Dropout because of child marriage in India

 

Dropout because of child marriage in India!

Of the over 21,800 girls who had dropped out of school before the 2019-20 school year, just over 13% girls did so as they were required for house work and almost 7% did so as they were married off even though child marriage is illegal

Early marriages and chores at home are key reasons why girls drop out of school, The National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) indicates. Of the over 21,800 girls who had dropped out of school before the 2019-20 school year, just over 13% girls did so as they were required for house work and a lmost 7% did so as they were married off even though child marriage is illegal. When it comes to paid work, the percentage of boys who dropped out for work is higher when compared to girls. A total of 21,851 girls and 20,084 boys had dropped out of school before the 2019- 20 school year.

How does child marriage affect education in India?

Child marriage ends childhood.  It negatively influences children’s rights to education, health and protection. These consequences impact not just the girl directly, but also her family and community.

A girl who is married as a child is more likely to be out of school and not earn money and contribute to the community. She is more likely to experience domestic violence and become infected with HIV/AIDS. She is more likely to have children when she is still a child. There are more chances of her dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Estimates suggest that each year, at least 1.5 million girls under 18 get married in India. Nearly 16 per cent adolescent girls aged 15-19 are currently married.

While the prevalence of girls getting married before age 18 has declined from 47 per cent to 27 per cent between 2005-2006 and 2015-2016 it is still too high.

The significant progress in the reduction of child marriages in India has contributed to a large extent to the global decrease in the prevalence of the practice. The decline may be the result of multiple factors such as increased literacy of mothers, better access to education for girls, strong legislation and migration from rural areas to urban centres.  Increased rates of girls’ education, proactive government investments in adolescent girls, and strong public messaging around the illegality of child marriage and the harm it causes are also among the reasons for the shift.

How does child marriage affect health?

A girl who marries early is more likely to give birth before her body is ready, presenting complications that will jeopardize her health for the rest of her life.

Impact of child marriage on Indian economy

Due to dropouts because of child marriage  many students lose opportunity to earn money and raise economy of India. Child marriage negatively affects the Indian economy and can lead to an intergenerational cycle of poverty. Girls and boys married as children more likely lack the skills, knowledge and job prospects needed to lift their families out of poverty and contribute to their country’s social and economic growth. Early marriage leads girls to have children earlier and more children over their lifetime, increasing economic burden on the household.

Child marriage is estimated to cost economies at least 1.7 percent of their GDP. It increases total fertility of women by 17 percent, which hurts developing countries battling high population growth. As per IRCW study, the welfare benefit in ending child marriage is estimated to be $22.1 billion globally in the first year (2015). This number increases to $566 billion annually by 2030, for a cumulative welfare benefit of more than $4 trillion. Considering how one out of three such marriages happen in India, this impact is huge on India. Decreased household sizes would lead to an increased availability of funds which then could be used to pay for food, education, health care and other expenses for other members of the household.

Child marriage and mental health

Five of the studies included in our review estimated the effect of child marriage on various aspects of mental health. These studies relied on cross-sectional data collected from Ghana, Iran, Ethiopia, Niger and the United States. Women in the United States who married before the age of 18 were more likely to report experiencing a wide range of mood, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders in adulthood when compared to those who married at later ages .The authors of a small study from a single county in Iran found that women who married as children reported more depressive symptoms than those who married at the age of 18 or older .John, Edmeades, and Murithi examined the relationship between child marriage and multiple domains of psychological well-being in Niger and Ethiopia . The authors found that marriage before the age of 16 was correlated with poorer overall psychological well-being, but no evidence that marriage between the ages of 16 and 17 was associated with poorer outcomes when compared to women who married at the age of 18 or later . In Ghana, child marriage seemed to protect against measures of stress. The Ghanaian study also found no indication of differences in levels of social support between women who married before the age of 18 and those who married after their 18th birthdays, though these odds ratio estimates were very imprecise

How to stop it ?

Contact a women cell of local police. ...

File for Domestic Violence under PWDW Act. ...

Contact National commission for women. ...

Contact a lawyer. ...

Suit for annulment of marriage in district court or family court.

What to do if you do not live in India?

If you want to help kids in India and stop child marriage you can donate to our organization and we will do everything we can to stop child marriage in India

HEEALS organization

We believe that by starting small and working with one community at a time, we can begin to make changes that will spread gradually throughout India, all the while working hard to create and maintain a self-sustaining society. We aim to facilitate the fulfilment of the millennium development goals, set out by the United Nations, by ensuring that every household in India has unimpeded access to proper WASH facilities.

Heeals was built by a core team of committed executive committee, the member and staff member, who collectively have extensive experience in rural, urban and social development in India. Most of the founding staff is working voluntarily or semi-voluntary.

