A report from UNICEF was released today, entitled "Ending Child Marriage: Progress and Prospects," revealing that 700 million marriages worldwide involved girls under the age of 18, and of those, about 250 million of the girls were under 15. (Comparably, about 2% of boys were married under the age of 15, meaning that many these girls are married to considerably older men.)
One-third of the married girls are from India, roughly half are from South Asia, and the bulk of the rest are in Africa. In proportion to their own populations, the ten most culpable countries are:
- Niger (77%)
- Bengladesh (74%)
- Chad (69%)
- Mali (61%)
- CAR (60%)
- India (58%)
- Guinea (58%)
- Ethiopia (58%)
- Burkhina Faso (52%)
- Nepal (52%)
Contributing factors include culture, poverty, dowry laws, and lack of access to education or economic independence. The report studiously avoids explaining what the foundations of these "cultures" might be, since there's no reference to religious traditions, which are usually powerful indicators.
The report summarises:
Girls who marry are not only denied their childhood. They are often socially isolated -- cut off from family and friends and other sources of support -- with limited opportunities for education and employment. Households typically make decisions about girls' school and marriage jointly, not sequentially, and education tends to lose out. Accordingly, lower levels of education are found among women who married in childrhood. In Malawi, for instance, nearly two thirds of women with no formal education were child brides compared to 5 per cent of women who attended secondary school or higher levels of education.
Child brides are often unable to effectively negotiate safer sex, leaving themselves vulnerable to sexually transimitted infections , including HIV, along with early pregnancy. The pressure to become pregnant once married can be intense, and child brides typically end up having many children to care for while still young. In Nepal, for example, over one third of women aged 20 to 24 who married before their 15th birthday had three or more children compared to 1 per cent of women who married as adults. Child brides are also less likely to receive proper medical care while pregnant, In countries including Bengladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Niger, women who married as adults were at least twice as likely to have delivered their most recent paby in a health facility compared to women who married before age 15. This, along with the fact that girls are not physically mature enough to give birth, places both mothers and their babies at risk.
Since the child brides who survive pregnancy have abundant children, and their daughters themselves are married young, the number of overall child brides is increasing rapidly (even when small inroads are made to discourage the parents). The Catholic response is not to discourage marriage or the child-bearing inherent to that vocation, but to expand edcuational opportunities for girls, delay marriage until it is safer, and to introduce and support the idea that marriage is a partnership that flourishes when mutual respect is possible.
Comments
“People have realized that the complete removal of the feminine element from the Christian message is a shortcoming from an anthropological viewpoint. It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity."
This is just another of the unintended consequences of the cultural acceptance of contraception and abortion! Men's sexuality has been robbed of its creative essence. It is now viewed as something that imposes a burden on women (when conception happens to occur), something used to control women or something that is purely recreational. Why would men bother?? In taking away their responsibility, we've also robbed them of their significance! In the big picture of humanity, men have been made into nothing more than a nuisance women have to figure out how to control in order to bring about the next generation. Men don't see it as their task to protect the vulnerable because they see themselves as the vulnerable ones. A few well preserved vials of sperm would make men entirely obsolete in the world's ethos today!!
That is astounding Robin, and good for you for standing up. At the heart of that matter, I think, is even worse than a gender mixing message. There is an increased sharper and sharper focus on the "self." Solid Catholic teaching returns our focus away from ourselves to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The original sin, Eve denied her womanhood when she desired to be like "gods." Since the only god she knew was the Father. Where was Adam? He stood impotent... in other words, they were divorced. There's a young girl at Robin's son's high school who was just told that she is the center of the universe and it's a tragic disservice to her.
Ditto what Mary said! A lot of high schools have very poor math and science depts, for boys and girls. I also am educated as a chemical engineer, but chose to teach the two years before we had children because its hours were more suited to spending time with children. (I was looking ahead). When it came time and I was pregnant with our first, I realized that I did not want to leave him with someone else, and was able to stay home full time. I am not sure it would have been that easy if we were used to another engineering income and not just a private school teacher income. Also some of my first job offers were out on oil rigs - I had no interest in that at all even though I enjoyed my engineering classes and did well in them. No one discouraged me from an engineering job, on the contrary I got a lot of flack for my decision not to pursue an engineering career.
I've been lurking, but this is one that irritates me. Beats the heck out of me what these "barriers" are. I was educated as a chemical engineer, where 1/3 of our class was women. However, in electrical engineering, only 1 or 2 out of 30 were women. Is it possible that women are Just Not Interested in some areas? Nah, it must be The Man keeping us down so we must legislate (and, I agree -- when they say "legistlate", I hear "quota"). And actually, I have a friend that was also a chemical engineer. When she lost her job, she decided not to go back into engineering and started working from home so she could spend more time with her 3 kids. Also, if nothing else, there are all kinds of incentives for women to enter science and engineering -- scholarships not available to men, guaranteed housing on campuses that do not guarantee housing to the general population, etc. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that schools in general are not preparing students for the hard sciences. It is truly a sad state of affairs, the lack of science education these days.