Defining and deconstructing girl child marriage and applications to global public health
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REVIEW
Open Access
Defining and deconstructing girl child marriage and applications to global public health Yvette Efevbera1*
and Jacqueline Bhabha2,3
Abstract An estimated 650 million girls and women alive today married before their 18th birthday. Referred to as girl child marriage, the formal or informal union of the girl-child before age 18, the practice is increasingly recognized as a key roadblock to global health, development, and gender equality. Although more research than ever has focused on girl child marriage, an important gap remains in deconstructing the construct. Through an extensive review of primary and secondary sources, including legal documents, peer-reviewed articles, books, and grey literature across disciplines, we explore what the term “girl child marriage” means and why it more accurately captures current global efforts than other terms like early, teenage, or adolescent marriage. To do this, we dive into different framings on marriage, children, and gender. We find that there has been historical change in the understanding of girl child marriage in published literature since the late 1800s, and that it is a political, sociocultural, and value-laden term that serves a purpose in different contexts at different moments in time. The lack of harmonized terminology, particularly in the global public health, prevents alignment amongst different stakeholders in understanding what the problem is in order to determine how to measure it and create solutions on how to address it. Our intent is to encourage more intentional use of language in global public health research. Keywords: Child marriage, Child, Definition, Girl, Health, Marriage
Background Worldwide, an estimated 650 million girls and women alive today married before their 18th birthdays [1]. One in three girls in developing countries is married before age 18, while one in five girls is married before age 15 [2]. Referred to as girl child marriage, the formal or informal union of the girl-child before age 18, the practice is increasingly recognized as a key roadblock to global health, development, and gender equality. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa regions account for the largest number of women married as children [1]; however, a recent report also shows high rates in previously * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, 641 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
understudied geographies like South America, where 25% of girls married before age 18 [3]. Girl child marriage is also increasingly documented in high-income countries like the United States, where a recent study estimates nearly 1% of 15–17-year-olds surveyed had been married, with variation across states [4]. (See Table 1 for countries with the highest prevalence rates.) Despite increasing global consensus that girl child marriage should be prevented given its harms to the rights and wellbeing of girls [5–7], no region is on tra
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