Marriage as risk management

How South African women are rewriting the policy terms of partnership

Of all the things a newly married bride might whisper to her husband during their first dance, ‘You’re a really solid insurance policy’ surely ranks as one of the most unsexy. Yet, for all its lack of romance, it may be the most accurate description of what marriage has long represented. Across cultures and centuries, partnership has always been about risk management: pooling resources, sharing burdens, and finding ways to hedge against an unpredictable world.

If this sounds overly rational, consider that women, at least in their partner choices, have always acted like actuaries. This is not to say that every marriage has been the product of careful calculation by women themselves; for much of history and still in many communities today, fathers or families have played the lead role, optimising matches to shield daughters from hardship and secure household survival. But whether chosen by the woman or on her behalf, the underlying logic is the same: in uncertain times, who can you trust to help you face the risks that matter most?

It is tempting to think of men throughout history as mere ‘providers.’ But that is an ahistorical myth, says demographer Lyman Stone. What women and their families have sought, he argues in a recent podcast, is insurance: the partner who can reduce the likelihood or impact of disaster. In the world of hunter-gatherers, the best match was not the one who simply brought home the biggest kill, but the one who could offer physical safety, group alliances, and resilience in lean seasons. Social cohesion, strength, and reliability were valuable not for their own sake, but because they spread risk and protected against calamity.

With the rise of settled agriculture, the definition of ‘good insurance’ shifted. Drought, crop failure, and raids replaced wild animals as the biggest threats. Here, marriages became vehicles for pooling land, labour, and kinship networks. Families arranged unions to secure access to resources or peace with neighbours, often paying or receiving bridewealth and dowries as upfront ‘premiums’ to seal the contract. In these settings, the insurance value of a marriage depended as much on the stability of the household and the reputation of the in-laws as on individual earning potential.

The industrial era brought another transformation. As men entered wage work and women’s livelihoods became tied to the stability of the household, the provider ideal reached its peak. Advice literature from the time urged women and their families to scrutinise not only a suitor’s earnings but his character and prospects, the original form of ‘underwriting’ a life policy. Here, the husband became the core risk buffer, but the risk itself was different: unemployment, illness, and the possibility of falling out of the middle class.

Yet, throughout each age, technology has rewritten the terms of what counts as ‘good insurance’.