Child Marriage in Bangladesh Essay
Child marriage is definitely an issue in numerous developing countries where low income, lack of education and good cultural customs and faith based beliefs exist. It is most prevalent in – however not restricted to South Asia, especially Bangladesh where research have shown that the practice of juvenile marital life is most common and severe. Although the legal age of matrimony for women in Bangladesh is 18, a lot of girls are married away as small as seven years old mainly because of poverty which consumes 54% of the human population and also since Bangladesh is known as a patriarchal contemporary society where there general attitude to women is “galay atkano kata” which is translated to “the backbone of a fish stuck inside the throat”.
Inside the rural areas of Bangladesh, certain cultural traditions must be preserved as they have already been present for years and years and also play a role in juvenile marital life as dowry, which primarily exists in patrilineal societies, determines simply how much the bride’s parents need to pay towards the in-laws which usually varies after the age of the girl. On the surface area, it would appears as though Bangladeshis accept this atrocity and feel quite passive to it because they are aware that teen marriage will be practiced although do not act against this. Is it because human privileges are not widespread?
Could it be possible that something such as teen marriage is definitely overlooked as the vast majority of the population of Bangladesh is usually not informed and ignorant to this sort of and through intervention, they will could gain benefit first world’s input in regards to their sociocultural “issues”? It truly is evident that juvenile matrimony is very common and evenly problematic in South Asia and appears to be an issue which can be most present in developing countries for differs reasons that are customized to the next culture and region. Wedding of a child is against the law in all in the countries by which it takes place and even in spite of activities such as strengthening of laws opposing to such, juvenile marriage goes on, especially in country, densely filled areas.
This is because these societies are moored by their social traditions and beliefs which have been their life style for centuries, passed down from generation to generation. Bangladesh in particular operates as being a patriarchal contemporary society and the women, both rural and rban, traditional and modern, are considered the most oppressed in the world mainly because they are in a cultural system that condones their being granted an inferior status. “After delivery, girls will be viewed as a burden to the parent house hold, whereas males are viewed as an asset. ” (White, 1992).
The minute they can be brought into the earth, girls will be resented and considered “not valuable” because they cannot give their normal families fiscally and they will certainly not carry out the family brand, which is very important in Bangladeshi culture. Ladies are educated as early as the child years that women should be under men’s control for the reason that common attitude towards girls is that they happen to be weak and vulnerable and they are generally treated consequently.
In Bangladeshi society, girls are unable to support and safeguard themselves and male guardianship is necessary to stop possible rape and this is important because society places the utmost importance in female sex purity which cannot be certain if a girl is without a male mom or dad as 97% of all rape incidents go unreported and women are be subject to brutality and murder in the event they do not eliminate the being pregnant before it truly is too late. Yet , abortions illegal and pricey in Bangladesh and even when a woman can afford to move forward with the termination, they are often malpracticed and lead to severe infection, illness and death.
Therefore , protection and security is usually provided (and guaranteed) through marriage in fact it is also a community belief that younger girls are more obedient and can become dedicated to her in-laws’ family more so than her natal family members which is reasonable considering by a young grow older, the girl might move to her in-law’s and essentially be attached to her husband’s parents rather than her own. Women are also required to terminate virtually any existing education (if there is any for all) after they get married and they are expected to take on house carry responsibilities and cater to her in-laws straight away and create children which regularly results in failed pregnancies or death as they are too aged malnourished.
A UNICEF statement says: In numerous parts of Southern Asia, as a result of poor quality of emergency obstetric care and high degrees of malnutrition between young ladies, particularly anemia and stunting, early matrimony presents substantially increased hazards to life on its own. Teenage moms have a 2-5 instances greater risk of maternal death than ladies aged 20-25 years (UNICEF, 2001: 7) It would seem which a simple and logical solution to this problem would be to continue the girls’ education as it will alleviate a few of the social pressure in regards to residence hold obligations and child-rearing and it could also provide these life skills and knowledge which could perhaps generate a brand new attitude toward women with no disrupting the deeply grounded nature of Bangladeshi ethnical traditions.
