Prohibitive marriage dowry

Bride price implies selling women into marriage without their consent. The payment of bride-price gives a man total ownership of the woman and over all her children, whether he fathers them or not. If he wishes, he may re-sell both his wife and her children; when he dies she is inherited by his heir and must become his wife, unless the heir chooses to sell her to another man.

Bride-price is a custom traditionally practised by tribes in Africa, and as such no action was taken against it by colonial powers until the French decree of consent of both parties to marriage and the prohibition of the inheritance of widows in 1929. Similar legislation followed from Belgium and the UK, but native courts still upheld the practice.

In India, this practice used to be restricted to the upper class. Even though it was made illegal in the 1960's, it has become more widespread under pressures of rising consumerism. The dowry may amount to fifteen years' salary of a villager.