1. Assistant Professor, Finance & Banking, Government Brojomohun College, Barishal, Bangladesh.

* Correspondence: afroz.nadira71@gmail.com

Keywords: early marriage, academic life, female students, of finance

1. INTRODUCTION

Throughout the world, marriage is considered a meaningful relationship between two adults (a girl and a boy) but in the case of girls, the scenario is quite different [1]. Early marriage means marriage before age 18, which is very common in Asia, especially in south Asia. But in reality, girls generally get married at an early age to comparatively older boys [2]. According to the Constitution of Bangladesh Government and Marriage Act of 1929, the minimum age of marriage for girls is 18 and for boys is 21[3]. However, the existence of human rights, laws, and conventions, early marriage still prevails in this region. According to UNICEF, throughout the world, about 60% to 70% of girls get married before 18 and in developing countries; about 20%-50% of girls get married at the age of 18. It is also said that this ratio is higher in south Asian countries and most girls are forced to marry [4]. In Bangladesh, early marriage is more obvious than we can imagine [5] and Bangladesh is in the third position compared to the world’s extraordinary early marriage rate for girls [6]. According to the 1991 census, about 50% of girls have married at an early age compared to boys’ early marriage rate is only 7% [7]. Therefore, women are in quite a vulnerable position in Bangladesh. In a survey among the adolescent respondents in rural Bangladesh, 51 percent of girls and 7 percent of boys aged 13 to 22 years were found married [4]. It is expected that early marriage should affect both girls and boys, but for prevailing gender discrimination and equality, girls are more sufferers than boys in Bangladesh [1] are. In Bangladesh, parents give young daughters in marriage for future secured life, to eliminate expense (dowry), to protect girls from illicit sexual contact, and pregnancy before marriage, and to uphold family honor [8].The scenario of the Government colleges in Bangladesh is also very alarming. Most of the girls’ students get married after completing their higher secondary certificate exam or after taking admission in graduation. It is harmful to their academic life. After getting married, the girls have to manage the household work very early.  Moreover, most of them become pregnant and give birth to a child. Then their academic life becomes more complicated and struggling because they cannot attend their classes and do not get enough time to study. Finance and Banking are such subjects where there are many mathematical applications. So they cannot able to solve mathematical problems without attending the class. It causes their dropout. About 33% of female students reported early marriage as the cause of their failure [9]. Some can continue their education but with a very poor CGPA, they can complete their graduation. Moreover, after marriage, the girls have to go to their husbands’ houses and live with their husband’s families. In Bangladesh, it is a common scenario that the family members of their in-law’s house are most often unwilling to continue their studies, and they do not support them in studying. Sometimes they create financial problems in the case study. Furthermore, giving birth at an early age hampers the student’s childhood as well as the joy of student life [10]. In this study, I will try to find out the reasons behind early marriage, its effect on students’ academic life, and students’ satisfaction levels in case of early marriage. According to UNICEF, ten million additional early marriages may happen by the end of the current decade. Bangladesh is a developing country and there is a rapid development rate in Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh has the fourth prevalence of child marriage in the world [11]. There are both immediate and lifelong consequences for girls who are victims of early marriage. In Bangladesh, they are very common to experience domestic violence and it is very unnatural to experience the scope of the study. Early marriage also causes early and unplanned pregnancy that is very harmful to their health. Early marriage isolates girls from their parents and affects their mental health badly. Worldwide, an estimated 650 million girls and women alive today were married in childhood, with about half of those occurring in Bangladesh [11]. In the last ten years, Bangladesh has gained success against early marriage. It has come in 1 in 5 positions from 1 in 4 positions [12]. However, after the pandemic, Bangladesh is losing its hard-owned gain that will take our country away from attaining sustainable development goals. McCauley said, “Early child marriage is harmful to the future well-being of girls. By marrying off children, the pressure of premature pregnancy, onset the postpartum health complications, frequency of domestic violence and abuse, higher chances of divorce and increasing numbers of adolescent women and children going under the poverty line are all consequences that will prove to be much more challenging and expensive than investing in the nationwide campaign now to reduce the practice of child marriage.” Early marriage also has a long-run effect on the mental and physical impact on the academic life of girls. They have to do all family responsibilities. Moreover, domestic violence is very common here. So most of the time they do not have enough scope of attending classes. Most of the time girls got married for social pressure, poverty, religious issue, the threat of dowry, for avoiding pregnancy before marriage, etc. Most of the time they are victims of society. As a result, their continuing study after marriage becomes very challenging for them. Some can continue their study with poor results. Common thinking in Bangladesh is that after a certain age it becomes very tough for the girls to marry a good boy because they want such girls to marry who are under 16. Sometimes, they try to reduce the age on their birth certificate. An author [13] noticed that parents of Bangladesh consider marriage as a safeguard for the girls for both cases social and financial. In addition, after the pandemic situation, uncertainty increased in different sectors. That is why early marriage has increased recently. According to [14], there are about 328 government colleges in Bangladesh. These colleges serve a major portion of higher education and every college is facing this problem. In my college, most of the married girl students in the Finance and Banking department are not financially solvent. After that, domestic violence is commonly experienced there. Their class attendance is very poor. Moreover, they cannot get time to study after maintaining all family responsibilities and caring for their children. Finance and Banking are a combination of mathematical and theoretical knowledge. Both concepts need class attendance and group work. However, they hardly get any chance of doing that. Sometimes their husband wants to help them, but mothers-in-law and other law house members create problems. As a result, their life becomes very complicated. Moreover, our college is situated in the Barishal sadar. However, most of our students are from rural areas and live in hostels for their studies. Nevertheless, married students of my colleges do not get permission from their husbands and in-laws to stay outside of their village residence. Besides that, in the girl’s hostels, children are not allowed. As a result, the married students who are mothers do not get a chance to stay in the girl’s hostel. These various types of problems hamper their mental and physical health as well as academic life. Their life becomes a store of multidimensional complexity, which hinders their academic life. There may be some studies on the early overall early marriage situation in Bangladesh. However, there are hardly any significant studies on this study in a government college in Bangladesh. Furthermore, after the Covid-19 situation, it has increased rapidly. Therefore, it is high time to study the issue that is finding the reason behind early marriage and its effect on their academic life so that Government can take the necessary steps to resolve this problem. To attain the Bangladesh government’s vision of 2041 and SDG needs to solve this problem because it is an important issue here. I strongly believe that this case study will develop our understanding of this issue and help the government reduce early marriage. The main objective is to find out the impact of early marriage on the academic life of female students in the Finance and Banking department at a government college in Bangladesh.

