Raising the Marriage Age for Women – Some Pros and Cons

I recently read about how the funds allocated for the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme had been spent. Almost 79% of the funds were spent on advertising. Not on building schools and toilets, not on safe transport, not on sex education, not on counselling parents, not on funding female education/books/uniforms etc. This got me thinking – why do our decision-makers only seem to do things that are easy, visible and that ‘look’ good, but which don’t make any real difference on the ground? For this reason, the recent headlines about raising the age of marriage of women from 18 to 21 did not enthuse.

The union cabinet has okayed the raising of the legal minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21. The understanding is that if women are married after the age of 21, they can be better educated, and therefore more empowered. If women marry later, they become mothers later and hence both maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates will go down. In theory, this sounds great.

However, the law is unlikely to have the desired impact based on what we have seen before. Back in the 1920s, there was uproar when the British raised the age of marriage for girls, from 10 to 12, yes 12 years. In 1978 the age was raised from 16 to 18. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, actually prohibits marriage below 18 years for women and 21 years for men.

So all the well-meaning laws meant to prevent child marriages and empower females have been enacted from time to time. However, right now, 23% of marriages in India are child marriages. These are figures from the National Family Health Survey 2019-21. It is clear that the laws are rarely if ever enforced; though they remain in statute books.

The reasons for women being married off in childhood have complex social and cultural roots. The enactment of laws is going to make little difference to the prevalent mindset. As Jaya Jaitly said, this act is like “making traffic rules without providing good roads or traffic lights.”

There is no doubt that women marrying later, is better for their health and agency of women. However, the fact is that only real social change will empower women and delay the age of marriage. The fact is that the average age of women getting married has been rising gradually over the years. This has been organic and not forced. It has had little to do with laws and everything to do with more progressive mindsets, better access to education and women having more of a say in decision-making in the family.

This law is unlikely to have the desired impact and could actually have the opposite impact of empowering women. Firstly, this serves to infantilise women. If women are mature enough to vote at the age of 18, be tried and punished as an adult under the law, why are they seen to be too immature to marry?

There is a valid apprehension that this law will put into the hands of parents, a weapon to prevent women from marrying men of their own choice. Women will be prevented from marrying by families who disapprove of their choices. This will be done under the pretext of the girl being underage, but in reality, the law may be used as a tool of coercion.

Experts predict yet another possible problem here. While women will continue to be married off at the age families decide upon, women may not have the protection of certain other laws. Suppose a girl is married before age 21 and then she approaches the court for redressal under the law. The husband/ husband’s family could easily turn around and say that the marriage is invalid because of the age of the woman and say she is not entitled to redress.

Passing a law is not the solution. The government has to invest in better access to education, transport, skilling of girls and give women better access to birth control. As importantly, societal perceptions about early marriages need to change – if that happens, there will be no need for legislation such as one raising the age of marriage right now. As things stand, this law looks like little more than virtue signalling by the government.