The price of a woman: Re-examining the use of financial incentives for women’s health in India

ABSTRACT

The use of financial incentives is a common instrument to advance women’s health across low and middle-income countries. Since the 1990s, the conditional cash transfer (CCT) for health has been generally lauded by researchers, policy makers and international financial institutions due to demonstrated improvements in access to health services and a range of health outcomes. Some scholars, however, have cautioned that CCTs should be further scrutinised to assess potential unintended consequences and moral concerns in a variety of contexts. In this article, I re-examine Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a cash incentive programme that aims to promote institutional deliveries in order to reduce high levels of home deliveries and maternal deaths in India. I adopt a critical perspective, focusing on the specific instrument of dowry through the lens of capitalist patriarchy (Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale. London: Zed Books). Global and national health policy experts and policy makers require a greater awareness of the dowry system, since this system may hamper the use of financial incentives by reinforcing the commodification of women.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s health
• financial incentives
• dowry
• India

Acknowledgement

This paper is the culmination of years of reflection and discussion with women across India and elsewhere on the sub continent in which the issue of dowry subtlety, but persistently cropped up regardless of the public health issue being tackled. I am grateful for the numerous scholars who have encouraged me to adopt a more critical (feminist) approach to my work. The superior input of two anonymous reviewers helped me to develop, sharpen and refine my ideas, which ultimately evolved into this paper. The support and input of the editors of Global Public Health was integral to completing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.