In the next ten years, more than 100 million young girls in the developing world will be forced to marry a complete stranger. All of them will be taken out of their home, afraid and unknowing of the life they will be placed into. They will not only have to leave their loved ones behind, but also their humanity. If laws were enforced to prohibit this life for young girls, as some countries have done, many people would simply ignore them. Despite the fact that the effects of child marriage cause abuse, unwanted pregnancies, and lack of education, religion and poverty among people in the developing world make it hard for organizations or rebellions to ever make a difference.
The effects of forced child marriage should be enough to stray countries from enforcing it, although that is not the case. Girls all over the world, especially in South America and India, have faced the struggle of living in a violent, abusive household away from their family. Girls Not Brides, a corporation against child marriage, states that, “Child marriage puts women and girls at particular risk of sexual, physical and psychological violence throughout their lives,” (girlsnotbrides.org). The United Nations Population Fund also says that, “Women who marry younger are more likely to be beaten and to believe that their husbands can justify it,” ('Marrying too young' 2012). Adding on to that, girls also are subjected to rape; 81% of child brides interviewed in Ethiopia described their sexual initiation as forced, and girls who are married before the age of 18 are more likely to experience domestic abuse than their unmarried peers. Because of gender inequality, girls are usually seen as weaker and property of their husband, so abuse and rape wasn’t viewed as ...
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...k of education, child marriage has obstructed their chance for a bright future. Even with that knowledge, the journey to ending it for good has been hindered by religion and devastating poverty, making it difficult for anything to really be done about it.
Works Cited
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"Early and Forced Marriage - Facts, Figures and What You Can Do." Early and Forced Marriage. United Nations Population Fund, 2012. Web. 20 May 2014.
"Education - Girls Not Brides." Girls Not Brides. Girls Not Brides, 2002 - 2014. Web. 21 May 2014.
"Girls' Safety - Girls Not Brides." Girls Not Brides. Girls Not Brides, 2002 - 2014. Web. 21 May 2014.
The impacts socially of the gendercide include women being married younger and younger due to the lack of suitable age females. This young marriage and the pressures on the young girls to provide families causes them to miscarriages and create harm to their underdeveloped bodies. In addition to younger marriages, high rates of prostitution become a problem. Most girls will be stolen and sold into sex trafficking. The lack of females causes male tensions to be high with no female perspective to calm down all the male testosterone in the environment. With no females to marry and love, they turn to illegal practices to satisfy their desires. The marriage of such young females also hurts their opportunity to grow and develop as women in society. They lose their chance for education, and they settle down to simply raise children. This also
As shown in the movie, Enemies of Happiness ( ) Afghan women are still suffering from planned and child bride marriages. Even though marriages of females below the age of 16 are outlawed by the constitution, this movie clearly shows that this continues to happen. As well does the reading from the introduction of Afghan Women in this quote “Afghan authorities do not investigate women’s complaints” (Rostami-Povey 2). More proof comes from the Ms Magazine article Stones can’t Stop Them, when in April of 2009 the President of Afghanistan signed the Shia Personal Status Law, that included, recognizing child marriages (Tang 21). And although this law was later withdrawn, it shows that oppressive thinking that is still going on in the Afghanistan culture today.
Some of these marriages are extremely dysfunctional while others seem to be practical. These marriages are considered different from forced marriages and are an acceptable type of marriage in Afghan society. Some arranged marriages lead to poor or horrific outcomes for the brides in order to separate from her spouse. Occasionally these marriages shift into being forced marriages. In the article “Afghan girls bound by family betrothals” the author states “In Kapisa province, just north of Kabul, an 18-year-old girl shot and killed herself because her family would not break off her three-year-engagement to a drug addict.” This exhibits how certain family’s decisions for their children are atrocious. In addition it shows how an arranged marriage turned into a forced marriage. At times young women may run away from as a threat tactic to their family reported by the article “Afghan girls bound by family betrothals.” A 17-year-old girl who ran away from her home for a few days resulted in her parents letting her marry the man that she loved rather than who they set her up with. This shows how some parents would be tolerant enough to let his own daughter marry the person she
Those who sacrifice to keep their children often run into financial issues, so when their daughters start their menstrual cycle they will often sell their daughters to provide for their other children. When daughters are sold they are forced to marry whoever has purchased them. The girls who are typically between the ages of twelve to nineteen, but the men who buy these young girls are old. A fourteen-year-old girl named Betty said “My father brought a man who was old enough to be my father and told me to go with him in order to get some food. When I arrived at his home he told me he had already paid a dowry for me so I am his wife” (Plan Uganda, 1).
...the hardest goals to accomplish, as cultural beliefs and values are often set in stone and cannot be changed instantaneously. Changing rigid gender stereotypes could take many years, so it is imperative that solutions be implemented over the long-term. Women should continue to be educated, and people should work towards a greater share in household responsibilities among families (24). A more holistic approach is needed, and social support for rural women should also be enhanced (24). Furthermore, it is essential that responses to the matter are culturally sensitive; for instance, divorce is often not a viable option for many women in India who fear being stigmatized by their communities. Overall, researchers should continue to conduct further studies in order to understand the roots of family violence in India, and work towards eradicating the issue altogether.
