Gendered wealth and the challenges of child support in India

Abstract In this paper, I examine the challenges in the legal processes of securing child support in India. Drawing from a qualitative study of family disputes—including ethnographic observations in courts, mediation centers, and legal offices, as well as in-depth interviews and archival research, I reveal how gendered institutional practices shape child support negotiations, often to the detriment of women. I make three significant contributions. First, while much research has focused on judicial decision making in family law disputes, I turn my attention to mediation, a growing method of dispute resolution, to show how this private ordering of family law often places women in financially precarious positions. Second, building on the concept of relational work, I show how mediators perform institutional gendered relational work and persuasive relational work in their roles as facilitators and reinforce inequality by reproducing gendered expectations and constructing notions of parenthood. Third, I demonstrate how women’s privileged class status does not necessarily guarantee favorable outcomes. Instead, gendered institutional dynamics intersect with systemic failure to perpetuate the gendered wealth gap, pushing women into debt, economic dependence, and financial insecurity. By analyzing these processes, this paper underscores how legal processes create persistent barriers to economic equality contributing to the gendered wealth gap and provides critical insights into the economic conditions of separated and divorced women.