Higher Legal Marriage Age for Women: Hell Paved with Good Intentions

Introduction

The pervasiveness of patriarchal stereotypes and sexism in India is making its way into senatorial enactments. The discretionary behavior in the minimum marriage age for men and women in India is an affirmation of the fact. The notion that women/girls tend to mature at a younger age than men and could be allowed to marry sooner is a shred of evidence to perfidious conventionalization. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 (PCMA) prescribe 18 and 21 as the minimum marriage age for women and men respectively.

Patriarchal stereotypes dictate the majority of marriages in India where families of the same caste and equal stature arrange the marriage. Horoscopes continue to decide marriages even among urban youngsters. The virginity of the bride decides her “worth,” and younger brides still means lesser dowry the family has to pay to the groom. Often girls enquire about their virginity demonstrating they are sexually active relatively early nowadays; what we as a community need is an effective sex education for boys and girls.

A misconception prevails that the minimum legal age for marriage is the ideal age when everyone should essentially get married rather antagonistically it aims to safeguard the rights of those who are under the prescribed age.

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi proposed in the 73rd Independence Day speech that a task force has been formed to raise the minimum legal age for marriage of women. Furthermore, Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister of India, in February 2020 during the budget session had proposed setting up a task force within six months to review the minimum age of marriage for women. On 4th June 2020, the Ministry of Women and Child Development validated the constitution of a high-level committee assisted by NITI Aayog, determined to bring parity between the legal age of marriage for men and women.

Inference

The right marriageable age for women in India might potentially act as a dominant strategy for societal good and financially empowering women to peel off the stereotype mindset that women are more mature than men of the same age and ergo can be allowed to marry prematurely.

On the social front, prescribing the age of marriage might potentially lead to social benefits like lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) and teenage pregnancies, and tweaking nutrition levels to mothers and infants which would consequently put an end to the intergenerational cycle of poverty and under-nutrition. Stretching on the financial front, opportunities will be opened up for women to pursue higher education and join the workforce and thereby giving a chance to women to become financially empowered, a requisite to achieve gender equality in terms of availability, accessibility, and utilization of basic provisions and rights.

Marriage isn’t a cultural practice suggestive of women’s status but is linked to multiple biological, ecological, and geographical factors, crucial for public health. Marriage is the gateway to multiple health consequences interrelated and tightly interwoven with socio-cultural norms and trans-generational developmental processes.

Marriage at a young age restricts women in India to get into the workforce despite accounting for almost half of the population. The situation in West Bengal and Karnataka is the worst in India with the mean marriage age being 20.9 years, a daunting situation altering the social and cultural standards.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund reported that India is home to every third child bride in the world, with more than 100 million getting married even before turning 15 arising out of deep-rooted patriarchal socio-cultural practices, control over women’s sexuality, poor socio-economic conditions, low literacy rates and lack of awareness of family planning methods. The report also added that 35,000 girls who married between the ages of 15-19 died due to pregnancy and childbirth issues because adolescent girls are still growing themselves, they are at a higher risk of complications if they become pregnant. Moreover, compared to women married as adults, child brides are less likely to receive proper medical care while pregnant or to deliver in a health facility.

Premature Marriage is a threat to human right violation and to the children under the age of 18, especially girls as it deprives them of education, exposes them and their babies to consequential health risks from premature pregnancy, sinks their families into poverty, and elevates the risk that they will face domestic violence. Underage marriage of a woman increases vulnerability and reflects the low status of women in society leading to a number of problems that a woman might possibly face.

Contradiction

The socio-economic repercussions of increasing the minimum marriage age to 21 reveal that it would do more harm than good towards empowering women in India, opening a new set of complications in the society.

The age of sexual consent for women and girls is a matter of great social concern but the women and girls themselves are rarely given a chance to contribute to the discussion.

Education plays a momentous role in women’s lives; thus, it is important to understand that merely increasing ‘age at marriage’ by legal provision may not produce desirable outcomes. There is a need to escort this change with concomitant policies pertaining to the education of girls which is believed to increase the national working population and make women financially independent. Furthermore, as girls start pursuing higher education, marriage is pushed further, automatically increasing the age at marriage. The need of the hour is to outspread importance to the education of girls as the prime reason to make women financially independent. Merely increasing the minimum marriage age would play a minor role in motivating women to pursue higher education. Ensuring access to quality higher education, scholarships, subsidized tuition fees, and changing patriarchal mindsets might potentially ameliorate the situation.

Child marriages before the prescribed legal age are voidable. The Government of India is proposing to amend the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 to nullify all underage marriages. Ensuing this declaration women and girls will be exposed to sex within a marriage, which is socially acceptable but legally void, and will possess no rights to inheritance, reparation, social protection, or any other benefit rights as the marriage would lack legal recognition. In India, women’s sexuality is closely guarded as a matter of family and community honor, which is a very risky proposition for women. Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO 2012) criminalizes sexual experimentation with charges of ‘statutory’ rape and child sex abuse even in the case of consenting minors. Upsurging the legal age of marriage to 21 years for women, women between the ages of 18 and 21 will be expected to remain sexually ‘pure’ and compelled to abjure sexual relationship till their marriage, and those who decide not to, will have the threat of dishonor, and their male sexual partner the threat of rape. The new proposition does not appear to be youth-friendly in its intent at all and puts women and the children born out of these marriages in a vulnerable position.

The proposed law might potentially abate child marriages, but the pandemic brought along with it a host of complications that India had to bear the brunt of. Female children are considered ‘economic liabilities’ for a predominant cultural practice, that is, marrying a girl involves paying a hefty dowry to her in-laws which tends to increase with the bride’s age. It is, for this reason, a sudden upsurge of the instances of child marriage transpires. The hasty nuptials are effectuated in the belief that the marital homes could provide for the new bride financially. Ameliorating the situation would require eradicating the dowry system by reshaping beliefs to view dowry as a social ill. This depicts, increasing the marriage age has barely any role to play in eliminating social realities such as dowry and child marriage and is merely a road to hell paved with good intentions.

Conclusion

The International Treaty Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) highlights the current laws that violate the Indian Constitution which provides for equality before law and non-discrimination on the grounds of sex and thus calls for the abolition of laws that assume women have a different physical or intellectual rate of growth than men as early marriage and adolescent pregnancy lead to depletion of body mass and iron deficiency in women. Also, children born to women married early were more likely to have infant mortality, child anthropometric failure, diarrhea, and anemia for first births compared to those born to women married after 21 as teenagers are psychologically underdeveloped for child-rearing.

A welcome step, therefore, would be to start working at the grassroots by providing better access to schools, sanitation facilities, sex education, and reproductive healthcare to remedy the plight of mothers and children living in impoverished conditions instead of adopting a judgmental view. Ignorantly debating about the legal marriage age as a means of improving the condition of women and nuptial bottlenecks in India would be futile without acknowledging the real causes which go beyond the law. We need economic empowerment, social and intellectual growth, stronger implementation of laws in the community, and earnest efforts for a change in mindset that can write a new reality for women in India.

Disclaimer: Please note that the content and views expressed in this blog post, "Higher Legal Marriage Age for Women: Hell Paved with Good Intentions," aim to shed light on various perspectives, potential consequences, and thought-provoking ideas related to the matter. The purpose is to foster understanding, open-mindedness, and respectful dialogue, not to promote a singular viewpoint or agenda. The opinions and perspectives in this piece are those of the author and do not represent or target specific policymakers, authorities, or organizations.