In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the Indian government was looking to raise the age of marriage for women from 18 to 21. A committee has been formed for the same, he announced, and this was being done in a bid to address malnutrition and to ensure women are married at the right age.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Family and Health Welfare, while refuting an article by The Print, said that the move was aimed at giving “women increased access to economic independence, greater freedom of marital choices, and, given the positive correlation between educational qualification and lower fertility rates, more reproductive freedom.” This, the ministry said, would have a positive effect on maternal child health as well.
.@ThePrintIndia story is not only mischievous, but is far from the truth. https://t.co/GB5hVHa7Sz
— Ministry of Health (@MoHFW_INDIA) August 18, 2020
The Healthy Ministry’s submission to the Committee is as below: pic.twitter.com/AxO4wDLc1W
And while issues of girls’ education, giving them autonomy in marriage, reproductive health and economy are pertinent issues, activists and social workers don’t necessarily see raising the age of marriage as a helpful tool to achieve them.
Dr Swarna Rajagopal, founder of Prajnya, a Chennai-based non-profit working towards gender justice, says that when women are old enough to vote, to drive and several other things at 18, what is the need to limit her agency to choose a partner. “This is coming at a time when men and women are sexually active earlier, are interacting with each other earlier. If the concern is to increase women’s education levels and reproductive health, they can be done without taking away her agency as well.”
Young Voices – National Report, a document that collates discussions, debates, and surveys done with around 2,500 children, adolescents and youth in rural, peri-urban and urban areas, predominantly from the most marginalised communities across 15 Indian states, found that respondents thought similarly. The initiative was done with 96 civil society organisations.
One of the respondents from Karnataka pointed out: “Child marriages will increase if an amendment is made to the law without bringing about a change in the reality. Amending the law is not the same as changing our realities, realities are very different from one family to the other. All girls should have equal access to education and this will ensure the reduction in child marriages. Girls do not have access to the opportunities that boys enjoy.”
Kavita Ratna, Director-Advocacy at Concerned for Working Children, a child rights non-profit, was also part of putting together the Young Voices report. She argues, “Most women who marry late already have access to education, nutrition and have low maternal mortality. It’s not as much because they marry late, but because they are more privileged, wealthier. Undernourishment and malnutrition have a direct correlation with poverty.”
According to the National Family Health Survey 4 (2015-16), 26.8% of women between ages 20-24 were married before the age of 18, despite the 1978 law making child marriage for girls below 18 and boys below 21 illegal. The respondents to the Young Voices report said that the law “is not effective in decreasing child marriage and indeed is only invoked when communities find ways to use the law to sustain social norms.” This perhaps explains one reason why child marriages continue to happen.
“There is still a patriarchal understanding and sanction to marriage because parents have fixed it. So even if they are reported, the FIR is not registered because of local customs, beliefs and so on. So, while raising the age of marriage for women to 21 can objectively be a good thing, will it be followed up with measures to ensure that the social sanction to early marriage is also dealt with?” questions Brinda Adige, an activist who works with Global Concerns India, a non-profit working on issues of gender equality and education.
And unless the underlying issues are dealt with, such a law will disfranchise the women who do end up marrying between the ages of 18-21 from availing services and rights that are associated with matrimony, says Kavita, such as safe abortions, inability to get child support, find themselves in bigamous marriages and so on.
The Young Voices report found that two major reasons reported for early and child marriage were limited opportunities for girls to study (28%) and fear among families of girls developing relationships of their choice (27%). A large number of respondents said that girls can be protected from sexual violence or taken out of financially tough situations with marriage. However, simply raising the age of marriage to 21 does not tackle these patriarchal issues of undermining a woman’s autonomy.
“Girls in the most marginalised communities marry early because they do not have another choice – either the parents fix their marriage or they elope consensually with a boy. A lot of the young people we talked to from young communities who are trying to break caste or religious barriers, and so, marriage becomes a way to seek protection. A 16-year-old from Karnataka once told us, ‘we are a burden on our family. With great difficulty, they keep us at home till 18. If the age of marriage is raised to 21, female foeticide will increase,’” Kavita adds.
In this context then, to take away agency from women to choose their partners would do more harm than good, say activists.
Kavita points out that while delayed marriage is a good thing for many reasons, it does not automatically mean more opportunities for women. For instance, in the Young Voices report for instance, while some respondents agreed with the assumption that delaying the age of marriage will mean more time for the girl to study, a large number of them said that “in absence of an enabling environment, lack of opportunities and abysmal quality of higher/vocational education, a mandatory increase in age of marriage would not convert into a gainful situation for girls who might still be kept back in domestic work and household roles.”
“Why not put money into health and education of children, into maternal health and alleviating girls from poverty?” Kavita says.
Swarna adds, “Put resources into sexuality education, reproductive health education, and making access to healthcare and supplies universal. We should not be forcing people into doing this or not doing that. Laws meant for women’s good should not end up shackling them. This will only prevent women from making their own decisions.”
Activists point out that marriage and access to healthcare, opportunities and economic and social freedom are not mutually exclusive – these should be available to women even if they are married early.