Abstract
A lawyer and writer on women’s issues, Kirti Singh, in Separated and Divorced Women in India, sets out to shed light on a dire need to reform India’s diverse legal systems, as they pertain to the economic security and legal rights of divorced, separated, and deserted women. These women are on the lowest rung of India’s social and economic ladder and marginalized in the justice system. She reviews existing laws and deploys original data from 405 women, whose marriages have dissolved, from across India—North, East, South, and West—to draw the reader’s attention to the legal, social, and economic status of women and their experience with the law in today’s India. The book reveals enormous gaps in economic and legal rights of these women and the social discrimination they encounter due to their marital disruption.
This is a well-written and organized book full of descriptive results—tables and graphs. It follows the format of a research report that reveals detailed information about marriages disrupted and women’s right to property in India. Using data from a sample of women from across India, the book provides a window into their demographic characteristics and their lives: their contribution to domestic work and household economy, violence against them by spouses and relatives, their interactions with the legal system, and their social and economic condition before and after marital disruption. Nearly all women in the sample, irrespective of their caste, class, and community, had experienced domestic violence from their partners, lost their homes, and their social and economic status had plummeted. None of India’s laws provide adequate financial support for these single women to maintain their economic status prior to their marital disruption. These women are entitled to ask for financial maintenance from their spouses or ex-spouses, but the pervasive institutional inefficiencies and barriers often deter them from seeking the rights to maintenance. Women who had filed for maintenance received only a fraction of their spouse’s incomes. They often return to their natal family and become an economic burden to their relatives for the rest of their lives. Also, women who become single as a result of marital disruption lose the respect reserved for married or widowed women. Hence, marital disruption in India not only results in women’s economic insecurities but also a decline in their social status and an increased level of discrimination and resentment from relatives, friends, and neighbors.
Indian property rights laws overwhelmingly favor the institution of marriage and women whose marriages are disrupted are at a distinct disadvantage, economically and socially. This book challenges India’s advocates and policy makers to revisit and amend existing property rights policies in favor of a growing number of divorced and separated women. The author provides a list of recommendations including enactment of laws allowing women to gain 50% of couple’s marital wealth upon divorce. In addition, to assist single women with young children whose spouses/ex-spouses are poor and without much property to distribute, the author recommends expanding state responsibilities toward such women.
This book is timely and valuable, given the prevalence of spousal violence against women within marriage and the rising trend in divorce and separation in India. Only a few social scientists in India, like Bina Agarwal (in her book, A Field of One’s Own), have explored this topic in detail. This book complements the existing literature and will be a valuable source for social work students, researchers, and policy advocates interested in divorced, separated, and deserted Indian women’s social and economic status and strategies to reduce their vulnerabilities.