SOME months ago, recommendations came to the government from a conference on ensuring the birth certificates of bridegrooms and brides during the marriage registration. The suggested minimum age of marriage as proposed for men is 23 and brides must be 18 years of age. Earlier, a similar conference was organized by two more NGOs. The participants there discussed mainly the empowerment issues of women in our society and examined how early marriage and the fall-outs from the same affected adversely the empowerment process of women and, thus, curbed their potential for contribution to the economy. A seminar of the same kind was also held under the auspices of the a bilateral donor agency.
The focus area of these seminars and conferences indeed merits a national attention. Early marriage of women is still more the trend among the rural people in Bangladesh and the population of the country is still preponderantly rural. Urban women in the upper classes are seen to be getting married later in life in comparison to rural women but they are still a small minority in the population. The greater section of the population considers it safe to have their teenage girls married off at the earliest.
According to tradition, a female who has not been married in her teens has perhaps missed the train of good luck because of some deficiency on her part. Thus, parents or guardians feel a psychological pressure to get the girls married early lest they should face the prospects of spinsterhood. Besides, the highly egotistical and male dominated society also puts preference on the marriage of very young maidens. Young girls as brides are preferred by the bridegrooms and their family members over the older ones.
But the outcome of these practices is early motherhood with crushing burden of the same on these girls who have barely come out of childhood themselves. They lose their health in the process, many die while delivering babies and suffer other related health problems. The major casualty is their education leading to denial of awareness and consciousness and taking of the major decisions of their life such as marriage by themselves. The young and uneducated brides become the typical housekeepers and undernourished mothers of equally undernourished children and little else. Early marriage means faster procreation and adding undesirably to the already existing high population growth of the country in its overpopulated conditions.
Women constitute half of the population of Bangladesh. The country’s economy can gain a great deal, if this half can lead productive lives and take conscious decisions of their own such as growing up to adulthood as single persons, marrying late and engaging in occupations outside the bounds of their homes. But this will require a social movement along with supportive legislation and the quicker it is launched by conscious groups in society, the better for the country in all respects.
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