put up with patrilocality

Still, some key components of marriage that deepen inequality between men and women have received little attention. Patrilocality is a clear example. It orders women to move permanently into their husband’s house after marriage. This dispersion of women who lack solid finances visibly weakens them. It makes their position in their new home incomparable with that of their husbands, who continue to live among their own relatives.

Patrilocality is widely praised in popular culture. Symbolically, its normative hegemony is maintained even in marriages in which a couple opts for neolocality (a practice in which both integrate a home away from their respective families). Also in such cases, the bride is duly sent to her husband’s family home for the time being. We often go to ridiculous lengths to maintain this farce.

In marriage ceremonies where the entire bridal party is housed in the same place, the bride leaves her own chambers after the marriage to go to her husband’s temporary abode a few yards away. Thus, the system of patrilocality is reaffirmed.

In cases where the bride has no choice but to move in with her kindred family, her situation becomes quite precarious. To a large extent, she is left alone to deal with the anguish of leaving her home and family. Scholars who study intergroup conflict have noted how people displaced from their homes as a result of these situations experience an acute loss of place, belonging, and dignity.

Such is the unspoken power of the patriarchy-patrilocality dyad that, in one case, a woman is uprooted from her own habitual habitat and transferred to a new home and family after marriage. The sense of loss she experiences becomes the obligatory price she pays to maintain the moral compulsions inherent in marriage. Confronted with the established normative hegemony of patrilocality, she often has no choice but to operate within its overall framework.
Across caste, class, and community lines, women have dispersed to conform to the norm of patrilocality. They have negotiated with him, devised strategies to subvert him, and made concessions. In some cases, they have managed to separate. But they have not been able to undermine the moral authority of patrilocality or hold it accountable for favoring men and discriminating against women.

Patrilocality is crucial to maintain the preference for sons and the practices of offering better food, health and education services to sons compared to daughters. These daily discriminations are intrinsically linked to patrilocality. A daughter will have to marry, often with a large dowry. A son, on the other hand, will keep the family name, offer the promise of support to aging parents, and even make up for financial losses incurred in arranging daughters’ marriages by obtaining a dowry. Ultimately, she will get through marriage another caretaker, whose work will also support the family. So slogans like “Save the daughters, educate them and treat them on a par with the sons” ring hollow. To achieve substantive gains, we have to challenge disempowering structures like patrilocality. However, the workings of everyday patriarchy and the blatant patriarchal conditioning of our children serve to limit such questioning.

The writer teaches history at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru’s national publisher. Shalini Langer Curates ‘She She Said’ Column