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Saying ‘NO’ to Child Marriage in Bangladesh: Changing Social Norms

Penn-UNICEF 2012 Summer Program -

Advances in Social Norms and Social Change

Tania SultanaPhiladelphia, July 13, 2012

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Bangladesh at a Glance• About 150 million population in the

area of 147, 570 sq. km. (densely populated)

• Around 23% of them are adolescents and 66 millions are children

• The TFR is 2.3 (DHS 2011), if the trend goes on, the average women gets 25% of their births before reaching age 20

• The literacy rate among the 15-19 age group is 82% and 52% for 25+ age group and education is a priority area of Government of Bangladesh.

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Child Marriage in Bangladesh (1)

• The child marriage rate in Bangladesh is still very high 66% (BDHS 2007), though the proportion of women marrying by age 15 has declined by two-thirds over time

• The median age of marriage for girls gradually increase of is 16.4 years in 2007 from 15 in 2000 DHS

• The Child Marriage Restraint Act is in place in Bangladesh to stop Child marriage yet law enforcement is very negligible

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Child Marriage in Bangladesh (2)

• Child Marriage is a form of violence against children as it denies the right of children to health, nutrition, education, freedom from violence, abuse and exploitation.

• The consequences of child marriage is long term - early pregnancy followed by pre term child birth and intergenerational malnutrition, withdrawn from schools and also unequal power relations of spouses as age gap is also high

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Child bearing Adolescents in Health Centers

A 16 year old girl (sitting left) is 8 months pregnant and came to visit health center for the first time for Antenatal check up

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Key Factors of Child MarriageDowry & Poverty

Poverty

Perception of Economic Burden

Accessibility and availability of

secondary education

Lack of law enforcement

Knowledge Gaps

Social Acceptance

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Child Marriage as Social Norms (1)

Motivating factors: Why Child Marriage persists ?To protect chastity of girls for the ‘honor’ of the family –

Empirical expectation of parents is influenced by personal normative belief and normative expectation of society triggering the conditional preferences to marry of at an early age (pluralistic ignorance)

The script of marriage includes dowry in Bangladesh. The social norms of ‘dowry’ coined up with ‘poverty’ exacerbating child marriage – the social sanctions for not paying ‘dowry’ is even worse. The factual belief is dowry increases with the age increase of girls (which is devaluing girl also)

Considering girls as economic burden – ‘girls are for their husband’s family and they do not contribute to family’ – factual belief with empirical expectations

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Why Child Marriage persists? (2)

Motivating factors: Why Child Marriage persists ?Accessibility and availability of secondary education –

the lower educational attainment of girls, limiting their employment opportunities, economic security, and productive capacity which is also a factual belief

knowledge gaps regarding consequences child marriage, law is another factual belief which is also triggered by pluralistic ignorance (i.e. parents may not want to but doing it as a conditional preference)

Poor law enforcement by authorities – legal sanctions and rewards by relevant authority

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Existing Interventions - EOA• Empowerment of Adolescent (EOA) Project – ‘Kishori Abhijan’ and the key

objective was - to protect children from all forms of violence, i.e. sexual exploitation,

abuse and discrimination Making children knowledgeable and empowering girls

• The project interventions implemented in specific programme areas based on research findings

• Capacity building of GoB and partner NGOs on Life Skills Based Education • LSBE for adolescents – Peer learning through interpersonal communication

(psychosocial Protection and Care)• Stipends/cash transfers for keeping children in schools and in some cases

for livelihood trainings • Communication interventions with advocacy and community engagement

approach – Advocacy with relevant ministry a• Legislation – Law enforcement through Peer Leaders’ initiatives and

support of religious leaders and community influentials

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Peer Discussion in Kishori Avijaan

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What went well?Achievements of EOA:• The peer approach - adolescents have

increased understanding about their rights and key life skills, including self esteem, leadership

• Adolescent (girls) peer pressure groups have helped to stop child marriage and continuing education

• Capacity strengthened of GoB and partner organizations on child development modules and provided life skill based education to adolescents

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What did not work well?Areas to improve:

• Need to address ‘dowry’ problem as it is a social norms too, if not given to the grooms family, the sanction often takes away the life of the bride

• Lack of male participation became a hindrance as they are the decision makers - absenteeism in fathers meeting was very common (lack of trust network)

• Community engagement with ‘Kazi’s (marriage register), religious leaders is another area to be improved further as they are potential member of core group

• Harmonization of legal and social norms needs to be addressed – commitment of core group towards action

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Strategies to Way Forward (1)

• Comprehensive Communication Strategy for national and sub-national level based on causal analysis – understanding personal normative belief, empirical expectations and normative expectations to change factual beliefs

• Need to conduct Network Analysis – to understand the relationship for identifying the core group and building ‘trust network’

• Identify the core groups – organized diffusion among them. Core groups can be diversified - religious leaders (Imams, Kazi/marriage registers, heads of faith based organizations)- local influential (Ward Development Committee for supportive supervision and monitoring)- families (mothers and fathers of girls)

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Strategies to Way Forward (2) • The key Approach will be Community led Social Change:

- Community dialogue to change the factual beliefs through argumentation (through and empirical expectations of core group which also bring change in normative beliefs - Increase common knowledge on benefits of new norm to address the collective behavior – ‘Norm shift’

• Building trust on delaying marriage and incentivize for keeping girls in schools – positive rewards for changing behavior

• Make positive deviance and making them public

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• Entertainment Education approach to change personal normative beliefs – - Using mass media for social marketing campaign/

publicity create diffusion among critical mass – interactive film shows, Meena animation shows followed by discussion and Meena story book with school level activity sheet

- Use community media to address the media dark areas i.e. Interactive Popular Theatre, Meena shows in the community, Radio listeners group

Strategies to Way Forward (3)

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• Public Pledge in small communities – create internal motivation, confidence and commitment to stop child marriage as collective action

• Strong networking of organizations those can contribute in harmonization of legal to moral and social norms – organizational diffusion

Strategies to Way Forward (4)

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Thanks