Mail-Order Brides and Contact Brides – What is the Similarity?

Was the first lady of the United States actually a mail-order bride? This and other tasteless bits of conjecture populate social media forums. While many make and refute claims about this particular union, the business of mail-order brides does in fact exist. In India something similar but far more sinister occurs under the guise of ‘contract marriages’. For the sake of better life or out of ignorance, this is a worldwide phenomenon that takes on different forms.

The mail-order bride - A Strange Phenomenon

The historical origin of the phenomenon dates back to 19th century America, when women from Eastern starboard moved to the wider western frontiers for matrimonial purposes. Later it became a way for women from developing countries or from countries of the eastern bloc to get a better life in developed western nations. Women from Southeast Asia and from nations of the former USSR such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus etc most frequently opt to be mailorder brides. Agencies that facilitate these connections call themselves international marriage agencies.

Many are critical of the term mail order bride; saying that it is demeans and commodifies women. There is the idea that the system caters to men who seek submissive women from societies that traditionally have a poor history of gender equality. However if you remove the problematic nomenclature and some of the assumptions about so call mail order brides, this whole exercise serves both parties well; it ought not to bother people.

Women who may face unemployment, low standards of living, even malnutrition and oppression have a stab at a better life while men looking for companionship find what they are looking for. This does not have to be exploitative; nor is the stereotypical image of the controlling social misfit of a man who is unable to find a match for himself always a reality. It is as good or as bad as many arranged marriage situations where practical, often financial criteria rather than personal emotions and attraction are taken into account to decide a matrimonial match.

That said, the whole business is distantly unsettling, particularly if there is an exchange of cash or favour of other kind. There may be nothing wrong about women looking for a better life; even about dreaming of their families having a better life in a new country. However the clinical bartering that ensues, the fact in many cases there is a premium placed on youth, good looks and virginity is very unsavoury. The possibility that a woman may live the rest of her life on an unequal footing with her spouse is certainly unsettling.

Why contract marriages are even more unsettling

What is euphemistically called ‘contract marriage’ in India is a thinly veiled term for a host of horrors ranging from the forcible marriage of children to outright prostitution and trafficking. Recently news of a Hyderabad girl falling prey to contract marriage made headlines. The photo of a young girl with a much older foreign looking man, and two others went viral. This was allegedly a wedding picture. This story is just one among many of rich, aging Arabs looking to marry teenage girls, sometimes with a view to take them back home and at times just for the duration of their visit.

The sale of child brides

According to one Reuters report, Indian child brides are ‘sold’ in ‘package deals’ to men from the Gulf Regions. In something akin to a slave market of medieval times, 20 to 30 young girls would be lined up for ‘selection’ in a hotel room. Some of these are ‘time pass’ marriages that will end when the men return home to their own country. The girls who are tricked into these ‘marriages’ don’t know that the men would sign postdated divorce documents at the time of marriage and decamp within weeks of the ‘marriage’. Some would be taken along to a foreign country and pressed into domestic service or even the sex trade. Families of the girls, who are usually paid some amount, would do this either out of ignorance and being misled or because of desperate circumstances.

Such rackets frequently come to light, where scores of girls between the ages of 14 and 18 would be rescued and so called ‘brokers’, qazis and would be grooms arrested. The fact is that these so called ‘contract marriages’ are just a euphemism for human trafficking.

The mail-order bride may be a more evolved, developed-world version of the contract marriages. However, what they both have in common is that they are a case of privileged men who can and do exploit the poor, the disenfranchised, the ignorant, powerless or simply the aspirational for ends of their own. The volition and the desires of the woman here may be secondary or wholly irrelevant.

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