Possibilities for small mothers to carry on their education or to operate are often limited because they may have little use of resources and they are responsible for child-rearing and residence hold jobs. The women married at childhood are more likely than those who will be married away as adults to have early, frequent and unplanned pregnancy, typically from lack of contraceptive use. The youngsters of adolescent mothers encounter serious health consequences too. A child created to a teenage mother is usually twice more likely to die just before his/her initially birth time than the child of a woman in her twenties.
In the event that they survive these infants tend to have higher rates of low birth weight, premature birth and infant fatality than those given birth to to elderly mothers. ” (Kamal, 2011: 218). It can be evident that we now have very harsh social, mental and well being consequences intended for both women and their children which in turn occur each time a girl is married also young, child marriage isn’t only recognized as a person rights violation, but it is also a obstacle to person and social development. As stated above, girls are forced to terminate their education and in most all cases they have not even reached extra level education which reveals in the literacy rate amongst men and women which is not surprising – 38.
1% rate for ladies, versus the fifty-five. 6% rate for men. Considering Bangladesh’s heavy population, this is quite a significant amount of girls who have received education.
A study by Farah Chowdhury with the Rajshahi Univeristy in Bangladesh shows the training level of men and women in the village of Chamrabo which is in the Narshingdi Area (located 31 miles coming from Dhaka, the administrative centre city). Her studies show that: Away of a populace of 261, 130 men and 131 women excluding children beneath six years of age, fifteen of the males and twenty-five of the females were illiterate. Most of the villagers, both make and female, have had at least minimal schooling. Sixty-two males and seventy women finished primary education (Grades 1-5); and twenty four men and 18 females secondary education (Grades 6-10).
Five men had a extra School Certificate (SSC), 4 a Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and 1 a college degree. Only one female had an SSC and none a HSC or college degree (Chowdhury, 2005: 247). Low income is ften a determining factor relating to education it will be linked to the age at which a girl is definitely married; if the family is poverty stricken, they may marry away their daughter(s) as early as possible to diminish the size of the dowry.
In some instances this age could be as young as seven or perhaps younger, in respect to Chowdhury, the belief in certain Bangladeshi towns is that eight is a suited age for girls to get married to and that girls of 9 are already older and may be subject to mistreatment or nuisance due to waste they might instill on themselves and their people as a result of not being desirable pertaining to marriage. Naturally parents prefer to marry off their daughters before the ladies are thought to be old. ” “… Furthermore, young girls are believed to have better sexual and procreative power than old girls, and also to be much less risk of miscarriage. ” (Chowdhury, 2004: 247).
Although the price of low income in Bangladesh has lowered over the modern times, 55% of the population lives below the low income line and among all those, 27% reside in extreme low income. Most of individuals affected by low income live in country and partially urban areas wherever they cannot manage to send youngsters to school. However , the problem goes both techniques as the Bangladeshi education system likewise faces issues such as financing, inflexibility, inadequate ratio of skilled educators to educational institutions and not enough resources.
In recent times, NGO’s like ‘Because I am a Girl’ and ‘Human Privileges and Education Program for ladies (HERP)’ identified the shortage of education facilities and still have stepped directly into rehabilitate the education sector of Bangladesh to produce an accessible and affordable system which will does not discriminate against females but in reality encourages the enrollment female students by using female teachers. NGO colleges are well resourced, with a network that reaches the remotest part of the region.
There schools facilitate the mixing of students from monetarily and socially vulnerable neighborhoods, operate sometimes that are suitable for young students (many of whom job during the day or at particular times of the year), present small course size (with teacher-student proportions of one to thirty), and ensure and fun learning environment. ” (Arndt, Hastings, … & Hardwoods, 2005). Since patriarchal societies such as Bangladesh are very concerned with a women’s personality as they observe it as a challenge is to do almost anything to contain it, it seems quite logical that ladies are pulled out of school early due to relationship as it disables them coming from knowing anything else outside of their particular inferiority.
Additionally, it helps to dissipate the rate from which self-discovery happens by marrying the girls away at a age which in turn decreases their future chances of education and furthermore, they become more submissive to their husbands and simply recognize the life they are forced to live as they do not know any other approach. Their superb, great grandmums did precisely the same and it is a tradition that has been passed down by many people generations. However , with this system in place there exists some hope.
