Possibly dowries have to be in cash and you don’t have liquidity.
Land dowries were common.
Dowries and inheritance are best thought of as the same thing, happening at different times; your sons have to wait until you die to come into full possession of your/their lands, but your daughters are ‘dead to you’ as soon as they get married. So the primary difference between sons and daughters is dynastic prestige; a son both maintains the wealth within the dynasty and accrues whatever dowry he can attract, whereas a daughter leaks wealth to another dynasty. (Indeed, when the mismatch was sufficiently large the man was typically forced to take his wife’s surname as a condition of being allowed to marry her, a sort of honorary swapping of the sexes.)
Interestingly, one of the things that happens here is that dowries are much more variable than male inheritance (which either gives almost all to the eldest son, or splits it almost equally, with deliberate splits being more rare); you can just send an unattractive daughter to a convent (tho this also typically required a dowry!) while giving your more promising daughters a larger share.
Land dowries were common.
Dowries and inheritance are best thought of as the same thing, happening at different times; your sons have to wait until you die to come into full possession of your/their lands, but your daughters are ‘dead to you’ as soon as they get married. So the primary difference between sons and daughters is dynastic prestige; a son both maintains the wealth within the dynasty and accrues whatever dowry he can attract, whereas a daughter leaks wealth to another dynasty. (Indeed, when the mismatch was sufficiently large the man was typically forced to take his wife’s surname as a condition of being allowed to marry her, a sort of honorary swapping of the sexes.)
Interestingly, one of the things that happens here is that dowries are much more variable than male inheritance (which either gives almost all to the eldest son, or splits it almost equally, with deliberate splits being more rare); you can just send an unattractive daughter to a convent (tho this also typically required a dowry!) while giving your more promising daughters a larger share.