The Decline of Women's Freedoms

The history of china saw continual and largely unsuccessful government campaigns to eradicate both bride price and debt slavery. In india, the caste system allowed what were otherwise differences between rich and poor to be made formal and explicit. Brahmans and other members of the upper castes jealously sequestered their daughters and married them off with lavish dowries. The twice born were, likewise, largely protected from falling into debt bondage while for much of the rural poor, debt dependency was institutionalized. Women's formal and practical freedoms appear to have been gradually, but increasingly restricted and effaced.