The Effect of Financial Independence of Indian Women on Their Marriage Decisions

Mate choice is a complex process in all sexually reproducing animals. In case of humans, this process becomes more intense since social, economic and cultural norms influence this decision. A common ob-servation among different human cultures is that the men prefer younger women because of their fertility whereas women prefer an older man who might have attained social status and economic stabil-ity, thus maximizing the Darwinian fitness of both the individuals. In this study, we analyzed the influence of financial independence of In-dian women, which they attained as a result of a boom in the IT sector, on their age of marriage and choice of groom (in terms of grooms' age). Our results show that financially independent Indian women of the post -IT boom period, preferred to marry late in their lives with a groom around their own age. On the contrary, men both in the pre-and post -boom times sought for a younger bride.