Marriage-Related Decision-Making and Young Women's Marital Relations and Agency

There is little research that has explored how marriage arrangements, i.e., family-arranged, semi-arranged marriages with some say in spouse selection and self-arranged marriages, affect young women's married life in settings traditionally characterised by arranged marriage. Using data from 13,912 married young women aged 15–24 in India, we explore associations between marriage arrangements and young women's marital relations and agency. Logistic regression analysis shows that women experiencing semi- and self-arranged marriages were more likely than those in family-arranged marriages to communicate and interact with their husband (OR, 1.3–2.8), and exhibit agency in their life (OR, 1.2–2.3); those in semi-arranged marriages were less likely to experience marital violence. These associations were, however, stronger and more consistent among women from southern and western states than in northern and eastern states. Findings call for expanding the discourse on marriage to ensure young people's right to free and full consent in spouse selection. Keywords: young womenmarriage arrangementsspouse selectionIndia ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Youth in India: Situation and Needs study was implemented by the International Institute for Population Sciences and the Population Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, for the Youth in India: Situation and Needs study. We are grateful to Komal Saxena and M. A. Jose for research assistance. Notes 1. Agency has been defined as the capacity to make choices through the acquisition of a sense of self and of personal competence (Lloyd 2005), and as the ability to make strategic life choices (Kabeer, Citation2001), to affect well-being and to exert influence over life matters (Mensch, Citation2006). What is available, moreover, from the literature on empowerment among adult women would suggest that central elements of the capacity to make choices include young people's decision-making capacity, freedom of movement and access to resources (Malhotra, Schuler, & Boender, Citation2002).