Sarah Degnan Kambou

Every day an estimated 25,000 girls are married off against their will. Some are as young as eight years old. Others have just entered puberty. No matter their age, the moment the wedding ceremony ends, so do the girls’ dreams of becoming a teacher, a health worker, a lawyer.

It’s a tragic scenario, but not just for girls. It’s tragic for all of us who desire an economically stable, healthy world. Instead of growing up to be women who can contribute to the overall well-being of their families and communities, most child brides will drop out of school. From Yemen to Nicaragua, many girls will give birth while their own bodies are still developing, leading to terrible health problems. Most will live in servitude and suffer abuse. These are common outcomes of child marriage that perpetuate the cycle of poverty, lack of education, poor health and gender inequity in low-income societies.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Investing now in girls at risk of early marriage can yield lasting social and economic benefits not only for the girls themselves, but their families and society, too. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s the smart thing to do.

ICRW has been advocating for the past decade on the need to end the harmful practice child marriage from a development, human rights and gender equity perspective. We have been putting ideas to practice in countries like Ethiopia and India. And now we find ourselves in the midst of an unprecedented growing movement to end child marriage: The Elders, an eminent group of former leaders like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson, this year launched Girls Not Brides, a global campaign to raise awareness of the ills caused by child marriage. Other influential individuals also are shining a spotlight on the practice, such as award-winning photographer Stephanie Sinclair whose images documenting child brides have brought the issue into the mainstream. And news outlets such as The Daily Beast, National Geographic and many more are finally bringing much-needed attention to the poorest, most remote parts of the world where child marriage persists.

We must rush to take advantage of the global attention and harness this collective will so that girls are valued for being girls, rather than being considered economic burdens on their families. On the contrary, if they remain unmarried and are allowed to finish high school, girls at risk of child marriage can contribute to a future generation that could break free of the painful grip of acute poverty.   

Indeed, in societies where early marriage is most common, girls are not valued in the same ways as boys. This is not to say that their families don’t love them. Many girls’ parents want to delay marriage, but with scant resources and social pressures, they feel they are left with no alternative.  

But there are alternatives. Harmful social norms can – and do – change. The promising practices ICRW has uncovered are a starting point for creating a more equitable environment for girls. And what’s more, there is evidence that they are working.

Some approaches that address the multiple causes and consequences of child marriage include: Arming girls with information, skills and support networks so they gain confidence and know themselves, their world and their options; educating parents on the long-term economic benefits of delaying marriage; mobilizing communities to adopt social norms that support those willing to buck the custom of early marriage; and offering economic incentives for girls and their families, who often are motivated by poverty and the lack of viable income-generating options.

More than any other time in recent history, this is the moment to redouble our joint efforts and work toward ending the harmful practice of child marriage so no girl is forced to wed too young and give up her dreams. Let’s do just that by making more investments and demonstrating the political will to create the first generation of girls who will rightly worry about finishing their homework, instead of feeding their husbands.

Sarah Degnan Kambou is president of the International Center for Research on Women.

In honor of ICRW’s 35th anniversary celebration that kicks off March 8, International Women’s Day, President Sarah Degnan Kambou shares her thoughts on the organization’s role in global development now and in the future. Kambou responded to questions by e-mail.

Read Kambou’s previous Q&A »

You’ve said that achieving meaningful social change is within our grasp. Why do you believe that we are in the midst of a transformative time?

Never in my 25 years as a social scientist and development practitioner has promoting women’s rights and gender equality been featured so prominently in global development. The role of women and girls in building safer, more just and prosperous societies is now a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy. The United Nations and World Bank have special initiatives focused on women, making gender a primary element of their development programming. And the private sector is exploring how to bolster its business models by addressing women’s unique needs as employees, customers and citizens. It’s now become clear that government, the private sector and civil society must work together to dismantle obstacles hampering women’s social and economic development. We have never had the kind of harmony – in terms of intent, political will and investment – that we have today.

What’s most encouraging is that each of these players is looking at the issues ICRW has long known to be essential to improving the status of women: laws that protect women’s rights, access to economic opportunity and services to maintain the health and well-being of women, their families and communities.

As you said, many organizations now recognize the importance of addressing gender issues in global development. What makes the work of ICRW different?

What makes ICRW different is that we specialize in taking apart complex problems – describing how they impede progress, exposing their underlying roots – and discovering pathways to positive change. ICRW’s core business is anchored in generating evidence to inform policy and programs that seek to alleviate poverty while promoting gender equality. Over the past 35 years, we’ve tackled some of the world’s most intractable development problems: the marginalization of women-headed households, feminization of HIV and AIDS, pervasiveness of violence against women and the under-valuing of small-scale women farmers’ contributions. 

As social engineers, we design and test new approaches to stimulate change and measure the direction and magnitude of that change. Finally, as advocates, we use our findings to influence the global discourse on gender and development.

Few organizations practice such a layered approach to advance gender equality and alleviate poverty. We let evidence, not ideology or intuition, guide our recommendations on how to address gender issues through policies and programs.

