If Dowry Was a Crime Against Women, Alimony Is Justice for It

Dowry was never just about money. It was about ownership. For generations, women were traded as responsibilities to be passed on, their worth measured in gold, gifts, or family reputation. Marriage was the transaction, and women were the currency.

When women stayed silent, they were called virtuous. When they spoke up, they were called greedy. Dowry made women property. Alimony makes them people. Because when a woman walks away from a man, she leaves behind her years of unpaid work, emotional labor, and lost dreams.

Alimony does not buy her dignity. It acknowledges it.

Marriage in India has rarely been a partnership. It often erases a woman’s identity in the name of tradition. According to National Sample Survey data, more than 80 percent of Indian women leave or reduce work after marriage.

They sacrifice ambitions so that their husbands can chase theirs. A man’s success often stands on the unrecorded labor of a woman who cooked, managed, soothed, and built everything around him. Alimony does not punish him for it. It compensates her for all the invisible investment that kept his world running.

Dowry told men they were doing a woman a favor by marrying her. It handed them money, respect, and control. Alimony reverses that narrative.

If marriage demanded her silence, her time, and her unpaid work, then justice demands he pay for what she lost. Dowry was society paying men for women’s existence. Alimony is society finally paying women back for surviving it.

It is not revenge. It is repair, long overdue and long denied.

Every home runs on an invisible economy powered by women. A homemaker in India works the longest hours, earns nothing, and receives no recognition.

Oxfam’s 2019 report estimated that Indian women contribute 19 lakh crore rupees in unpaid domestic work every year, nearly three percent of the country’s GDP. Yet the moment she steps out of that marriage, her decades of labor vanish on paper.

Alimony is the only legal acknowledgment that her contribution was real, valuable, and necessary. She is not taking his money. She is reclaiming what her labor built.

Every woman knows this truth. She does not just manage a home. She manages a man. She absorbs his moods, carries his stress, maintains his family ties, and fixes what he breaks emotionally and socially.

A Harvard Business Review study in 2019 found that married men earn 30 percent more than single men because of the emotional stability provided by women. When men complain about alimony, they forget that their peace, productivity, and prestige were built on her invisible care.

Alimony is society’s way of saying that emotional labor counts too.

Many men call alimony unfair, but women have been paying since the day they said “I do.” They paid with paused careers, stretched bodies, and shrinking identities.

According to the National Judicial Data Grid in 2023, nearly 70 percent of divorced women in India have no independent income. Alimony is not lifelong luxury. It is temporary balance. It helps her rebuild in a system designed to make her start over with nothing.

The law does not ask him to suffer. It asks him to share the burden he once demanded she carry alone.

Whenever a woman seeks alimony, she is called a gold digger. When a man took dowry, he was called well settled. That hypocrisy is the core of patriarchy.

The Delhi High Court in 2022 ruled that a homemaker’s contribution must be recognized financially. She is not exploiting men. She is demanding dignity.

You cannot call her a gold digger when she spent her life digging the ground he stood on.

Men never feared dowry because it favored them. They fear alimony because it exposes them. It reminds them that equality has a cost, and this time, they are the ones paying.

For centuries, women were expected to give without question. Now, the law demands a reckoning. Alimony does not make men victims. It makes them answerable.

When women start asking for what they are owed, patriarchy starts calling it injustice.

Dowry treated women as burdens. Alimony treats them as beings with worth. Dowry was a price tag for being chosen. Alimony is the price of surviving being chosen.

It is not about punishing men. It is about correcting the story. Because the truth is simple. Dowry made her pay to enter marriage. Alimony helps her survive leaving it.

So the next time someone asks, “Why should he pay?” ask instead:

Why has she been paying for marriage all her life?