Increasing women's age of marriage to 21 is a superficial idea; rather govt should focus on education and jobs

Several civil society organizations have questioned the Centre's move to increase the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 years to 21 years. They said the decision will only criminalise the sexual activities and will not help in accomplishing the idea of gender equality, writes senior journalist Chandrakala Choudhury.

New Delhi:Increasing women’s age of marriage from 18 to 21 is nothing but a superficial idea and will do little to improve the health of mothers and infants and will ultimately lead to the criminalisation of sexual activities, say, experts.

They say amending the law by fiat will not further gender equality, women’s rights or empowerment of girls.

The government’s proposals to revise the minimum age of marriage have drawn sharp criticism from woman and child rights experts all across the country. A task force appointed by the Women and Child Development Ministry in June has been consulting civil society members on this.

Expressing concern, over 100 civil society organizations with extensive experience in research and advocacy on adolescents and young people, child rights and women rights have made three submissions to the task force, urging the government against increasing the age of marriage by citing coherent reasons as to why the announcement of a possible increase of age is a matter of concern. There are lots of questions popping up regarding revising the age of marriage.

In a joint statement, the rights organizations asked how increasing the minimum age of marriage is a step forward when it denies many more women matrimonial status and rights.

They also questioned how will it help to criminalise families whose survival needs and insecurity compel them to not just marry early, but to also enter the workforce early.

However, the organizations, individuals have urged the government against increasing the age of marriage, claiming "it will not further gender equality, women's rights or empowerment of girls, and will do little to improve the health of mothers and infants".

"It is only in the most superficial sense that having 21 years for both men and women is a sign of gender equality, but somehow this idea has great appeal in liberal circles”, the statement endorsed by over 100 CSO’s and 2500 young voices said.

The women rights experts are of the view that child marriage has been on a decline and therefore, there is no point of increasing age of marriage but more emphasis should be given on schooling and jobs.

Speaking to ETV Bharat, Mary E John, Director, Centre for Women Development Studies who is also a part of the endorsement said, “It is just a superficial idea that people who are educated and wealthy, marry at a higher age, it is not actually a poor person who waits for three years to get married then 21 years is not going to become wealthy for that reason. Unless there are schools, colleges available for the poor, or jobs that are meaningful, what is going to change by simply postponing the marriage age by 3 years? The government has not thought through it properly".

“We have a history of differential age; one cannot suddenly equalize overnight because we have a social system which tends to think that we should be ‘Hypergamists’ meaning the boy should be superior to the girl within a caste. This idea has broken down in the western countries but in India, we still maintain the hierarchy. Therefore, 18 should be kept as it is; it is just a minimum age to marry, not the age that one ought to marry. It works only as a guard in a situation where families who are in difficult circumstances like in case of school dropouts, poverty, and then a girl sitting at home are married off.

“Despite such constraints, the age of marriage has been increasing, the proportion of underage marriage is dropping. We no longer have child marriages except in some villages of Rajasthan which is very rare”, said John, adding that the emphasis instead needs to be on schooling especially on elementary education and access to job opportunities to delay the age of marriage and address poverty to prevent the under-age marriage and fight malnutrition.

Across the world, 18 years is the norm- as the minimum age for marriage for both men and women. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by India in 1992, defines a child as a person up to the age of 18 years.

The experts also argue that increasing the age of marriage through law will only criminalize, not prevent, early marriage.

Moreover, an in-depth analysis of cases reported under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006 has been presented by Delhi based NGO Partners for Law and Development to understand who used the law the most and to what end.

The data analyzed comprised 83 High Court and District Court judgments and orders between 2008 to 2017 and found that in 65% of the cases PCMA was used to punish elopement of two consenting older adolescents.

In the remaining 35 per cent of cases of child marriage, the PCMA was invoked in more than half of them to seek dissolution of marriages that didn’t work and not to punish the parents for breaking the law.

The law was used mostly by parents and relatives of the girl in 56 out of the 83 cases and only 14% of the cases were initiated by legal functionaries such as the Child Marriage Prohibition Officer.

The study also found out that of the 35 per cent of cases in relation to arranged marriages, 48 per cent involve prosecutions against parents /husbands for organizing an underage marriage. The rest of the 52% cases pertaining to arranged marriages involve nullification of marriages that have broken down for dowry, incompatibility or domestic violence.

It is worth noting that, between National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 3 in 2005-2006 and NFHS-4, the proportion of women in the age group of 20-24 who were married at 15 years dropped from 25.4 per cent to 6 per cent.

However, data from National Family Health Survey, 2015-2016, shows 6 per cent of women between 20-24 years were married at the age of 15, 26.8 per cent by 18 and 48% by the age of 20.