Feminist Theories on Marriage: Addressing Inequality and Exploitation

Marriage is one of the oldest social institutions, widely regarded as a cornerstone of family life and social order. But feminist scholars have long challenged this seemingly universal celebration. They argue that marriage, despite its romantic veneer, has historically functioned as a structure of inequality-one that assigns women a subordinate role through law, culture, and economic dependence. Understanding feminist critiques of marriage is essential not just for academic study but also for making sense of ongoing debates around gender justice, domestic labour, and legal reform.

Why feminists critique marriage 🔗

At its core, the feminist critique of marriage is about power. Feminist activists point to historical, legal, and social inequalities of marriage, family life, and divorce in their criticism of the institution. The argument is not that love or partnership is inherently wrong, but that marriage as a legal and social institution has been built on assumptions that favour men and disadvantage women.

These assumptions show up in many forms: who does the housework, who earns the income, who gets to make decisions, and whose career takes a backseat when children arrive. Feminists stress that women’s choices within the family interact with unjust social structures outside it, particularly the sex-segregated division of labour in the economy, where women continue to earn significantly less than men for comparable work.

Different schools of feminist thought approach this critique from different angles, but they converge on one point: marriage, as traditionally practised, is not a partnership of equals.

Liberal feminism: reforming the institution from within 🔗

Liberal feminists do not seek to abolish marriage. Instead, they push for reforms that would make it genuinely equal. Their focus is on removing legal and social barriers that prevent women from participating fully in public life.

The liberal feminist argument is straightforward: if women had equal access to education, employment, and political participation, the power imbalance within marriage would naturally diminish. Legal changes like the right to own property, equal inheritance laws, and protection against domestic violence are central to this vision.

In practice, several legal milestones reflect the liberal feminist agenda. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 addressed the issue of violence within the home. Similarly, amendments to the Hindu Succession Act in 2005 gave daughters equal coparcenary rights in ancestral property. These reforms aim to level the playing field within the existing institution rather than dismantle it.

However, critics argue that legal equality alone is not enough. Laws may change, but deeply entrenched social norms around gender roles within marriage tend to persist much longer.

Marxist feminism: marriage and the economics of exploitation 🔗

Marxist feminists take the critique a step further. They link women’s subordination within marriage directly to the capitalist economic system. Marxist feminists argue that marriage benefits capitalism by ensuring women perform unpaid domestic labour, which enables men to enter the workforce without the burden of household responsibilities.

In this view, women’s domestic work-cooking, cleaning, childcare, care of the elderly-is not just “helping out at home.” It is an essential economic activity that sustains the entire workforce, yet goes entirely uncompensated. Friedrich Engels, in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argued that the emergence of private property was directly connected to the control of women within marriage. As men accumulated wealth, the need to pass it on to legitimate heirs made it necessary to control women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity through the institution of marriage.

This analysis has remained influential. Modern Marxist feminists argue that the “double burden”-where women work both outside the home and inside it-is a direct consequence of an economic system that profits from women’s unpaid labour.

The numbers behind unpaid domestic work 🔗

The data backs up this argument quite strikingly. According to the Time Use Survey 2024 released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, women spent 289 minutes per day on unpaid domestic services for household members, compared to just 88 minutes spent by men. That is a gap of over three hours every single day.

An analysis by the Observer Research Foundation found that Indian women spend eight times more hours on unpaid care work than men, and these patterns remain consistent regardless of education level, employment status, or marital status. In other words, even women who earn their own incomes do not spend any less time on unpaid housework.

Government estimates place the value of women’s unpaid domestic and care work at 15 to 17 per cent of GDP, yet this contribution remains largely invisible in official economic calculations. When feminist economists talk about the exploitation of women within marriage, these are the figures they point to.

Radical feminism: marriage as patriarchal control 🔗

Radical feminists offer the most uncompromising critique. They view marriage not merely as an unequal arrangement but as a patriarchal institution fundamentally designed to control women’s bodies, sexuality, and labour.

Kate Millett, in her landmark 1970 work Sexual Politics, described the family as “patriarchy’s key institution”-a microcosm of the larger patriarchal society where young girls learn their subordinate place by observing the hierarchical relationship between their parents. Millett concluded that achieving gender equality required a revolution in the domestic division of labour, and she advocated for fundamentally restructuring the traditional family unit.

In Millett’s analysis, romantic love itself functions as a disguise for the power mismatch between men and women, leaving women vulnerable to emotional exploitation. This is a particularly challenging idea because it questions something most people consider deeply personal and apolitical.

The “personal is political” argument 🔗

Millett’s theory argued that women’s subjugation to men was socially constructed rather than biologically determined, and that this subjugation was institutionalised in every aspect of life-including personal roles within the family. This is the core idea behind the famous radical feminist slogan: “the personal is political.”

What happens in a bedroom, a kitchen, or a family gathering is not just a private matter. It is shaped by-and in turn reinforces-the broader power structures of society. When a woman changes her surname after marriage, when she is expected to move to her husband’s home, when her career is the one that gets sacrificed for the family-these are all political acts, even if they feel like personal choices.

Radical feminists like Shulamith Firestone went even further. In The Dialectic of Sex (1970), she argued that the biological family itself was the root of women’s oppression. For radical feminists, reforming marriage is not enough. Some feminists have argued for the complete abolition of marriage, with activist Sheila Cronan famously asserting that women’s freedom cannot be achieved without ending the institution.

