048 - Child Marriage is Legal in 117 Countries; Same-Sex Marriage is Legal in 38 - by Camille Saunders
Child marriage refers to any form of marriage involving someone who is under 18. This may seem self-explanatory, but in fact it is this caveat that brings so many countries into the statistics. 18 is the legally recognised age of adulthood not just in the UK, but in the majority of countries worldwide. This implicates countries like Canada, Australia and the US, where 16-year-olds can still legally marry with parental or judicial permission. The UK is no longer one such country, since the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022. By allowing external approval as an exception to the minimum age, these policies effectively recognise the vulnerability of minors, yet do not mandate their protection.
Among these 117 countries, the situation differs widely. 6 countries have no minimum age at all, where any child can be married to a person of any age. 38 countries have a different minimum age for men and for women; unsurprisingly, all but 1 of those impose a younger age on girls than boys. For example, in Bangladesh, the age is 18 for women and 21 for men. In Sudan, it is 10 for girls and 15 for boys (Sandstrom & Theodorou, 2016).[1] This cements in legislation a trend of inequality that already exists worldwide. In every country in the world, wives are on average younger than their husbands, ranging from a 2-year gap in Czechia, Slovakia and Estonia to 13-15 years in Mali, Guinea and Gambia (Ausubel, 2020).[2] On the one hand, this shows a wide global disparity; on the other, it shows that every country is somewhere on the same scale of marriage inequality.
In the 5 countries with the highest numbers of child marriages, the percentage is close to half of all girls being married before the age of 18. This represents 52% of Bangladeshi girls, 47% of Indian girls, 43% of Nigerian girls, 41% of Ethiopian girls and 36% of Brazilian girls. In these countries, the domestic geopolitical situations paint a complex variation of religion, financial stability and education. Proportions and trends over time are changing in rural areas in comparison to urban, and where political power is held regionally more than nationally, federal marriage laws and not always upheld (Feser, 2017).[3] This underlines how closely linked marriage norms and sociopolitical realities are, and how many girls’ futures are dictated by that context.
The impact on the girls themselves are widespread across various factors: their mental health is endangered, their risk of intimate partner violence inevitable given a child’s inability to give consent, their vulnerability to diseases including malaria and HIV heightened. In particular, education and child marriage are negatively correlated, with each year of education reducing the risk of child marriage or child pregnancy by 6 additional percentage points (Wodon et al., 2017)[4]. This highlights both where vulnerabilities lie, and also where the priority should be in order to solve the problem.
The reasons behind child marriage are complex in the above countries where the practice is not uncommon, and where access to education and financial independence can be generally more restricted. However, in countries like the US where the GDP and average access to education and finance is higher, child marriage is still prevalent. From a legislative standpoint, it seems heavily implicated with statutory rape laws (Van Roost et al., 2022)[5]. Statutory rape usually refers to a sexual act that may, according to the parties’ testimonies, have been described as consensual, but from a legal standpoint cannot be accepted as such, for example because of the victim’s age. It is a crucial part of legislation for protecting the rights of children, particularly given how vulnerable this age range is to manipulation. Furthermore, it establishes the inability of a child to give sexual consent as protected by law, not just a moral standard.
However, between 2010 and 2014 in the US, more than 78,000 children were married (Koski & Heymann, 2018).[6] One such reason is that definitions of statutory rape and rules about child marriage are decided state by state, and some have decided to include child marriage as an exemption to statutory rape. That is, if you marry the 14-year-old you raped, it was not rape but just a conjugal experience between spouses (Tsui, 2017).[7]
Child marriage is overwhelmingly an issue involving a young girl and an older man, as opposed to two teenagers of the same age. For example, in Alabama between 2000-2018, there were 8,600~ marriages involving a child, but only 9,100~ children married. This suggests that only 500 of those marriages involved two children. In Arizona, where 5,600~ marriages involved a child, only 6,000~ children were married. This suggests only 400 of those marriages involved two children. In Colorado, a child married another child in 300 cases, and married an adult in 4,800 cases. In Florida, a child married another child in 1,200 cases, and married an adult in 14,900 cases. The list goes on (Van Roost et al., 2022).[8] Therefore, the gender power imbalance of child marriage is not just presumptive, but demonstrably the case.
With this context of child marriage’s prevalence worldwide, it feels surprising that it should be harder to marry a consenting adult of the same sex than it is for a grown man to marry a child.
My own views on homophobia are irrelevant here; same-sex marriage is a human right, and should be honoured as such. We can ask ourselves “why is the world more comfortable with child marriage than same-sex marriage?” and even try to answer ourselves, “because love being important is subjective, and for much of the world, a girl being chattel is objective.” There is so much value in this question sociologically, and it can open a wealth of curiosity about our humanity, our relationship with love, with matrimonial and parental expectations, with our definitions of family, of heteronormativity, of consent, and several other important things besides.
But from a more substantive perspective, we can ask ourselves literally “why is there more legislation permitting child marriage than same-sex marriage?” We can suggest an answer, “because child marriage laws are a passive acceptance of the past, and same-sex marriage requires actively writing new legislation.” We can hope this gives us clarity on our next steps. Viewed through this angle, it can give us a certain amount of hope. Having same-sex relations is legal in 130 countries – more than the countries that allow child marriage. Furthermore, in addition to the 39 countries in which same-sex marriage is totally legal, a further 49 have at least some recognition, whether in the form of performing civil partnerships, or at least recognising same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Finally, 146 countries have, to some extent, legislation protecting against LGBTQ+ discrimination (Equaldex, 2026).[9] Therefore, when comparing all legally recognised forms of relationships, the numbers are somewhat less skewed.
None of this is to say that because the bare minimum exists for some of the LGBTQ+ community, that it is totally acceptable and rational that child marriage would be equally as accepted in the world, if not significantly more so. However, in order for legislation to pass for global marriage rights, the foundation must first be there, and luckily, it largely is. Marrying a child is never acceptable, and legislators worldwide must tackle this practice in all its forms, from the root of its reasoning to the consequences it causes. Likewise, the new age of legislation needed to recognise same-sex marriage worldwide is underway, and long overdue. It is important to keep sight of the legislative situation in order to enact more concrete measures towards equal rights. But it is also important to recognise that the joy of a community is never being alone. In this case, 130 countries already accept same-sex relationships due to the love and sacrifices of millions, and recognising marriage rights is just one step further in their legacy.
When I revisit this article years from now, I have faith that it will be more than 117 countries in which child marriage is abolished, and more than 130 countries in which same-sex couples are celebrating their weddings. I look forward to that day.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/09/12/many-countries-allow-child-marriage/
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/01/03/globally-women-are-younger-than-their-male-partners-more-likely-to-age-alone/
[3] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/5-countries-with-highest-child-marriage/
[4] https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/530891498511398503/pdf/116829-WP-P151842-PUBLIC-EICM-Global-Conference-Edition-June-27.pdf
[5] https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(21)00552-8/fulltext
[6] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1363/psrh.12055
[7]Tsui, A., ‘Child Marriage in America’, (2017), The Frontline Dispatch, Public Broadcasting Service, Arlington, VA
[8] https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(21)00552-8/fulltext