When Helping Hurts

Context: Raising the legal age of marriage for women to 21 years needs to reconsider its disproportionate impact on marginalised rural communities.

Trends in Early Marriages: National Family Health Survey (NHFS)-4 data 2015-16.

• Rural-Urban Relationship: Rural women are likely to marry earlier than their urban counterparts
• Linked with Economic Status:
• Higher wealth quintile leads to a delayed marriage of women
• Poorest households are concentrated in rural India
• Causal link with education levels
• Women with 12 years or more of schooling are most likely to marry later.
• Early marriages are not the main reason for school dropouts among women, and other reasons are responsible like:

• Loss of interest in studies, the prohibitive cost of education, the burden of household work, and schools located far away.
• Only 8% of rural girls who drop out in the age group 6 to 17 years cite marriage as the reason.

• Stress on access and quality of education is backed by a report of the apex child right’s body, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, and the NGO Young Lives,

• For, E.g. between 2005-06 and 2015-16, child marriage in 15-19 age group for girls has decreased from 26.5% to 11.9%

Factors Affecting Early Marriage in Marginalised Communities

• Socio-economic necessities: of vulnerable communities force the early marriage of women
• Poor Scheduled Tribes (ST) (45%) and Scheduled Castes (SC)(25.9%) girls marry earlier than the general category women (9%).
• Lack of access to education: results in rising instances of early marriage, especially among vulnerable class like
• A large percentage of SC (33%) and ST (44%) women have received no schooling as per NFHS-4 data.
• Small percentage of SC (10%) and ST (15%) women have completed 12-plus years of education as compared to other category women.
• Presently, children in the age group of 14-18 are outside the purview of the Right To Education Act and most likely to drop out. 
• Varying minimum age marriage for girls and boys: in several personal laws and also in Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006 (i.e. 18 years for girls and 21 for boys).
•  The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act: increased the age of consent, from 16 years to 18 years.

Negative Implications of Increasing the Legal Age of Marriage 

• It will add to these existing hurdles for young women’s access to reproductive and sexual healthcare. 
•  SC-ST households with least recourse to legal and other safeguards, at a greater risk.

• It will end up criminalising and exacerbating the existing vulnerabilities of SC and ST women.

Way Forward

• Important Commissions’ Recommendations: 
• Bring uniformity in the age of marriage at 18 years for both men and women- 18th Law Commission report (2008).
• Lower the age of consent to 16 years.- Justice Verma Committee
• Address the gendered and caste-based disparities instead of implementing a blanket law devoid of social justice principles.
• Extend the right to free and compulsory education up to the age of 18 years for tackling the issue of child/early marriage.

Conclusion: Efforts to address child marriage should be in consonance with the socio-economic realities that demand investment in education, welfare, and opportunities for women.

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The logic of, and debate around minimum age of marriage for women

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