How does ICRW’s research and strategic advice influence others working in gender and development?

ICRW’s niche is creating evidence-based approaches to increase the effectiveness of policies and programs. Our impact is less about providing direct services to advance women and girls and promote gender equality. Instead, we measure our impact by how our research is used in the gender and development space. The fact is, many organizations now know the value of understanding the distinct, unique needs of women and men to achieve global development goals – thanks in large measure to the work of ICRW. How to do this remains the challenge.

ICRW works like a software patch: install our gender app and watch how gender-informed strategy boosts your program’s outcomes. We draw from our research and vast field experience to help organizations implement practical, gender-sensitive programs and measure results. Social change takes time, and for the most part, we’re looking at incremental change. We can trace how our research has contributed to moving the field. That’s how I know ICRW is making a difference.

ICRW is celebrating its 35^th anniversary this year. Where would you like to see the organization in the next three years, in terms of its role in the field of global development?

Over the next three years, our team of researchers will focus on exploring critical intersections in women’s lives that affect their economic opportunities, health and well-being.

Why ‘intersections'? Because no one experiences life in silos. Women’s experiences and relationships are complex and constantly in motion, reacting and adapting to their environment. These converging factors impact impoverished women’s opportunities for a better life. We believe that answers to the root causes of and solutions to gender inequality are found by understanding what happens in those intersections of women’s lives.

Along with strengthening our analysis in this area, we’ll also focus on deepening our research on women and technology and women’s leadership. We’re particularly eager to gain insight into technology’s impact on women and gender dynamics and its state of play at the intersections.      

ICRW is hosting Passports to Progress to celebrate its 35^th anniversary. What do you hope to learn from the series? 

My hope is that the series will serve as a launching pad of new ideas for how to address emerging and long-standing issues that affect women in developing countries. We’ll have some very smart, thoughtful people at the table. I hope that our conversations with them will help set the agenda for how best to move forward.

It was early December, the day after World AIDS Day, 2010. I was back in Beijing for the first time in 23 years, standing outside the entrance to the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square. I had an official invitation in hand to a high-level consultation on China’s national response to the AIDS epidemic, which is increasingly affecting women and girls.  

My mind toggled back to my last visit to China in 1987, when the government had just decreed mandatory AIDS testing for foreign residents. At that point in the epidemic, Chinese public health authorities said the source of the HIV threat was outside of China and they relied on China’s strong heteronormative culture to protect its citizens from sexual transmission of AIDS. The government figured they could contain the threat by focusing on foreigners and a very small number of gay Chinese men – a highly stigmatized group in China, as elsewhere. Back then, AIDS was viewed predominantly as a “gay man’s disease.”

Fast forward to December 2010. Reports released by the Chinese government and UNAIDS on World AIDS Day indicated that HIV and AIDS in China have evolved much like other epidemics in Asia, transforming from one concentrated among groups most at risk for HIV, such as injection drug users, to a broader epidemic among the general population. Sexual transmission is now the primary mode of HIV infection in China: As of 2009, heterosexual transmission accounted for 42 percent of new cases and homosexual transmission for 32 percent. And emerging data show that patterns of risk are becoming increasingly complex, in part due to the rapidly escalating diffusion of HIV among men who have sex with men as well as with women. At the Great Hall event, government officials acknowledged the need to understand and address the complexity of China’s national epidemic.

So where does China go from here? As Chinese public health experts develop their national AIDS strategy, they may want to pay close attention to two related elements: the evolving nature of women’s vulnerability to HIV and the impact of stigma and discrimination in complicating an already complex situation.

Focusing on women is essential. Recent data indicate that a growing proportion of Chinese women are being infected with HIV through sexual transmission, from 30 percent in 2000 to 74 percent in 2009. HIV transmission within marriage now poses a credible threat to many Chinese women, particularly those wedded to men most at risk for HIV, such as migrant workers, men who have sex with men and injection drug users. Public health authorities’ efforts will go farther if they understand the role of power relationships between women and men, and how that can contribute to women’s vulnerability to HIV. They may also want to consider that social dynamics and sexual practices are fluid from setting to setting, and interact differently under different environmental conditions. This creates a multitude of “local” epidemics within China’s national epidemic – each requiring a well-tailored response. 

This, I believe, includes working with civil society to reduce stigmatization of men who have sex with men and increase services available to them. As I talked with people leading AIDS programming for corporations, multi-laterals and foundations, it became apparent that very little is known about this community of men in China. Service providers are perplexed about how to reach this population and their sexual partners, both male and female, with information and services. We’ve studied HIV-related stigma extensively at ICRW, and our research in Cambodia and across the world may be useful in designing effective programs.

It’s critical that China’s next national AIDS plan, which is currently under development, lays the groundwork for an AIDS-free society. And I’m confident that the country has the ability to do so through policy, research and programs that tackle the underlying causes of women’s and men’s vulnerability to HIV.

Sarah Degnan Kambou is president of ICRW.