atriarchal family- that is the root of wife beating and deaths (Jaggar & Rothenberg, 1993).In the United States we condemn those acts and even cry out for justice for these women. This is a culture and society unlike our own. Women here in the United States are free from dowries and the traditions which make them property of their husbands, however, acts of violence stands as a reminder to women of their low worth in society. The "dowry deaths" in India are undercounted, largely because the husband and his family frequently try to disguise the murder as a suicide or an accident. A frequent scam is to set the wife alight with kerosene, and then claim she died in a kitchen accident. In 1987 the police officially recorded 1,786 dowry deaths in all of India, but womens action groups estimates that 1,000 women burned alive in Gujurat state alone (Jaggar & Rothenberg, 1993). As Cheryl Bernard, director of Austrias Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Politics, notes: "Violence against women in the family takes place because the perpetrators feel, and their environment encourages them to feel, that this is an acceptable exercise of male prerogative, a legitimate and appropriate way to relieve their own tension in conditions of Domestic Violence 4stress, to sanction female behavior or just to enjoy a feeling of supremacy" (Jaggar & Rothenberg, 1993). (Jaggar & Rothenberg, 1993) However, in our history women endured much violence and it was once accepted to beat ones wife. Under English common law, for example, a husband had a legal right to discipline his wifesubject to the "rule of thumb" that barred him from using a stick broader than his thumb. Judicial decisions in England and the United States upheld this right until well into the 19th century. In April, a New York judge let off with only five years probation a Chinese immigrant who admitted bludgeoning his wife to death. The judge justified the light sentence partly by reference to tra...