Over 2 million children are sold into sex trafficking each year (Global). Sold gives the eye-opening narrative of just one of them. I followed Lakshmi through her journey as she learned about life outside her small hometown in Nepal. She loved her mother and baby brother and worked hard to keep up with her repulsive step-father’s gambling habit. When given the opportunity to take a job that could provide for her family, Lakshmi accepted the offer. Unknowingly, she walked into the hands of horrible people who led her blindly on the path of prostitution. Discovering her fate, Lakshmi latched onto hope when all seemed bleak. After months of endless abuse, some Americans gave her the opportunity to escape her situation, and, thankfully, she took
The deleterious consequences such as poor health, abuse, and low literacy are the devastating effects of child marriage which are demonstrated throughout the novel. The parlous implications when examining a young wife’s health include early death, extremely high risks of fistulas, and the risk of being infected with sexually transmitted disease. Commonly, girls are “admitted to hospitals shortly after marriage in a state of sh...
Coltrane, Scott, and Michele Adams. "The Social Construction of the Divorce "Problem": Morality, Child Victims, and the Politics of Gender." Family Relations 52.4 (2003): 363-72. Print.
Marriage is one of those things most women and some men look forward to in life. This generation is different from the rest of the generations before, where you had to get married by a certain age and follow a standard of living. Nowadays everyone has the option of getting married or not. There is so much individuality, and liberty to do whatever we please without lives that we can marry the same sex. Even if a couple does marry and say their vows that should mean so much to them, they are getting divorced the next day. “Among adults who have been married, the study discovered that one-third (33%) have experienced at least one divorce. That means that among all Americans 18 years of age or older, whether they have been married or not, 25% have gone through a marital split (New Marriage).” “Around the world, people are marrying later and divorcing often (Sernau).” Now that this epidemic of marriage and divorce has taken place over the last few generations parenting suffers a great deal.
Each day, 25,000 or more children are married and become child brides: and in Yemen, over fifty two percent of girls are married before eighteen years old, and fourteen percent are married before the age of fifteen(“Laws Fail to Stop Child Marriage”), which is the highest rates of child marriages in the world. In Iraq, however, eleven percent of girls are married before eighteen (“Child Marriage: Legalized Rape?”) while a new law in Iraq could lead to girls as young as nine years old getting married and having to submit to sex whenever her husband wants. (Aly)Sometimes, girls as young as ten would be forced to marry men up to four or five times their age(Birkett) and a husband can have sex with his wife regardless of consent(“Humanitarian News and Analysis”). Children ten to fourteen are five times more likely to die during childbirth than women in early twenties because their bodies aren’t physically equipped for childbirth.(Baz) “Married underage girls are subjected to physical and psychological suffering”(“Humanitarian News and Analysis”). This is disturbing because while in India, the percent of arranged marriages is 90% of all marriages in India, almost all being younger than eighteen.(Gorney and Sinclair). By the end of the decade an estimated 142 million girls will be married before eighteen years old, while one in three girls in the world are married before eighteen, while one in nine are married before fifteen. 400 million women in the Middle East between twenty and forty nine were married before eighteen. (Al-Ansi) These numbers shock people in America, but in the Middle East, arranged marriage and pre pubescent marriage is nothing to blink an eye about. This leads to the conclusion that even though Islam constitutes ma...
Why are Indian women and children so venerable to this condition? Evidence suggests that colonialism, high population, intents poverty, low educationa...
The controversy over marriage today is much more observable than almost a century ago in the 1920s. Not only are divorce rates at 40% for young adult women (Shiono 20), but initial marri...
Because of child marriage many kids lose the opportunity to continue with school. When kids don’t go to school they lose out on many employment opportunities to help the household financially. When children miss out on employment opportunities it keeps the cycle of poverty going. Parents should not be marrying off their children so young just because they cant provide for them, there is other options instead of throwing out your daughter. Every child is valuable and deserves to live a childs life and have fun and just worry about being a kid instead of having a grow up while still yet a child. Each child should enjoy their child years, it only happens once and then real life hits, no child should be deprived of a childhood. Parents should step up and take responsibility for the life that they brought into the world. These countries that waddle in child marriage are some of the poorest because the cycle of poverty starts all over again as these two people joined together have to figure out to make finances work when they couldn’t even finish school to get a good job. Parents should let their children be children, their lives should be more valuable than any money they can get for marrying off their
While the age of marriage is generally on the rise, in many countries, especially among poor, migrant or displaced communities, early marriage – marriage of children and adolescents below the age of eighteen – is still widely practiced. Tremendous number of couples enters marriage without any chance of exercising their right to choose. Some are forced into marriage, others are simply too young to make an informed decision about their partner or about the implications of marriage itself. Studies have shown that teenage married couples are often less advantageous, may come from broken homes, may have little education and work, low status jobs in comparison to those that marry after adolescence. It could be very encouraging if our community established a prohibition on the early marriages, giving a room for young couples’ relationships to grow. I propose to ban early marriages because they bring a lot of flaws in our society and make the young couples face imposing obstacles during their life path.
Girls will come to benefit from the end of child marriages, but as well the society helping them left from poverty via education as CARE promotes Education as a key to ending child marriages. Child marriages trap girls and their families in the cycle of poverty. If a girl does not marry early and stay in school, she is likely to be healthier and wealthier which will allow for her to reinvest her income into her family. As stated by girlsnotbrides, a global partnership of more than 300 civil society organizations from over 50 countries working to address child marriage says, “For every year a girl stays in secondary school, her eventual wages will be boosted by 15 to 25 percent”. This will bring a whole other meaning to society in which there will be a way for girls to help their family raise from poverty. By addressing child marriage through education, girls develop skills, knowledge and are empowered to claim their rights. This allows them to make free and informed decisions, including if, when and whom to marry. As education can also be that key for India to stop to child marriage as Ben Arnoldy, a managing editor of Monitor Frontier Markets and recently spent several years based in New Delhi covering India, tell a story of girl in India who refused to enter child marriage at 12 years old and insisted in staying in school obtaining an education. He stat...