New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2013. xxiii, 255 pp. (Illus.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-81-321-0952-5.
Precious little attention has been paid in research and in policy to the lives of women after marriage. This admirable book goes some considerable way towards exploring the reality of women who have been in marriage but find themselves separated, deserted or divorced.
The book draws on a survey of 405 such women to explore their daily lives and the difficulties they face after the end of their marriages. Singh’s core concerns are living standards and income as well as access to the court systems through which women seek to claim their legal rights.
An introductory chapter maps the legal landscape, as well as women’s success in navigating this, with particular attention to the allocation of assets at the end of a marriage and the ability to claim maintenance. Singh attends to the problem of the failure of Indian law to recognize a woman’s contribution to the economic survival of a marital unit, insomuch as this is neither quantified nor recognized at the time of divorce and is, consequently, not factored into the allocation of assets.
A very helpful overview chapter then summarizes the main findings of the study and is followed by a section describing the sample of women surveyed. Four subsequent chapters explore the following: earning capacity and work status, family status and lifestyle, spousal and child support and the dowry system and finally social status, mobility and skills and decision making. Findings from different cities are reviewed next, with a final chapter that presents conclusions and recommendations. A wealth of data, in tables and graphs, is presented throughout the book, supplemented with summaries of accounts of women respondents.
The argument is set out at the very start, well fleshed out by data and concluded in policy recommendations at the end of the book. In the foreword, former judge Sridevan notes that “the law‘s gender neutrality is a fiction” (xix); this theme runs through the book. Another thread is that with women’s work in the household not being given a monetary value, it fails to be recognized as a contribution, either to the household or to the career or work progression of the husband.
A key finding is that upon death or separation, Indian women by and large find themselves without assets. Singh, a lawyer, makes a central and key argument that equality for women cannot be realized without a right to the equal division of property belonging to both spouses. Drawing on Canadian and European examples, Singh promotes the concept of Community of Property in marriage, so that all assets of the marital home are pooled and then divided. She argues for economic rights as the key to women’s equality.
At the time of dissolution of marriage or of widowhood, the law generally serves a woman leaving the institution less favourably than a man, with pitiful amounts of maintenance being awarded and often after lengthy court procedures and delays.
Women surveyed had made contact with women’s organizations, state women commissions, police and/or courts; one could argue that there is an inbuilt bias in the sample towards women who know of state structures and how best to access institutional support. The broader picture, therefore, is likely to be much more challenging, for many women lack the ability, knowledge and networks that enable them to access these supports.
Some of Singh’s key findings are as follows: that maintenance, though provided for by law, is extremely difficult to access; that the majority of women turn to their natal families if they are left alone at the end of a marriage (including if they have children), where tension and a lack of welcome is often apparent; and that those who are able to take paid work outside the home earn too little for independent survival. Of the women surveyed, 83 percent cited violence as a cause for separation, including women across all communities and religions.
There is a particular problematic that stems from the marital home, where many couples live with the husband’s family. The marital home is not a place where the wife can easily remain post-separation or divorce. Women also struggled to retain moveable assets, such as land, cars and jewellery, after the separation, or to claim money or goods given in dowry. Where maintenance claims were settled by the courts, most cases took between one and five years to reach a conclusion. Support for children was granted in under 50 percent of cases.
Singh’s policy and practice review concludes that family courts have been tried but they are too few; women-only staff teams at police stations were established in the hope that women would access these more than other stations and would be successful in registering cases, including reports of violence. Yet Singh concludes that the hoped-for improvements have not been realised. Women need access to immovable assets—especially property—but also moveable assets such as household items and savings. Many women therefore become assetless on the dissolution of marriage, though arguably they were already so before then.
Singh rightly calls for more and more effective efforts by the state to ensure social welfare and poverty alleviation in general. There are currently provisions for widows but very little for deserted or divorced women. Yet, as this book shows, their challenges and experiences have much in common.
A focus on what happens after marriage continues to highlight the need to explore both the nature of adult womanhood as being legitimately framed only by marriage, as well as women’s poor profile in the labour force (especially in well-paid work) as it reflects both of these areas of concern. We would do well to join the dots.
While many of the arguments and conclusions are not new—accessing courts in India is difficult, the laws do not provide well for separated women, and natal families are the main alternative for women on the demise of marriage—the data provided here are really valuable. They give critical flesh to arguments about the difficulties women face in such circumstances.
The data, in graphical form and explained in the text, are plentiful and are very useful in helping to understand the reality of women who find themselves outside the institution in which acceptable adult womanhood is socially bound.
The layout and nature of the text is at times unfriendly: small print and text that summarizes some of the tables can make for hard work. More attention to prose and commentary would have been helpful. Finally, given that it was published in 2013, the book would have been strengthened by use of 2011 census data, even if it had delayed publication by a few months.
Purna Sen
London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom
pp. 883-886