Bizarre: Ladies, share your husband for a secure future!

Ladies, looking for a secure future? Maybe it is time to think about polygyny!

New research has found that the practice of sharing a husband may, in some circumstances, lead to greater health and wealth for women and their children.

Most countries around the globe ban or restrict marriages to more than one spouse at a time. And polygyny is decried by the United Nations Human Rights Commission and women's rights organisations as discriminatory to women.

For the study, the researchers compared polygynous and monogamous households in 56 villages in northern Tanzania, where polygyny is widespread among certain ethnic groups, including the Maasai.

When comparing households within individual villages, polygynous households often had better access to food and healthier children.

Polygynous households also owned more cattle and farmed more land than monogamous households.

These findings support evolutionary anthropological accounts of marriage indicating that polygyny can be in a woman's strategic interest when women depend on men for resources.

The research highlight the importance of local context in studying the health implications of cultural practices, and suggest that in some settings, prohibiting polygyny could be disadvantageous to women by restricting their marriage options.

(With inputs from IANS)