clear from the patrilineal Muslim respondents that they did not have control over dowry, specially cash and sometimes gold and land.²²

Non Conventional Indicators: Violence and Mental Distress

Analysis of reported crime in the state shows a four-fold increase between 1991 and 1996, of which growth in rape and domestic violence was the highest (National Crime Records Bureau, various issues). On the basis of the 1995-1997 average, it is seen that in the ascending order of crime, Kerala was ranked 25th among the Indian states in molestation and domestic violence, which includes dowry-related crime, 18th in sexual harassment and 10th in terms of dowry deaths (Mukherjee et al., 1999). While it must be remembered that dowry deaths were little heard of even in the recent past, it is possible that some dowry deaths were disguised as suicides. In a micro level study of 133 survivors of attempted suicides in 1994-95, more than half were women (Jayasree, 1997).²³

²⁰Sindhu pointed out that in the past it was possible for girls to marry without dowry. Expressing herself against the practice, she added that she would receive 10 cents of land and 5 sovereigns as her share of property. (Life Histories)

²¹Arifa like the elderly matrilineal Muslim respondent, Pathumma, received mehr, (given to the wife by the husband at marriage). (Life Histories)

²²Fathima points out that she was unaware that her husband had used her dowry to renovate his parent’s house which was to go to his sister. She also had to give some of her gold to her husband’s sisters at their marriages. Nafissa’s parents had paid Rs 10,000 and 8 sovereigns of gold to her first husband at their marriage about 10 years ago, which was not returned on divorce. (Life Histories)

²³In general the incidence of completed suicides is higher for men and attempted suicides are higher for females (World Health Assembly Report, 1998, Vadakumcherry, 1994).

A major factor associated with suicide attempts by women was marital disharmony — 36 of 75 women. It was found also that one third of the women were suffering from domestic violence. Men, however, related economic problems followed by family problems. While harassment of women was not linked directly to dowry in this study, an autopsy study conducted in a district in Kerala revealed that more than one third of the women who had died had a dowry problem preceding suicide (Ibid).

A study of domestic violence undertaken between 1997–99 in seven sites (cities) in India, revealed that Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) had the highest prevalence of overall violence (to some extent due to higher reported rates of husband’s infidelity). Levels of psychological violence were very high — over two thirds of the sample women in rural and a little lower in urban non-slums (INCLEN/ICRW, 2000). Key causes of violence were: perceived lapses in fulfilling household responsibilities, infidelity and alcoholism. ‘Disobedience’, including any act construed as disrespectful or disobedient or a challenge to male authority, has been seen as a critical precipitating factor (Batliwala, 1998, Jejeebhoy, 1998). Four of our younger and one middle aged respondents experienced violence from their husbands. As factors precipitating violence they cited suspicion of their fidelity, ‘disobedience’ and ‘disrespect’. ²⁴

It is understood that the more severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia show no significant gender difference in prevalence. However there is a greater prevalence of the more common type of conditions such as depression, and anxiety among women across socioeconomic levels and in diverse societies (Sonpar and Kapur, 1999). Research seems to indicate the social (rather than entirely psychological) influences on common mental distress in women, in particular due to domestic problems, are quite strong. A study of cases brought before the Family Court in Trissur between 1995-98,

²⁴In all these cases the husbands were also given to consuming alcohol. Fathima claimed that her husband had grown more violent since his bout of mental illness two years ago. Two younger respondents ended their first marriages on account of violence. Besides three of the younger respondents reported that their fathers used to abuse their mothers. Of these however only one experienced violence from her husband; another was not married. Our discussions with psychiatrists in Trivandrum, particularly Dr Suraraj Mani of the Mental Health Authority and Dr S. Jayaram, Mental Health Care, corroborated factors outlined.