The educational sector’s main goal and aspiration is usually to break the cycle of dependent women and rid them of their substandard status. Through education, women can discover ways to be self-reliant and resourceful, they will be trained personal development and may understand their particular bodies and also become aware of all their rights as women. This can be interesting because these options could spark a new generation of women that will not tolerate their subjective social roles which could lead to protests and other actions against gender exploitation and oppression.
It is not something that would happen immediately of course , possibly over a few decades women might start to understand their worth and become daring enough of talking out and protest nevertheless even even now, education by itself cannot change the rich, traditional cultural ground in which the values of contemporary society is so tightly planted. Knowledge will enable the women of Bangladesh but it will not modify their sociocultural position and it does not replace the existing concern of low income. Even if the education is presented and accessible, the issue of lower income is still present and as long as poverty exists, poor parents will be inclined to marry all their daughters as early as possible to decrease how much the dowry owed towards the groom’s relatives.
As talked about above, traditional cultural principles and beliefs outweigh all other potential blames to kid marriage even though poverty appears to be the main cause, it is merely a scratch with the surface to the bigger picture. It would seem as though Bangladeshis practicing juvenile marriage performing so because they think it is a divine command and not doing so they are really exempt from contemporary society and subjects of nuisance, dishonor and shame. However , if we examine the situation properly, we will see that the locals are certainly not marrying their particular daughters off as fresh as possible only to decrease the dowry, it is generally because of their classic beliefs about fertility regarding age.
Consequently , juvenile marriage cannot be straight linked to poverty because the solid influence of local beliefs is almost certainly the main trigger as ethnic communities are inclined to trust all their beliefs and also respect and preserve their traditions. The locals of rural Bangladesh have depended on the same superstitions, methods and practices for hundreds of years, it is deeply embedded within their culture and essentially is it doesn’t glue that holds all together. Bangladeshi officials are aware that teen marriage is taking place in the rural areas and they acknowledge this being a punitive crime but they will not risk interfering or tampering with these kinds of rituals since it could lead to a level bigger problem such as the break of a society.
It is a local belief that if a woman’s marriage can be prevented or perhaps interrupted, the girl has been a patient of sorcery and she must be exiled from the community. In most cases these women will be children and they are taken outside the small town to remote control areas, blindfolded and kept there without food or perhaps means of endurance which results in fatality. The girl’s family is said to be subject to nuisance, and if they may have other children, they will be deemed socially condemned and will not be attractive by additional in the town to get married to. It is also believed that the father and mother will inherit the age of the girl in many years of bad luck, case in point: if the child was five years old, the parents will inherit five years of bad luck.
Therefore , Bangladesh is going to continue to suffer as a result of this intricately weaved culture, everything is connected and impacted by their belief system which makes for a fragile society. To summarize, juvenile relationship is a infringement of human rights and has physical, intellectual, emotional and mental implications for the young brides. That deprives ladies of their years as a child and adolescence where important development happens and this is very important for the promotion great mental and sexual health.
From an outsider’s standpoint, the issue of child marriage seems easy enough to “fix” with a simple prescription of proper education plus the implication of Western know-how and sociocultural values but it is not that easy to undo hundreds of years of abundant and complicated cultural principles, in other words, all of us cannot use the “Band-Aid” method to cover up a concern which needs to be addressed internally. So how do we prevent teen marriage? An obvious solution is always to change the guy views and attitudes towards women which can be addressed simply by including women’s studies and sexual/personal development in the syllabus of main and larger levels of education.
Also, the state of hawaii should notice that sufficient measures are set up to ensure that ladies have the same rights and obligations to look after their very own natural families both monetarily and actually because if this started to be a strong social value, then girls would not be considered a burden to their families and this might increase their sociocultural “value”. Finally, the belief that ladies are poor and susceptible is the response to the lack of sociable security presented to women in Bangladesh thus if the condition cannot assure the security of ladies, then obviously the people (especially the men) of Bangladesh will be reassured in their philosophy of women and they are in constant need of protection of their male guardians which will further inspire the practice of child relationship.
