The Purpose Of Marriage: When Women Say Yes To Love, No To Systems Of Men

Why do we get married? After all, marriage is sold as a dream, an achievement, a ‘win’, especially to women. And why are some women rejecting marriage as a concept all over the world, including India?

One school of thought may claim marriage is needed for procreation. But academics argue procreation can happen without the solemn oath of marriage. Some argue it is a religious thing. Yet some academics claim marriage predates any organised religion.

So once again, why do we get married?

For some, the answer lies in private property. “If you follow the (Friedrich) Engels school of thought, when humans began accumulating surplus – when the concept of private property emerged – there arose a need to ensure that property remained within the paternal line,” says Dr Shivani Nag, assistant professor at Ambedkar University, who specialises in gender studies.

“Marriage, as a byproduct, may create companionship, but that is not the driving force behind the institution. Its primary function is to establish ownership over private property,” she argues. An ‘heir’ born of a community-sanctioned marriage is entitled to inheritance, while a child born out of love or lust is not.

In this system, women – along with property – also become objects of ownership. When asked about religion, Dr Nag explains that religious and social codes were introduced much later. These codes then became mechanisms to define the family as the preserver of clan identity – caste, religion, and race.

“The idea of family is deeply resistant to flexibility,” she says. “Look at the anxieties around inter-caste marriages, inter-religious couples, or even same-gender partnerships.”

Why Women Want To Break Free

A recent study suggests that 45 per cent of women aged 25 to 44 will remain single and child-free by 2030. The finding triggered outrage online, largely from men, who blamed what they called the ‘disease of feminism’ for an imagined societal collapse.

“There are multiple reasons, including greater financial independence and education, which allow women to make informed choices,” says Dr Shivani Nag. For a small, privileged group of women with education, money and family support, the traditional reasons for marriage no longer apply. “Historically, women married for financial security. Some no longer need that,” she explains. However, she stresses that this group remains a minority. Most women are still married through arranged systems, with limited choice and reduced freedom afterwards.

Dr Rashmi Gopi, Associate Professor at Miranda House, University of Delhi, argues that the shift cannot be explained by economics alone. “Alongside education and income, there is intergenerational trauma,” she says. “Women grow up watching how patriarchy erases their mothers’ individuality. Compromise is expected of them, and that reality is frightening.”

The contrast is often visible in everyday life. A single woman can pursue hobbies and interests freely, while a married woman is frequently constrained by in-laws, social expectations and unspoken boundaries.

Dr Nag agrees that women who reject marriage are seeking space to exist as full human beings. Recalling her PhD years, she notes that while married friends were not explicitly stopped from studying, they were never given the freedom to opt out of rituals, hosting or domestic duties. “Not objecting is not the same as offering space,” she says.

Young women see these patterns clearly through their mothers, sisters-in-law and grandmothers. “In marriage, you are expected to comply, regardless of choice,” says Dr Gopi. “This generation recognises that and wants distance from it.”

Even men who claim progressive views often express a preference for a ‘homely’ partner who prioritises his family over her own. “That hierarchy,” Dr Gopi says, “is being rejected.” Dr Nag adds a simple question: when couples live independently, whose parents are expected to matter more?

A Room Of One’s Own

In 1929, Virginia Woolf argued that a woman must have money and a room of her own – a space she could lock herself into in order to think, write, and simply exist.

It is no coincidence that many academics and women who choose to remain single frequently speak of this room – whether metaphorical or literal.

Yet male-dominated social media spaces paint a bleak caricature of female singledom: an unhealthy woman with grey hair, surrounded by cats and dirty dishes, or a bitter, screaming woman with coloured hair, incapable of joy. Reality looks very different.

Many women are choosing – and choice is key – to escape the bitterness and suffocation imposed by marriage. The study The Decision to Remain Single by Phillis Gordon argues that the idea that couples are happier than single people is a myth.

“When women reject marriage – at least heterosexual women – they are not rejecting men. They are rejecting a system,” says Dr Nag. “Many would accept a like-minded partner who doesn’t impose traditional roles, but such men are rare.”

Woman, Womb, And Woes Of Men 

Men in power have long sought to remind women of their ‘place’. In recent years, few have been as vocal as Indian tech billionaire Sridhar Vembu and X owner Elon Musk.

Vembu has mourned the loss of women’s so-called ‘demographic duty’ — those who choose not to marry or have children in their early twenties. Musk frequently warns of declining birth rates and the supposed ‘vanishing’ of the white race if women do not reproduce enough.

Framing marriage as a way to ‘protect women’ or ‘save children’ simply revives an old patriarchal logic rooted in ownership and control.

“My students often realise only later that certain things weren’t normal — like a mother needing permission for everything,” says Dr Gopi. “They don’t want a marriage like that. They want a partner who is the antithesis of this patriarch.”

She adds, “One student’s cousin died by suicide after dowry harassment. For her, the question is simple: what security does marriage really offer?”

Women carry not only their own trauma, but the inherited and witnessed pain of other women. When social institutions like marriage insist that this pain is a woman’s destiny, those with the power and privilege to do so increasingly choose to reject it

A Lonely Road, A Peaceful Life

Being single is not easy. Rejecting a system built to silence women comes with personal costs. For Dr Nag, 41 and single, it means coming home after a long day with no one to vent to. “My women friends have marital responsibilities. Listening to my crises naturally falls lower on their list.”

Society often mocks women for failing to be ‘good friends’, yet rarely gives them the freedom to practise friendship. A man can casually say he will be home late or eat out. For wives or daughters-in-law, the same choice demands planning, permission, or sacrifice.

Single women are routinely ridiculed. “She must be a lesbian or of loose character,” people whisper, says Dr Gopi, who is single after a divorce. “I don’t eulogise marriage in my classes. We are taught to see it as a natural progression. Students should know it isn’t. Marriage and children are options, not inevitabilities.”

This is not an argument against marriage, but for individuality, dignity and respect. Marriage should centre love and companionship. Instead, it often remains transactional, rooted in religious sanction and the preservation of male lineage.

A privileged few now have the space to ask why compromise is expected from only one partner, and why a woman’s self must be erased to fit the role of wife or daughter-in-law. They want fairness. In its current form, marriage rarely offers it.

Women in marriage are expected to accept lives they would never choose otherwise. The new generation recognises this and those who can are choosing differently.