2. MATERIAL AND METHODS

Qualitative research involves collecting and analysing non-numerical data that can be used to find patterns and averages, make predictions, test causal relationships and generalize results to wider populations [15]. Here, the researcher has emphasized the impact of early marriage on academic life, which is analysing non-numerical data. Therefore, the researcher used the qualitative research method for this research. A qualitative research method originated from the study of social sciences that can be used to study social phenomena like early marriage. According to [16], qualitative study is very useful to study a social phenomenon in detail and deep. To achieve the objectives of this study the impact of early marriage on academic safe and the female students’ perception etc. can be achieved through qualitative analysis. Female students of the Finance and Banking department are the sample of this study. Purposive sampling is a non-probability sampling technique where the researcher relies on their discretion to choose variables for the sample population [17]. That is why four samples have been taken for a case study from about 300 students. The purposive samples are chosen here based on familiarity with the researcher. The researcher selected four samples from different years of students. Two from first-year students, one from second-year students, and one from third-year students. An author [18] stated that purposive sampling and qualitative research are synonymous and that purposive sampling is related to qualitative nalysis. Samples are chosen from different areas, different family backgrounds, and different religions. Semi-structured interview method has been used here for gathering data. A semi-structured interview is a data collection method that relies on asking questions within a predetermined thematic framework where the questions are not set in order or phrasing [19]. Here the researcher had to clarify information through consecutive questions with the predetermined questions. That is why the researcher used a semi-structured one-on-one interview with the participants. At first, the researcher asked some demographic questions such as name, age, year of study, location, institution, etc. After asking the main questions, the researcher asked some other questions based on the respondent’s answers to clarify their view. In this study instead of a questionnaire, an interview schedule is used. Using these schedules, the interviewees are interviewed. Here in interviewee has to answer the questions directly in front of the interviewer. Therefore, there is a huge scope of clarification of answers with further questions and analysis of the answer.  As it is a qualitative study and needs to analyse a social phenomenon, the semi-structured interview schedule will be effective for this study. Data processing is the most important and challenging job for the researcher. For this reason, a data processing tool is very important. Finding research depends on data processing techniques and tools. As it is a qualitative analysis that is why the researcher used Microsoft excel as a data analysis tool. Microsoft Excel is very simple and widespread software. It provides a huge scope for accumulating data and simply processing them. For this reason, this user-friendly tool is used in this analysis. Microsoft Excel enables the user to organize, identify trends, and analyze data in a meaningful way in different categories. It is a spreadsheet program with multiple uses that enables users to analyze data the easiest way [20].

