How the Face of Arranged Marriages is Changing

Arranged marriage is the idea that marriages should be arranged by the parents or other family members. This is acceptable in some parts of the world but for some it is completely out of the question. If choosing our life long partners are our most basic rights as an individual then why are arranged marriages still enforced among other nations? Arranged marriages shouldn’t be enforced because of the infringement on rights and freedom of a female and male, the boundaries it creates to diversity and the consequence of illiteracy and lack of education upon women.

The idea of enforcing an arranged marriage causes problems with feminists. Because the procedures involved in arranging marriages lead to differences in the autonomy with which individual women can choose their spouses, those procedures bear some scrutiny from a feminist standpoint (Yalom and Carstensen 214). Arranged marriages put a strain on a female being able to be independent and picking her own spouse. These types of marriages give women an unfair share in their own self-determination. According to Yalom and Carstensen, arranged marriages could pose a particular problem if (1) they are arranged with less input from women than men; (2) they produce inequities of power between women and men; and (3) they are an integral part of a host of other practices reflecting and maintaining women's lower societal status, permitting treatment of women as commodities or property.

This is all true because in many Middle Eastern parts of the world, parents or family members choose the spouse for the female. The inequity of power between women and men is highly apparent in these arranged marriages. The husbands were usually required to be rich, educated, successful and of high social ...

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...today’s modern day society we can see that arranged marriages have become less of a coercion from parents but they still exist. Who’s to say that these enhanced ‘assisted’ arranged marriages won’t have these same effects happening with traditional arranged marriages?

Works Cited

Alvarez, Lizette. "Arranged Marriages Get a Little Rearranging." The New York Times 22 June 2003: n. pag. Print.

Farr, Diane. "Bringing Home the Wrong Race." The New York Times 3 June 2011: 6. Web.

Gupta, Giri Raj. "Love, Arranged Marriage, and the Indian Social Structure."Journal of Comparative Family Studies 7.1 (1976): 75-85. JSTOR. Web. 22 May 2014. .

Yalom, Marilyn, and Laura L. Carstensen. Inside the American Couple: New Thinking/new Challenges. Berkeley: U of California, 2002. Print.