Asia

Low education level, lack of community-based livelihood programs and widespread poverty are the primary motives of child marriage in Bangladesh, India and Nepal, according to a new International Center for Research on Women’s (ICRW) report, which examines perceptions about the practice from a variety of groups and recommends strategies to delay child marriage in South Asia.

The study, “Asia Child Marriage Initiative: Summary of Research in Bangladesh, India and Nepal,” explores child marriage through a qualitative study of stakeholders in the region. ICRW carried out the study for Plan International Regional to help Plan better understand the efficacy of its Asia Child Marriage Initiative, which aims to prevent early marriages in the region. The research was conducted in 2012 and led by Ravi Verma, director of ICRW’s Asia Regional Office in New Delhi.

This latest study builds upon ICRW’s nearly 20-year commitment to documenting the causes and consequences of child marriage and devising solutions to prevent it. Meanwhile, ICRW experts recently provided policy recommendations for addressing early marriage in nine Southern Asia countries and, in an ongoing program in Ethiopia with the humanitarian organization CARE, ICRW is striving to better understand what works to empower girls who are already married. 

Child marriage is one of the most prevalent violations of human rights in South Asia where 46 percent of children are married before the age of 18. It disproportionately affects girls, who are much more likely to be married off than boys. Although governments in the region are working to strengthen and enforce child marriage laws, the practice is deeply rooted in social values and norms and is often a result of poverty and lack of opportunities available to women. 

The research findings, gathered from a series of interview and focus group discussions with girls and boys, parents, community leaders and government officials, provide valuable insight into the practice of child marriage in the three countries, how community programs and government should address the issue, and ways to deter and ultimately end the practice.

ICRW researchers found that the cause of child marriage in all three countries is deeply ingrained in tradition and considered inevitable by children and adults alike. In most cases, parents’ fear of putting their daughters at risk of sexual violence or engaging in pre-marital sexual activity prompted them to marry them off young.

Furthermore, most respondents hold the age-old belief that a female’s primary role in life is to care for a husband and children. Poverty and lack of education was also found to be a key driver in each country. For example, girls from lower income families were often married young because of costs associated with education, a preference to educate boys over girls if forced to choose, and the poor quality of schools. A relatively less understood reason for child marriage that emerged was parents’ fear that their daughters would “self-initiate” marriage without their consent, damaging the family’s honor.

The study provides an extensive list of key findings and recommendations to improve current government initiatives and community programs, develop future policy and create mass media messaging in the region. If implemented, researchers say the study’s recommendations can ultimately help change perceptions and delay early marriages in South Asia and other regions where the practice is a major health, development and human rights issue.

The following is a brief summary of key findings and recommendations:

• Education and poverty are closely linked to age of a girl at marriage
• Engage men in efforts to prevent child marriage
• Develop mass media messages that promote respect of the decision for boys and girls to remain unmarried rather than stigmatize unmarried girls
• Universalize financial support for girls’ secondary education
• Strengthen the identification and prosecution of parties involved in perpetuating child marriage, and enhance penalties so that the law becomes a deterrent
• Policymakers should support programs to economically empower girls and women in locations of high prevalence of child marriage and in marginalized communities

Read “Asia Child Marriage Initiative: Summary of Research in Bangladesh, India and Nepal” to view additional recommendations, learn more about how researchers conducted the study and see an assessment of Plan International’s strategies in the region.

There is growing global momentum to foster women’s participation and leadership in the political arena, and specifically within local governance structures. India has been at the top of this curve as compared to many countries around the world: Twenty years ago, decentralized governance in India – which ensured that women hold at least one-third of seats in local governing bodies known as Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) – was established with the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution. But have these quotas really enabled PRIs to successfully address concerns faced by ordinary women in India over the past two decades?  

ICRW's Nandita Bhatla joins Indian radio show "Have a Heart" to discuss gender equality in India, ICRW's research with Indian youth, and what can be done to combat pre-existing attitudes and behavioral norms.

Listen to Nandita's interview here>>

ICRW researchers spoke to participants of a new project that has transformed attitudes and opened minds.

Watch the video here >>

The Indian state of Haryana, a short drive from the capital New Delhi, is known for its social conservatism, a declining female population due to sex selection, and more recently, for a number of brutal rapes reported by the national media.

As I would soon learn, life in rural India is full of contrasts and contradictions. The first family I met wanted to tell me about a local unmarried heroine who at 25 took home a gold medal after winning an international wrestling competition.

“If she’d gotten married, then her concentration would have been on the household and her husband, but she didn’t, and now she’s doing really well,” Susheela, a 37-year-old mother of four daughters, told me.

Life is hard for Susheela but she still smiles a lot. She even smiles when the conversation finally turns to more serious matters: what it was like for her to be married as an illiterate child and move in with a strange family, in a strange village, miles from home.

 “At 14, what had I seen? I never even went to school – parents didn’t send girls to school back then. I came here and my in-laws said ‘work in the fields,’ so I worked in the fields. Because I suffered, I didn’t want them to do the same. I thought it would be better if at least my daughters studied,” Susheela says.

Despite this recognition, – marrying their own teenage daughters off as soon as possible remains their priority due to deeply rooted cultural norms.

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is currently evaluating an innovative government program that used cash incentives to encourage parents like Susheela to delay marrying their daughters until they turn 18 – with the added hope that attitudes about a girl’s inherent value would improve. One of Susheela’s daughters, 17-year-old Kirin, is among the first girls to take part in the effort, called Apni Beti Apna Dhan (ABAD) – “Our Daughter, Our Wealth.” ICRW’s findings will be released in late 2013. 

For now, Kirin and her older sister, Heena, 19, remain unmarried, and later this year, they will have both completed secondary school. Once Kirin gets her payment (worth $350-$500) the two girls will be immediately married in a joint wedding.

The girls have ambitions to continue on to college and start a career as teachers before settling down. Yet they seemed unsure if they would be able to lead a life outside of the home, despite their parents’ desire for them to study further.

“If our parents-in-law say we can’t continue our studies or get jobs, then we’ll have to listen to them and our dreams will only stay a dream,” Heena says.

Kirin, adds “I become hopeless and my heart breaks at the thought of not going to college. Boys have all the permission, they can go, but not girls, parents are scared. We want to go to Bhiwani town to study full time. But we can’t because of ‘the situation.’”

“The situation” refers to a spate of horrific rapes in the past several months in Haryana. In one of the most severe cases, eight men raped a 16-year-old girl. The powerful Khap panchayats which govern social affairs in Haryana, proposed a solution: lower the legal age of marriage for girls. Although they do not have the authority to do so, girls fear they will incur an additional cost for this escalation in violence against them.

“It is always the girl who is blamed. One does the bad deed, and the other always pays the price,” Heena says.

There is still a long road ahead to gender equity in rural India. But the fact that Heena and Kirin will both finish secondary school, and are still living at home, signals that a generational shift has occurred. At the very least, the quality of these educated sisters’ lives will undoubtedly far exceed that of their mother. Even if it’s unlikely they’ll ever become world class wrestlers.

Jennifer Abrahamson is ICRW’s Senior Director of Strategic Communications. A version of this story appears on the ONE Campaign web site. Not Her Mother's Daughter was Jennifer's last story about adolescent girls in India.

To learn more about how ICRW is working to “change the course for adolescent girls worldwide” visit the Turning Point campaign.