Marital Captivity Under the Era of Globalisation: A Sociological Analysis

Volume 2 - Issue 4

Suman Srivastava*

Received:July 22, 2019;   Published: July 30, 2019

DOI: 10.32474/SJPBS.2019.02.000145

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Abstract

The process of globalization sweeping the world is exerting its unnoticed forces to redefine ‘marriage’ and ‘family’. The forces of globalization and market are influencing the family structure and marriage norms to a large extent. Institution of marriage and the existence of a ‘family’ as a unit have found a new meaning. This new meaning is very often dictated by the market forces. The notion of family is shrinking, from large joint families, to nuclear families to individual or ‘autonomous family’ constituted by single person.This move that has been precipitated by the process of globalization has both positive and negative fallouts. On the one hand, this new found freedom promotes acceptance for such a process and allows the nuclear family to democratize and negotiate better living conditions. Women find their freedom to enter job market and earn enough for buying all material needs. Modernity has promoted women’s empowerment through education, legal reforms, political power, economic and personal autonomy, and social mobilisation for gender justice.

Women, though allowed to earn, are incapacitated by lack of control over their own resources and earnings and suffer discrimination and violence. Thus the changes are more superficial than penetrating. The women may have entered the public arena, but the family values dominate and marital captivity is kept as a closely guarded secret. In the private arena, at the level of the family, the family is still dominated by patriarchal norms. Many traditional values and norms take new forms which may be detrimental to old social arrangements, such as providing family support systems to women. According to studies, one of the definite fallouts of globalization and marketization has been growing incidence of marital captivity on women. The important questions at this point are whether the process of globalization and the market forces and changing societal structures is inducing more violence into the lives of women, or they provide a new power in hands of women to come out of the patriarchal dominance and exert their rights to fight violence. This paper shall analyze the impact of globalization and market forces on changing nature of family and marriage and its relationship with growing marital captivity in India. To understand the change in society and its influences on marital captivity in the context of globalization, some references have been drawn from studies and researches in Europe, United State, India and Japan in this paper. The paper attempts to put across a model for combating marital captivity against women in the new era of globalization.

Keywords: Globalisation; Women; Marital Captivity; East Asia; Patriarchy; Family

Abstract| Introduction| Changing Institution of Marriage in India| Marriage, Market and Dowry Related Violences| Institutional Mechanism: Protection of Women from Marital Captivity| Democratization for Combating Marital Captivity| Conclusion| References|