I'd say that women's rights activists in rich nations have succeeded in raising the status of women in marriage dramatically since the late nineteenth century, but, in many parts of the world where neither capitalism nor socialism modernized the relation of sexes a great deal, marriage appears to be still a patriarchal institution encumbered by residual feudal customs:
<blockquote>More than half of Kyrgyzstan's married women were snatched from the street by their husbands in a custom known as "ala kachuu," which translates roughly as "grab and run." In its most benign form, it is a kind of elopement, in which a man whisks away a willing girlfriend. But often it is something more violent.
Recent surveys suggest that the rate of abductions has steadily grown in the last 50 years and that at least a third of Kyrgyzstan's brides are now taken against their will. (Craig S. Smith, "Abduction, Often Violent, a Kyrgyz Wedding Rite," The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/international/asia/30brides.html>30 Apr. 2005)</blockquote>
Marriage by abduction sounds worse than voluntary prostitution.
In the United States also, many individuals (more often women than men) get access to necessary social programs (health care, dental care, Social Security, etc.) based on their relationship to their spouses, rather than as a matter of citizens' social rights (let alone human rights to which all individuals, regardless of immigration status, are entitled). More men than women are the primary earners in marriage also. To the extent that individuals depend on marriage for economic survival, marriage remains an institution of inequality. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>