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This case study is on a married female student of honors in the third year who lives in a village in the Barishal division. She got married at the age of thirteen when she was a high school student. Her father lives in Malayasia, works there, and sends money for them. Before marriage, she lived with her mother and younger sister. Her family gave her marriage because of social safety. In Bangladesh, live just three females are treated in a very vulnerable situation. They faced eve teasing, bad comment, social threat, and many problems. For that reason, her parents gave her married to a boy quite familiar with them. Before marriage, her in-laws promised to continue her study. Nevertheless, after marriage, they created barriers to studies. However, she finished her SSC and HSC with good results. After that, at the time of graduation they did not permit her to study further. She got admission to a graduation degree by struggling with them.  However, they did not let her attend class and did not give her any time to study. They all time kept her busy with household work. By this time, she became a mother of a girl. Nevertheless, because of early motherhood, the baby is special; she cannot stand or walk. The measurable situation occurred when her husband died of a heart attack. Now again she is living alone with a special child and facing many hardships financially and socially. She cannot attend classes and does not get time to study after maintaining her family and her special child. She obtained a very poor GPA in her year final examinations. Many diseases like high pressure and heart disease also attack her. She is not satisfied with her early marriage. This is a story of a tribe girl of Patuakhali district in the Barishal division. Her father has a grocery shop in that village. She has two brothers and two sisters. Her mother is a homemaker. She has one elder brother and others are younger than she is. Now she is studying in her first year in Finance and Banking department. She got married at the age of 17 when she was reading in college at twelve. In their society, most girls were married by their own choice that did not like their families. Some girls were falling in love with boys in that society that is treated as the bad manner in their society. Moreover, her elder brother was about 30 then and needs to marry then. In their society, there is a tradition of giving marriage elder son after the marriage of the elder daughter of the family. That is why then their family gave her to marry a friend of her elder brother. Her in-law’s family is supportive and lives in Barishal sadar. However, she has to maintain her family and son. She gave birth to a son after her admission to the graduation course. For this reason, she cannot attend the classes regularly. She just attends the in-course examinations and final examinations, which is affecting her study regularly. However, her husband and in-laws’ family help her financially and provide the scope of while study remaining at home. For this reason, she is partially dissatisfied with her early marriage. Nevertheless, her family lives in a rural area, and in their society, they do not get the scope of living outside the family before marriage. There are no good colleges in their village. That is why marriage gives her scope of reading in a famous college in this region. For this reason, she is partially satisfied with her early marriage. Here the case of an honors third-year student is studied. She belonged to a Hindu family in the Pirojpur district of the Barishal division. She is the elder daughter of her parents with a younger sister. Her father is an advocate and her family is financially solvent. She got married after her HSC examination when she was 18. She had affair with a boy nearby her house. Her family did not agree with the relationship. That is why she married on her wish going against her family. Her husband is supportive of her study. However, her father-in-law and mother-in-law do not give her time to study and she cannot attend classes. She has to maintain her family and her son all the time. She just attends some online tuition and sits for the examination. As she married against her family, so her parents do not give her any support. Though her father-in-law is financially solvent, he does not give her enough financial support. As a result, she is both struggling financially and psychologically. Her mother-in-law also makes psychological disturbances to her. As a result, she obtained a poor GPA in her last two-year final examinations. She is not satisfied with her early marriage. She said that her decision was quite wrong. She is suffering much from her early marriage. However, she wants to be established after all her struggles. This is the story of an honors second-year student in the finance and Banking department. She is the elder of the two daughters of her parents. Her father has a grocery shop in a village in the Bhola district in the Barishal division. Her parents believe that girls should be married early according to Muslim law. Moreover, her family is not well established. For these reasons, they gave the marriage of her daughter to the imam of a nearby mosque at the age of 16 when she was a student of HSC in a college. Before marriage, her mother-in-law was willing to continue her study. However, after marriage, she does not let her study and attend classes. More. In the pandemic, her husband lost his job. Now he is doing tuition. Her husband is supportive, but her mother-in-law does not give her any financial support. She tells his son to stop giving any financial support. She keeps her busy with household activities. She became a mother at the age of 18. Now she is struggling hard financially and does not get any time to study or cannot attend classes. She is not satisfied with her marriage. In the interview, the respondents were asked about the age of early marriage. It is found that about 75% of them were married before the age of 18, which is against the marriage rule of Bangladesh, and they did not face any obstacles in giving marriage to their daughter. It is also found that females married before the age of 14 are in a more vulnerable situation than others.

