The meaning of the term marriage is living happily
ever after like in the fairy tales for many people. However, unfortunately,
most children are married without even listening to one fairy tale. Although it is known that child
marriage is a human rights violation, each year, 15 million girls are married
before the age of
18. This means 28 girls every minute. According to data, over
700 million women alive today were married as children. Moreover, despite laws
against it, child marriage is fueled by gender inequality, poverty and
traditions.
To begin with gender inequality, in
many undeveloped countries such as Nigeria, The Central African Republic and
Bangladesh, inequalities between women and men in society are more apparent. In these societies, child marriage is common
since girls are not considered
as important as boys. Daughters are usually seen as a burden for their
families. Therefore, when their daughters are married, the families think they transferred
these burdens to their daughters’ husbands’ families. Furthermore, child
marriage is also driven by patriarchal values and the desire to control female
sexuality. For instance, how a girl should behave, how a girl should dress or
when a girl should marry are all determined by social convention . Only a man
can answer these questions because the man is a breadwinner. In addition to
this, a girl represents the
honor of her family in closed societies. Hence, families closely guard
their daughters’ sexuality and virginity in order to protect the family honor.
These families think that their daughters may become pregnant outside of
marriage and this causes shame and brings
dishonor to their family. Consequently, gender inequality
may bring about child marriage.
Child marriage is a traditional
practice, which exists in many cultures such as the Roma, seems normal because it has happened for
generations. In some communities such as Chad, Mali and Ethiopia, when girls
start to menstruate, they become women in the eyes of the community. Therefore,
marriage is used as a tool to give the girls their status a wife and mother by
their families. however, although they had to experience this difficult situation, they are only children and their
bodies are still undeveloped. Because of this, these marriages may harm girls.
For example, an 8 years old Yemeni child bride was married to a 40 years old
man and then, she died of vaginal injuries on their wedding night. Namely,
traditions cause child brides and child brides may die , but everything can be
different as Graça Machel, widow of Melson Mendela, said, traditions are made
by people, and people can unmake them.
Poverty, especially, in the
undeveloped countries such as Bangladesh and Somali leads to child marriage
because floods and droughts disrupt girls’ lives. Hence, their families want to
push them into their daughters’ husbands’ families. thus, adding to the risk of
child marriage. For instance, in Bangladesh and northeast India, floods made
poverty worse and closed schools causing families to see marriage as an alternative way for their
daughters. Another example is in Somali and Mozambique: due to drought, many
families living in these countries, families push daughters to marry (marry off
their daughters) since they no longer
have to feed them. Consequently, the effects of poverty on child marriage
shouldn’t be ignored.
To sum up, the number of child
marriages is increasing day by day
thanks to poverty, gender inequality and tradition. However, no reason should be a pretext for child marriage.
If a solution isn’t found for child marriage, the global number of women
married as children will reach 1.2 billion by 2050. Therefore, it should be
understood that children are children, not wives or mothers.
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