Gender division of labour: the invisible chain 🔗

Across all feminist perspectives, the gendered division of labour within marriage emerges as a central concern. This division is not just about who does the dishes. It encompasses a vast, invisible web of responsibilities-what sociologists now call “mental load” or “emotional labour.”

Feminist theory highlights that women typically perform a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic work, and the concept of “emotion work” draws attention to women’s expected role in managing family relationships, resolving conflicts, and maintaining family connections.

This division has real economic consequences. When women take career breaks for childbearing, choose less demanding jobs to accommodate family responsibilities, or get passed over for promotions because of assumptions about their family commitments, the wage gap widens. India’s female labour force participation rate stands at around 31.7 per cent, despite rising levels of education and skill attainment among women. The unpaid domestic burden is a major reason for this gap.

The 2024 Time Use Survey further confirms this pattern. Only 25 per cent of women aged 15-59 were engaged in employment-related activities, compared to 75 per cent of men. Even when women do work for pay, the expectation that they will also manage the household means they effectively work a “second shift” at home.

Marriage, violence, and legal structures 🔗

Feminist scholars also draw attention to how marriage can become a site of violence-protected by social norms that treat what happens within a family as a private affair.

For decades, the legal system treated domestic violence as a family matter rather than a criminal one. Historically, patriarchy granted the father near-total ownership over his wife and children, and the legal assumption underlying marriage was an exchange of women’s domestic service and sexual consent in return for financial support. Although laws have evolved, remnants of this thinking persist.

Consider the ongoing debate around the marital rape exception in criminal law. The Indian Penal Code (Section 375) historically exempted forced sexual intercourse by a husband with his wife (above a certain age) from the definition of rape. While courts have increasingly questioned this exception, it remains a legally contested area. Feminists argue that this legal gap is a direct consequence of viewing marriage as granting men an inherent right over women’s bodies.

The National Crime Records Bureau data consistently shows that a significant proportion of crimes against women occur within domestic settings. Dowry-related violence, cruelty by husbands and in-laws, and domestic abuse are reported in large numbers every year. These patterns, feminists argue, are not aberrations-they are structural features of a patriarchal institution.

Discriminatory practices within marriage 🔗

Beyond violence, feminists identify a range of discriminatory practices embedded in the everyday functioning of marriage that reinforce women’s subordination.

Dowry and the commodification of women 🔗

Despite the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, the practice of dowry remains widespread. Feminists view dowry as an extension of the idea that women are economic liabilities to be transferred from one family to another. The practice links a woman’s worth to the financial transaction her family can afford, reinforcing her subordinate status from the very start of the marriage.

Naming, residence, and identity 🔗

The near-universal expectation that a woman will adopt her husband’s surname, move to his family home, and integrate into his family’s social network is another form of identity erasure. While these are presented as cultural traditions, feminists point out that they systematically erase women’s independent identities and deepen their dependence on the marital family.

Reproductive control 🔗

Control over women’s reproductive choices within marriage is another feminist concern. The pressure to bear children-particularly sons-the stigmatisation of childlessness, and limited autonomy over contraception and family planning decisions are all ways in which marriage restricts women’s bodily autonomy. Feminists note that girls are often socialised from childhood to anticipate marriage and childrearing, which can lead them to invest less in their own education and career development.

Can marriage be reformed? 🔗

This is perhaps the most debated question within feminist thought. Liberal feminists believe it can. They point to legal reforms, changing social attitudes, and the growing number of egalitarian partnerships as evidence that marriage is slowly evolving.

Research on self-identified feminist couples has found that feminism can positively influence beliefs about equality within marriage, motivating women to demand fair treatment and men to hold themselves to higher standards in relationship work. These couples actively negotiate domestic responsibilities and challenge traditional gender roles.

Some feminists have proposed using explicit marriage contracts to determine the domestic division of labour, arguing that moving marriage from an implicit, status-based patriarchal arrangement to a transparent contractual one would enhance women’s freedom and equality. However, critics note that background inequalities would likely lead to unequal bargaining power even in such contracts.

Radical feminists remain sceptical. They argue that the institution itself is so deeply enmeshed in patriarchal structures that reforms can only be cosmetic. The fundamental power dynamics, they contend, will always reassert themselves as long as marriage exists in its current form.

The way forward: recognition, redistribution, and reform 🔗

Regardless of where one stands on the reform-versus-abolition debate, most feminist scholars agree on three immediate priorities.

Recognition of women’s unpaid domestic and care work as economically valuable is the first step. Feminist economists and policy researchers have recommended that public investment in care infrastructure-including childcare centres, pre-primary education, and maternity benefits-needs to be significantly expanded. Until unpaid work is counted and valued, it will remain invisible.

Redistribution of domestic responsibilities between men and women is equally critical. Community-based organisations and government partnerships can play a key role in engaging men and boys in conversations about equitable sharing of household duties. This is not just about fairness-it is about enabling women to participate fully in economic and public life.

Legal reform must continue to address the gaps that perpetuate inequality within marriage. This includes strengthening enforcement of existing laws against domestic violence and dowry, reconsidering legal provisions that embed patriarchal assumptions (like the marital rape exception), and ensuring equal property and inheritance rights in practice, not just on paper.

What do you think? Is it possible to truly transform marriage into an equal partnership through legal and social reform, or does the institution carry too much historical baggage to ever be fully equitable? How do the patterns of domestic work and decision-making in households you observe around you reflect or challenge these feminist arguments?

References

1. https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A2005-49_0.pdf
2. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/
3. https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1860-45.pdf
4. https://www.ncrb.gov.in/
5. https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1961-28.pdf