CHILD MARRIAGE: A CRITICAL

BARRIER TO GIRLS’
SCHOOLING AND GENDER
EQUALITY IN EDUCATION
 GROUPS MEMBERS

Ezzah Rizwan
Iqra Shehzad Kayani
Kholah Rizwan
Muneeba Saman Malik
Sana Gul
 INTRODUCTION

• Education is not only a human right, but also a

powerful tool for women’s empowerment and a
strategic development investment.

• There is a clear multiplier effect to educating girls.

CONT’D:
• Women who are educated are healthier,
participate more in the formal labor market,
earn more income, have fewer children, and
provide better health care and education to
their children as compared to women with
little and no education.
 BENEFITS OF EDUCATION
• Where girls have greater educational and economic
opportunities, they are more likely to pursue those
opportunities than to have children in their teenage
years.

• Yet a host of structural, social, and financial

barriers prevent girls’ enrollment and completion
of both primary and secondary schools.
CONT’D:

• Over the past few decades, uneven progress has been

made toward genders equality in global education goal.

• The most resent UNESCO data show that of 161 countries

60 percent have achieved gender parity in enrollment a In
enrollment at the primary school level as compared to
that only 38 percent of countries at secondary level.
CONT’D:

• Major gender imbalance persist especially in low

income countries.

• Millions of girls around the world are banned for

entering and completing education due to typical
social norms.
CONT’D:
• Asia shows that on average one quarter of men and an
equal share of women believe that it is morally wrong for
a women to delay getting married to further her
education or to start a career.

• Such adverse norms are reinforced by sanctions that can

be positive or negative, imposed by people belonging to
the same reference group or by the state.
Causes of early
marriages
 POVERTY
• Poor families sell their children into
marriage either to settle debts or to make
some money and escape the 
cycle of poverty. Child marriage fosters
poverty, however, as it ensures that girls
who marry young will not be properly
educated or take part in the workforce.
 GENDER DISCRIMINATION
• Child marriage is a product of cultures that devalue
women and girls and discriminate against them. "The
discrimination," according to a UNICEF report on
"Child Marriage and the Law," "often manifests itself
in the form of domestic violence, marital rape, and
deprivation of food, lack of access to information,
education, healthcare, and general impediments to
mobility."
 INADEQUATE LAWS
• Many countries such as Pakistan have laws
against child marriage. The laws are not
enforced. In Afghanistan, a new law was
written into the country's code enabling Shiite
, or Hazara, communities to impose their own
form of family law-including permitting child
marriage.​
 TRAFFICKING
•Poor families are tempted to sell
their girls not just into marriage,
but into prostitution, as the
transaction enables large sums of
money to change hands.
 NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE

• Child marriage effectively ends a girl’s childhood,

curtails her education, minimizes her economic
opportunities, increases her risk of domestic violence,
and puts her at risk for early, frequent, and very high-
risk pregnancies
• Girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in
childbirth than women in their 20s and face higher
risk of pregnancy-related injuries, such as obstetric
fistula
CONT’D:
• Child brides are often unable to negotiate safer sexual
practices and are therefore at a higher risk of HIV and
other sexually transmitted infections.

• The negative consequences of child marriage reach beyond

the girls themselves: children of child brides are 60 percent
more likely to die in the first year of life than those born to
mothers older than 19, and families of child brides are more
likely to be poor and unhealthy.
CONT’D:
• Every two seconds, a girl becomes a child bride

• 90% of adolescent pregnancies in developing

countries are among married girls

• By eliminating child marriage and early

pregnancies, we could halve the gender education
gap
CONT’D:
• Girls from poor families are almost twice as likely to marry
as girls from wealthier households

• The international community has committed to ending child

marriage within 15 years

• Socio-cultural perspective that include preserving traditions,

illiteracy or lack of education, gender discrimination,
poverty and shifting of the economic burden.
CONT’D:
• The impact of women’s agency are potentially far
reaching ,as discuses earlier.
• An example from rural Bengal
• ‘’when a girl was asked how education had made their lives
different from their mothers, they replied that it had helped
them to find their voices allowed them to have a say to
speak and to be listen.’’
CONT’D:

Child marriage reflect lack of agency in several ways ,

1. The individual basic right to free and full consent to marry
at full age.
2. Child marriage is directly linked with the girls increased
risk of other form of gender based violence including
physical and emotional abused of the husband and other
family.
3. Lake of education is both the risk factor and an outcome
of child marriage
CONT’D:

• By the report of the Africa which suggest that the

women who married early are over five percentage
point less likely literate.
• Every year the early marriages significantly reduce the
probability of the girls compliting the secondary
school.
• Across the 18-20 century the girls with no education
are up to six time are more likely to marry then the girl
with secondary education.
CONT’D:

• The longer the girl stay in school the less likely she is
to be married.
• The girls living the poor household are twice as likely
to marry before the age of 18 as compared with the
girls in wealthier household.
• Education is also related with a higher probability
that women can make decision about large
purchases ,though the effect is less marked.
 THE EFFECT OF WOMEN EDUCATION ON
HEALTH

Increasing the girls access to the education improve the

mental health.
• In Burkina Faso, mother with the secondary education
are twice as likely to give birth more safely in health
facilities as those with no education
• It has been estimated that an additional year of
schooling for 1000 women's helps prevent two
maternal death.
 WOMEN EDUCATION AND THE CHILD
HEALTH
Increasing girls education have positive effect on the infant
and child health.
• In Indonesia, child vaccination rate is 19 percent when
women's have no education. the figure increase to 68
percent with the education of the women.
• Education also decrease the risk for the contracting HIV or
transmitting HIV to her baby.
 SO WHAT MEASURES
SHOULD BE TAKEN
TO ATTRACT AND KEEP
GIRLS IN SCHOOL?
CONT’D:

• Providing scholarships or cash transfers to girls

• Hiring more female teachers

• Reducing distance to schools

• Building separate toilet blocks for adolescent boys and

girls in schools
CONT’D:

• Carrying out gender-sensitivity training for teachers

• Avoids physical, psychological, and verbal violence

• For example :Many girls’ schools in Afghanistan and

Pakistan have made it a priority to protect students
from physical harm, even from extreme threats of
being attacked with acid
CONT’D:

• By erecting school boundary walls

• Providing community supervision
• Rallying the support of religious community
leaders; schools and communities working
together have been able to make protecting
students from gender-related violence a priority
(Glad 2009).
CONT’D:

• Providing uniforms and supplies in addition to

school vouchers or cash transfers increased
attendance and retention, as did provision of
meals and medical care at school.
• Improving school infrastructure and materials,
and increasing accountability of schools to the
Ministry of Education
CONT’D:

• Promoting education for girls can prevent child marriage,

while preventing child marriage can promote secondary
school completion

• Successfully addressing child marriage requires solutions

that are tailored to local context and successfully engage
community and religious leaders in efforts to chip away at
the norms that perpetuate the practice
CONT’D:

•At the same time, since families and parents

often look to culture and religion to justify
child marriage, religious traditional leaders
can be particularly effective advocates for
ending child marriage and leading a
collective shift in social norms (Lemmon and
ElHarake 2014).