by Rubia Medina
Imagine being a fifteen-year-old girl being forced to marry a thirty-two-year-old man because it is what is “best” for you. This is the reality many girls like Nasoin Akhter face on a daily basis in Bangladesh. During the wedding, brides are expected to be both shy and coy even if they have no desire to wed. Many of these girls have dreams of pursuing an education and a career in the future. However, these dreams are short-lived when they are pushed into marriage by a family member. Mothers are usually the ones that are pressuring daughters into marriage at a young age because it is the norm within the community. In order to avoid social scrutiny, girls will be married off before eighteen because no Bangladeshi boy would want a girl older than that.
The social pressures to marry young is one of the reasons why Bangladesh is ranked number four globally in regard to the practice of child marriage. According to Human Rights Watch, 29% percent of girls are married before the age of 15 and 65% of girls are married before the age of 18. Should the family to fail to find a husband for the daughter, either the mother or daughter are harassed until a wedding has happened. Where these young women live can play a role in their likelihood of getting married at a young age. According to Girls Not Brides, 71% of girls living in rural areas are being married off before the age of 18. These girls are often poor areas where their parents cannot afford to send them to school and probably cannot afford to take care of them. In a patriarchal society that is also impoverished, like rural Bangladesh, girls are viewed as a financial burden to the family and they are of no real use to their parents. When it comes down to it, parents would much rather pay to educate their sons. In the minds of the parents, their son will be the one to take care of them in their old. These views prevent girls from receiving education and inevitably prevent them from getting well-paying jobs. These daughters end up being married off at a young age to help ease financial burden and to protect their virginity. Child brides are stuck in a domestic sphere and their young age and naivety leaves them in less than desirable situations.
Once a girl has been married off, she is expected to have sex with her husband in order to give him children regardless of the fact that she may not be fully developed. There is a pressure to have children, especially boys, because they will be the ones to carry on their father’s family name. When forcing young girls to have children before they are fully matured, there can be some complications during the birth, such as the death of the child. Girls that end up giving birth at the age of 14 are five times more likely to lose their baby compared to a woman that gives birth at the age of 20. Babies that are being born to underaged mothers wind up being underweight and potentially die. If the baby makes it past infancy, there are other issues such as stunted growth and being underdeveloped. Outside of having children at such a young age, these young girls are also more susceptible to STDs and STIs. Since parents make the choice to pull their daughters out of school early or not educate them at all, their daughters end up becoming more susceptible to STDs and STIs. In schools, children usually end receiving some form of education about their reproductive health and how to prevent getting STIs or STDs.
In order to combat child marriage, UNICEF (https://www.unicef.org/bangladesh) has been creating various programs in Bangladesh for both parents and children to be a part. In Shorishabari, Jamalpur, teenage boys and girls have the opportunity to socialize with one another twice a week. Allowing them to interact helps bring them together to combat issues like child marriage. Due to Bangladesh being a patriarchy, it is necessary to get the future generation to realize that child marriage is wrong regardless of tradition. On top of bringing boys and girls together, UNICEF also has a Conditional Cash Transfer program. This program targets families that are vulnerable to child marriage and will pay them 12,000 takas ($148) to send their daughters to school. The stipulation is that the daughters have to go to school, they cannot be married off, and the parents have to attend sessions that discuss the impact of child marriage. In order to ensure that families keep their word, there is regular monitoring and assessment of the child. Families will receive two additional payments as long as they follow the program’s guidelines. Educating girls is important because the cycle of poverty will end with them and they can live a better life than their parents did. According to UNICEF, girls that receive a secondary or higher education end up marrying almost five years later than what is considered the norm.
While ending child marriage does seem like an impossible task to accomplish, there are organizations like UNICEF that are dedicated to helping girls get their education and educating their parents on the consequences of child marriage. Battling an issue like child marriage should not stop at the legislative level; this is an issue that needs to also be addressed locally because this practice is so ingrained into the society that it is hard to simply stop. No child should be forced into a marriage they do not want.
Rubie Medina has an Associates in Arts and will be graduating in the summer from ECU with her Bachelor’s in Anthropology and English. During the summer, she will be attending a field school in Peru to explore the issues that the Andean people are facing today. After field school, she will be pursuing her Master’s degree in Public History from SNHU in the fall.