Email:communication@heeals.org

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Written by Kenenbaeva Janyl

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Used resources:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/girls-drop-out-of-schools-due-to-early-marriage-house-work/articleshow/92195487.cms

https://www.vowforgirls.org/aboutchildmarriage?gclid=Cj0KCQjwi7GnBhDXARIsAFLvH4lQXFqdBIWjUXs4wcnUnnKC3TWbL4I9EuP7is6CX3SoOpYH5bKARhkaAv84EALw_wcB

https://www.insightsonindia.com/social-justice/issues-related-to-children/child-marriage/impact-of-child-marriage-on-indian-economy/

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-12707-x#:~:text=Women%20in%20the%20United%20States,at%20later%20ages%20%5B21%5D.

https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-3584-family-pressure-of-marriage-on-daughter-and-indian-laws-.html

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Reason of dropout of girls from school

 Around the world, girls are less likely to graduate from secondary school than boys. Millions of girls are missing their classes during their periods, which deprives them of getting a quality education. There are many reason for this, mostly due to lack of facilities,of information and of sanitary products.

Culturally, in India, menstruations are considered dirty and impure and during periods girls are discouraged to attend school and stay home. The unavailability of sanitary pads, inadeguate sanitation and absence of separate toilet for girls in schools, has a huge impact on girl school attendance and is a major reason of dropout of girls from school. The main challenges at schools are identified as lack of soap, clean toilets, clean water privacy and sanitary pads supply. Moreover, there’s no facility to dispose of the soiled sanitary towels and no private area for girls to change their underwear or sanitary napkins and manage their hygiene. Menstruation continues to be a subject of gender disparity in India, because of a lack of awareness makes for a major problem in India’s menstrual hygiene scenario.

In Delhi, 40% of girls in government schools stay home during periods, for reasons such as unavailability of private place to manage periods, lack of running water supply, absence of disposal system for pads/clothes and lack of bathroom for girls. Girls are forced to stay away from school because toilets are open and there’s no privacy and also girls are hesitant to seek permission to go home. The reasons for absenteeism are different, one of the most frequent one is the lack of running water supply. Out of six girls, one school had no separate toilets for girls. Many girls complained that the toilets did not have regular water supply, forcing them to stay at home during menstruation. Additionally, cramps and shame are an incentive to drop out from school.

For some parents, puberty also indicates a sign of maturity for girls: time for them to get married. Thus, improving sanitation facilities and hygiene services could have a great impact on improving girls’ attendance in school. There’s an urgent need to improve basic facilities to cut out absenteeism. The solution is Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM), that it is the access of adeguate information, preparation, and support to manage menstruation in a healthy, safe way.  It can further social and economic empowerment and growth. MHM need the involvement of teachers whom are fundamental to reach out girls with correct information and skills to manage their periods. Girls and teachers have to discuss on menstruation.

Keep girls in school is not only important for their own health and well-being but for the success of the entire community. When a girl finishes secondary school, she is less likely to experience child marriage, face domestic abuse and suffer from long-term complications. As a result, educated women are more likely to have fewer, healthier children, who are then more likely to get an education and pull themselves out of poverty. MHM can affect the community also through demanding need for privacy for managing their periods could persuade their parents to construct toilet at home, the break of taboos surrounding periods and to carry out message on hygiene practice into their households and community.

Some measures that can improve the situations can be are the development of water and sanitation facilities in school girls’ toilets including the incinerator for safe disposal of napkins have shown its impact on the school attendance. This can reduce the dropout rate of girls in school. In 2015 the government of India launched national guidelines on MHM to respond to nearly 113 million millions adolescent girls’ at risk of dropping out of school due to the start of menarche. One of the surveys that informed the National Guidelines found that in 14,724 government schools only 53% had a separate and usable girls’ toilet.

We, at HEEALS, believe that MHM is fundamental for girls’ education and improvement. That’s why we implemented MHM measures into our programs for girls our school, through our Menstrual Hygiene and Girl Education Project in which we give girls classes on the importance of menstrual hygiene practices, free booklets and sanitary pads in Northern regions of India.

-Bene 
MH Intern 

WHYMUST I BE A GOOD WIFE AND MOTHER, IF I AM STILL A BABY?

According to the UNICEF Report of 2012, in India 47% of girls use to get married before the age of 10 and the average age of maternity is from 15 to 19 years old. As a matter of fact, pregnancy is consistently among the leading causes of death for girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide.

Moreover, girls who become pregnant under the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women who give birth in their 20s.For istance, around 2 million women worldwide suffer from obstetric fistula, a debilitating complication of childbirth especially common among physically immature girls.

At this point the fundamental question is: why must I be a good wife and mother, if I am still a baby?

Broadly speaking,child marriage leads to other social problems that require specific solutions. The most remarkable are:

1. An insufficient level of education, for both girls and boys. That because younger spouses are frequently forced to drop out after marriage.

