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From: colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang.india,net.math
Subject: Re: whom do Arranged Marriages favor?
Message-ID: <863@gloria.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 21:01:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: gloria.863
Posted: Wed Jun 19 21:01:11 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 04:39:39 EDT
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[You want HOW MANY wives?]

> 	In all the responses for this discussion, I have yet
> 	to read anything about the differences in how the Arranged
> 	Marriage System treats the male and the female participants.
> 	The system seems to be heavily weighted in favor of the
> 	males (sons) as are most things.  A son brings a wife into
> 	the family while the daughter 'leaves' to join her husband's
> 	family.  The girl's family may for a long time try to
> 	'unload' her to just about anyone.  The tradition of
> 	subservience would more likely lead the girls to accept the
> 	'match' over the son who may feel that he could get better.

There's a theorem in mathematics, due (I think) to J. H. Conway.
Assume that everybody has a lineally ordered list of prospective
marriage partners.  Define a "stable" matching as a matching in which
no two people would be happier married to each other than to the people
they're married to.

One can distinguish two stable matchings among the others: the men-
oriented matching, where each man gets his best available choice,
and the women-oriented matching, where each woman gets her best
available choice.  These are always distinct, unless there is only
one stable matching!
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel