Discriminatory Marriage Laws Are Putting Women and Girls at Risk of Child Marriage, Rape, and Abuse

NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In many countries, women and girls are denied the same legal rights as men and boys regarding marriage, putting millions at heightened risk of human rights violations, including child marriage, marital rape, forced pregnancy, and domestic violence. To highlight sex discrimination in marital status laws around the world and what governments need to change, international human rights organization Equality Now is releasing on International Day of the Girl Child a new policy brief, Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable to the Beijing +30 Review Process – Sex Discrimination in Marital Status Laws. 

Sex-discriminatory laws regarding marital status govern some of the most intimate aspects of our lives - marriage, divorce, custody, and guardianship. They have proved to be one of the most intractable areas of legal change because they are embedded within the family, which is viewed as a cornerstone of society and linked to deeply entrenched beliefs about religion, tradition, and culture.

The right to culture and religion are human rights, but cannot supersede a person's fundamental right to equality.

Child marriage

Occurring across religions, ethnicities, geographies, and cultures, girls are disproportionately affected by discriminatory minimum age of marriage laws and practices. Before the COVID pandemic, child marriage affected 12 million girls yearly, with even more entering into informal unions involving cohabitation without legal registration of marriage. UNICEF estimates that an additional ten million girls are now at risk of marrying under 18 years old during the next decade.

Excluded from decision-making about the timing of marriage and choice of spouse, girls are often essentially subject to statutory rape; and those who become pregnant before biologically ready are at added risk of miscarriage, post-partum hemorrhaging, obstetric fistula, and even death.

A child cannot consent to marriage, and consistent with international and regional law, the minimum age of marriage should be 18, with no exception, whether governed by civil, religious, or customary law. Equality Now welcomes the recent reforms in the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

In the USA, child marriage is legal in 43 states and there is no federal law which prescribes the minimum age of marriage. For example, Mississippi allows girls as young as 15 to be married with parental consent, while prohibiting the marriage of boys under age 17, and a judge can waive the minimum age requirement altogether under certain conditions. Equality in the US Constitution, through incorporation of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) could help rectify this.

States must take a comprehensive legal approach to preventing child marriage, as outlined in Equality Now's policy brief, while at the same time recognizing adolescents' evolving sexuality. 

Wife obedience, forced marriage, and polygamy

The right to equality and non-discrimination in the law is violated in other ways, such as with forced marriage when a spouse does not give free and full consent to wed. This is sometimes sanctioned by laws that allow guardians (often male) to "consent" on behalf of a woman or girl. An adult or judge should never be able to "consent" to marriage on behalf of a child or grown woman.

In Israel, divorce depends solely on the will of the husband. If women cannot divorce as easily as men, they can be trapped in abusive marriages, and when they do divorce, they may lose custody of their children.

Polygamy is another violation still allowed in various countries, including Algeria, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mali, and Tanzania. When a husband has multiple wives, women face severe challenges such as diminished inheritance rights and greater exposure to potentially fatal health conditions such as HIV/AIDS due to their spouse having multiple sexual partners.

Alarmingly, some states specify in law that women and girls must "obey" their husbands and/or male guardians. For example, Mali and Sudan mandate "wife obedience," while Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo instruct that a husband is head of the household. In Afghanistan, the household's supervision is solely the right of the husband, and a wife's right to leave the home is restricted.

These discriminatory marital status laws result in women and girls being subjected to sexual and gender-based violence and curtail their ability to make reproductive decisions. It also prevents them from being able to choose where they work or live, and they are relegated to a less equal status within the family and society.

Beijing+

In 1995, at the UN's 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, 189 governments agreed on a comprehensive roadmap to advance rights for women and girls and achieve gender equality. One of the commitments made by states was that they would "revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex".

More than a quarter of a century on, gender equality is far from a reality. Legal equality between the sexes has only been achieved in 12 of 190 countries surveyed by the World Bank in 2022.

To keep countries accountable to the plan outlined in the Beijing Platform for Action, Equality Now has been tracking these laws and has conducted periodic reviews on sexist legislation around the world. Our 2020 report found that almost every country is failing to live up to the pledges they have made to eradicate explicitly sex-discriminatory laws.

Antonia Kirkland, a human rights lawyer and Equality Now's Global Lead on legal equality, explains: "Discriminatory laws make gender equality impossible. Until women and girls have legal equality, we will also continue to see the proliferation of harmful practices such as child and forced marriage, which fuel other human rights violations such as gender-based violence. We must continue to demand that governments take action to reform all sex-discriminatory laws, without exception." 

"In the lead up to the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action in 2025, Equality Now is calling on states to respect, protect and realize women's and girls' rights to equality by taking immediate steps to end discrimination against all women and girls in laws and practices including those relating to marital status."

Media contact:
Tara Carey
[email protected]
+44 (0)7971556340

SOURCE Equality Now