2. The impossibility of having a good job (considering the lack of education), that cause a significant increase of the rate of poverty. Generally, child brides are more likely to come from a poor family and once married, are more likely to continue living in poverty.

3. A deeply marginalization and social exclusion of the lower people, that emphasize the cast system, nowadays still present in India.

4.  A higher incidence of domestic violence, marital abuse (including physical, sexual or psychological abuse) and abandonment.The International Center for Research on Women conducted a study in India and found that girls who were married before 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped or threatened by their husbands than girls who married later.

Having said that, it results evident that it is almost impossible to save the present generation of children from child marriage practice, mostly because this phenomenon is considered normal and necessary, especially in rural area. There is not awareness about the negative impact that it has on children. Also for this reason, parents tend to not only promote it but also to defend it from every attempt of change.

The “values” strictly linked to child marriage refer to the cultural and economic issues underlying that practice. Young girls are married off according to dominant beliefs about preserving women’s “honour”, as well as the costs of raising girls. Child marriage could be relate to people trafficking in extreme situations. In the majority of the cases, it maintains the status quo in poor and underdeveloped areas, where economic deprivation is used to justify men’s dominance over women.

Biswajit Ghosh, a famous Indian sociologist, conducted fieldwork in Malda district of North Bengal (India). Then he pointed out that in rural areas, communities tend to have limited access to quality education and to basic infrastructure. Specificly, in Malda, it is problematic to send children to school, even though younger people show a strong interest in their education. Furthermore, poverty and lack of infrastructure serve to maintain the belief that education is worthless because young’s education delays marriage and so it is construed as negatively impacting society’s welfare.

Ghosh surveyed around 380 fathers, mothers, elders and girls in Malda. He discovered that 90% of parents and elders believe that marriage is “essential for girls,” primarily because they fear girls might elope without proper permission, as well as their concern about girls’ economic and social protection. So, it appears clear that preserving a young girl’s honour before marriage is central to the ideal which priorities marriage over education.

Even in “our modern area”, caste system is the main factor that complicates education interventions to defeat child marriage. According to Ghosh, girls from upper families are able to delay marriage as they focus on education, but the girls, who come from poorer families, have less bargaining power with their parents. Often it happens that a girls would like to reach high level of education but this has a negative effect of excluding her from most marriage prospects because young men, who are less learned, required a poor dowry that reflected negatively on the girl’s family. On the other hand, young men who could match the girl’s level of education required too high a dowry. Once again, it seems that, at social level, the lack of employment opportunities for women, and the material reality faced by poor communities convert early marriage is a source of protection.

The sociology identifies that many community members had been in contact with international aid workers who had explained the main issues associated with child marriage. Besides in several cases, locals knew it was illegal to organise the marriage of a young girl. Althoug that, child marriage is still spread in the area. This is one of the reason why Ghosh personally believe that legal sanctions and international campaigns to end up the  child marriage practice are dismissed, above all at the local level, since they do not connect directly to people’s material experiences. He claims that: “such campaigns are not taken seriously and knowledge about the negative consequences of early marriage is underplayed as ‘aberrations’ as many of the existing mothers were married much early. Experience of these mothers seems to create a moral basis for marrying their daughters early. Hence, the logic of late marriage propagated by health workers and others do not produce any visible results”.

In order to eliminate child marriage, communities need to be shown practical demonstrations that delaying marriage increases everyone’s welfare.

The United Nations purpose to totally defeat child marriage by 2030,international agencies often focus on raising community awareness on the legalities and health benefits of education, but this approach has a limited impact, as information campaigns about education, do not match the material and cultural reality of local communities. For example, in the Indian district of West Bengal, problems in organising effective delivery of education and tangible employment outcomes only provides more credence to religious and community elders, who argue that marriage undermines society.

A concert a change can occur, if and only if,  international agencies, national governments and local grassroots groups start to work together, adopting practical strategies.

It is a sort of duty understanding that the tensions between girls’ right to education versus their obligation to marry is not simply about “gender question”.Sure enough, the lack of access to quality education makes it difficult to invest in resources that are already lacking into sending girls away to attend school in other regions. In this setting, economic necessity and cultural habits about family honour and protection overtake the civil law, which establishes that child marriage is illegal.

To sum up, ending child marriage clearly requires stronger efforts from all the world. Moreover, addressing poverty is critical. Poorer communities need to see concrete examples that developments projects lead to benefits, like for example a “normal job”, that increase everyone’s quality of life.For better clarifying this conclusion, I would like to say that through improved education system, schools can become a vehicle for delaying child marriage. Likewise, providing regular training sessions for parents and community leaders would help generate further support. But schools must be supported in the development of tangible skills, linked to the social – economic contest of each child.

-Martina 

WASH & Intern coordinator