DYNAMICS OF PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS INFLUENCING THE ATTITUDE OF MARRIED AND UNMARRIED WORKING WOMEN TOWARDS DOWRY
The present study was conducted on a randomized sample of hundred married and hundred unmarried Hindu working women from Dharwad city. A pretested questionnaire schedule and a self developed attitude scale whose test retest reliability was 0.77 (correlation coefficient value) were the tools of data collection. Correlation and 'Z' tests were used for analysis of the data. This study aimed at finding out differences, if only, in the attitude of married and unmarried Hindu working women toward dowry. It examined the differential effect of a set of socioeconomic and personal variables on the attitude of respondents. Contrary to the expectation majority of married group of respondents were found to have significantly more favourable attitude than married respondents. In addition as the educational level increased the attitude of both married and unmarried women became increasingly favorable toward dowry, the correlation beinghighly significant in case of unmarried. Moreover as the income of their parents increased the attitude of both married and unmarried women became increasingly favorable. However, income of the respondents was found to be negatively correlated with the attitude of married women and positively correlated with that of unmarried respondents. Likewise as the age increased the unmarrieifwere found to have increasingly favorable attitude, whereas that of married respondents became increasingly lessfavorable. B ut among both married and unmarried working women, the number of their sisters was found to be negatively correlated with their attitude. In case of married respondents there was no difference between the attitude of those in whose marriage dowry was given and those in whose marriage it was not given. These results disprove the myth that increased education, income and employment of women can turn these women against dowry system at least in their attitude. These findings imply the need to search for social and psychological factors operative in the working women's family and socio cultural milieu which are defeating all efforts to eradicate dowry and to mobilize working women's attitude against it.