OVER the last week, reports of a 41-year-old man taking an 11-year-old girl as his third wife has hogged headlines in Malaysia. This has cast a spotlight on incidences of child marriage in Malaysia. 

Child/early marriage is defined by the United Nations as a formal marriage or informal union before the age of 18, and is a practice widespread in developing and lower-income countries. Child/early marriage affects both boys and girls, though girls are disproportionately the most affected. Child/early marriage, more often than not, leads to a lifetime of disadvantage and deprivation.  

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child defines any person below the age of 18 as a child, and by Malaysian law, the age of maturity is also 18. Global advocates often highlight that the term early marriage is a better as in the many societies that do practise child marriage, once a girl attains puberty, she is no longer considered a “child” but rather a “woman”, despite her age.

The most common drivers of early marriage are poverty and lack of access to education and employment opportunities. However, in a country like Malaysia, where access to education is heavily subsidised, we need to consider other drivers as well. 

Without a doubt, in this particular case, poverty is a key driver. However the additional vulnerabilities and marginalisation that this family face must also be taken into consideration. That they are migrant workers from a neighbouring country in which access to health and education is usually denied them. They work as rubber tappers in a farm, or a plantation, which is a hard-to-reach, even isolating community, with its own rigid hierarchies and limitations. The family’s income is derived from selling their rubber to this man in particular, and as such, he holds some form of power over them. Hence, they fall below the poverty standard, as migrant workers are paid less, especially in the plantation sector. There is no possibility of social mobility for this family, due to this lack of access to education and other forms of employment.  

Child/early marriage occurs not only due to poverty, but is also caused by the low status of girls within our society. One proverb goes: “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbour’s garden”, and girls, once married, cease contributing to their parents and their birth families. 

Poor families then tend to spend less educating their daughters compared with their sons because of social expectations of girls contributing or belonging to the families they eventually marry into. This social norm is also replicated in inheritance laws across many Asian societies, favouring sons over daughters, as well as in issues concerning ownership of family businesses and professions. 

Within families and households, gender roles also predominate. Girls are brought up to do work within the household – cooking, fetching water and firewood, caring for younger siblings, cleaning, washing and doing the laundry. Regardless of their level of education, girls and women are still expected to perform most, if not all, of the work and reproductive labour in the household: “If you study, you have to make roti, if you don’t study, you have to make roti.” Educational attainment alone cannot ensure the necessary transformation for more equal gender roles in the family and household. 

In situations of poverty, educating girls and allowing girls to be free of care work comes with an economic cost that poor families cannot afford. Hence, not only do poor families have to be given additional subsidies to enable them to send their daughters to school, but they also have to be taught to think about and view their daughters differently. A study in Bangladesh notes that when girls are able to find some form of gainful, monetary employment, families deferred marrying them off young.

Besides poverty and the low status of girls in our society, the third key driver is the tight control of girls’ sexuality exerted by families and communities. Adolescence, the period between 10-19 years of age marked by puberty, is often the period of sexual awakening. Both boys and girls experience crushes and different feelings of love, form relationships and experiment with their bodies and with sex. This is part and parcel of the biological process. 
 
However, boys and girls experience adolescence differently. Boys usually get more freedom and autonomy to explore and define their sexual identity, whereas girls usually experience curbs and limitations on experiencing and exploring theirs. In many traditional societies, the onset of menstruation signals availability for marriage, and the period of adolescence is for girls far shorter, and sometimes coincides with marriage. Hence, many who profess a conservative viewpoint will point to menstruation as readiness for marriage, rather than to perceive a girl as an adolescent who is just discovering herself and her identity.  

For girls then, biology is destiny. The end goal – socially and culturally – is for all girls to be a wife and mother. Since that’s where girls are headed (and should be headed), there is nothing wrong in getting them to reach that destination earlier.

Female sexuality is meant to be expressed only within the framework of marriage, and the emphasis on virginity (and a protection of that virginity) is an onus on families. Again, those in vulnerable social positions who feel they cannot adequately safeguard the “honour” of their daughters find it easier to marry them off young. ARROW’s research shows that families living in areas affected by climate change, which increases economic and social vulnerability, also fall back to marrying off their girls young. 

Since girls’ sexuality needs to be tightly controlled and curtailed, families also resort to marrying girls off before 18 to “protect” them from sexual promiscuity, since these girls may have dated, socialised, had a boyfriend, had sex or is pregnant. The general thinking is that since girls are having sex, let’s get them married because that’s where they can and should legally be having sex. Hence, marriage and sex are perceived as one package for girls, which is not necessarily true for boys. In common lingo, this is “halalkan yang haram”, which means making permissible that which is forbidden. Girls’ needs for sexual expression and discovery is not at all recognised as part of self-development, which it should rightfully be. 

There is a flawed assumption that marriage and family for women and girls are sites of protection and care. However, research denotes that girls who are married off young suffer from higher rates of maternal mortality, domestic violence, HIV transmission, divorce and have higher birth rates. Hence, marriage and family is often, especially for vulnerable girls, the site of further discrimination, violence and oppression. We are not doing better by our girls by marrying them off at an early age. 
 
Ensuring that the law unequivocally states that the age of marriage stands at 18, without exception, will do much to protect and elevate the status of girls in our society. It sends a signal that social norms need to be modernised. That girls have a right to continue their education, to be gainfully employed and economically empowered, to have choices and options beyond marriage and motherhood in our society. That girls are autonomous beings in their own right, and are not mere chattels to be kept and traded between men and families. – July 6, 2018.

* Sivananthi Thanenthiran is executive director of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), a civil society body that champions sexual and reproductive health and rights.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.