Consanguinity leads to higher levels of mortality, morbidity and congenital malformations in offspring due to the greater probability of inheriting a recessive gene. Nevertheless the institution of consanguineous marriage remains the choice of a large part of population in many countries. We argue that consanguinity serves as an incentive compatible mechanism that induces husbands not to mistreat their wives. Therefore, families choose consanguineous marriages in order to place their daughters in a more women friendly institution. We shall use the data provided by the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), that include information about consanguinity, to test whether married women have higher intra-household bargaining power and/or enjoy more women-friendly attitude from their spouses in a select group of transition economies.