ARI Working Paper Series

Compared to Southeast Asia, Dhaka city represents an apparent anomaly: a rapidly growing metropolis with relatively little change in early marriage practices, with 51 percent of 15-19 year-old females in 2000 already married. The rapid influx of rural poor families to Dhaka has led to a rapid increase in urban population growth, slum settlements and worsening poverty. Ethnographic fieldwork among married adolescent girls, aged 15–19, was carried out in a Dhaka slum from December 2001 to January 2003, including 50 in-depth interviews, 8 case studies from among 153 married adolescent girls, and observations and discussions with family and community. Informed by critical medical anthropology [1],  this paper is about how early marriage practices and marital instability in an urban slum in Dhaka are grounded in the social, political and economic structures of their lives. A climate of poverty, violence and insecurity encourage early marriage practices and incidents of coerced marriages. Lawlessness, fears of sexual harassment and gang wars are a motivating factor for many families. In addition, the incentive to pay smaller dowries for poor families especially if their daughter is younger is also a motivating factor. While urbanization and the advent of the garment industry has increased employment opportunities and options for young girls, this has also led to a shift in traditional marriage arrangements, with greater incidence of love marriages, without parental permission at times. Incidents of young women resisting marriages organised by parents highlight a shift in parental authority as increasingly girls who work assert their agency, preferring to select and choose their own partners. The reasons for early marriage in a slum are shaped increasingly by structural and social inequalities which compel families and young women to make choices and trade-offs in order to survive in the difficult environment.

[1] Disease is understood to be social as well as biological, and there is a focus on the links between disease and social class, poverty, power and ill health, i.e. the political economy of health.

Full text is not presently available. This working paper has been temporarily withdrawn, as it is being considered for publication.