Figure 01: Number of early marriages

When the respondents were asked about the reasons for early marriage, most of them mentioned more than one reason for their early marriage. It is alarming that, about 75% of them mentioned it as social security. It seems that in Bangladesh marriage is considered the way of securing social security. Their parents do not think of their daughters’ self-establishment. They try to establish them by giving marriage. Nevertheless, it hinders their way of self-establishment [21]. About 25% of students’ parents think that in the Muslim religion early marriage is praised. However, there is no evidence of this issue in the holy Quran. Some got married because they are the elder daughter of the family. However, being an elder daughter she had many things to do for the family except an early marriage [22]. So social awareness should be the priority to reduce the rate of early marriage.

Figure 02: Reasons of early marriage

From the respondent’s answers, it is found that most of them are not satisfied with their early marriage. They think that they can continue their studies smoothly if they were not married early. Some are partially satisfied because they got the scope of reading in a better college. After all, their husbands’ families live in urban areas where there is the scope for reading in better colleges. The satisfaction level is very low among the respondents because they have to face various problems in the case of the study.

Figure 03: Satisfaction level of early marriage

From the study, we can that, all of the female students face the problem of early motherhood, maintaining both family and study together, low GPA, and irregular in college. However, the health problem is not very significant here. About half of them facing financial problems, especially after the pandemic has increased. It can be addressed that, husbands are supportive but their mother-in-law tortures them mentally students. Most of the time they do not give a scope of study at all. Sometimes they create financial problems and put pressure on their son to stop financial support to the students [23]. However, some mothers-in-law are also supportive of their husbands. Irregular in college is very common after being a mother and being a mother is very common after 1-3 years of marriage. As a result, low GPA is very common for them because they cannot give time to study after maintaining family and child.

Figure 04: Case study

Concisely, early marriage is a social phenomenon and it has a multidimensional impact on every aspect of a female student. However, one or two institutions cannot change it. Because it is related to belief, culture, thought, and security issues. Only comprehensive awareness programs from a very small part of society can decrease the rate of early marriage [24]. Long-term programs related to policy, its application, and raising awareness may solve this problem. It is now the social responsibility of every responsible person to talk against early marriage to give freedom from early marriage to females as well as to our daughters.

4. CONCLUSION

Early marriage is a very common and alarming problem in Bangladesh. Though it began to reduce after the pandemic, it has increased rapidly. It is considered a means of social security. It is more obvious in rural, poor, and slum areas. They consider their girls a burden for them and want to transfer them to others. By violating the girls’ rights, about 64% of the girls are getting married before the age of 18. In not only Bangladesh but also it is very common in South Asian countries. About 88% of the girls are forced to marry. Female students have to face multidimensional problems due to early marriage. No married girls are satisfied with their early marriage though some are partially satisfied. About 80% of girls face mental torture to continue studying. All of the female students get less time to study because they have to maintain both family and study. Absenteeism is very common among married students after being mothers. 85% of the married female students become mothers within one year after marriage.  It will hinder Bangladesh to attain its MDGs and SDGs because reducing early marriage is a key indicator of these goals. The female students of the finance and banking department have negative perceptions regarding early marriage. The students who can continue their studies until the end are of their own willingness and mental strength. Furthermore, early marriage is a multidimensional problem that is linked to various social phenomena such as poverty, illiteracy, social insecurity, lack of awareness, and religious factors. Therefore, it cannot be changed overnight. Only government cannot control it. Therefore, we should take collective measures to reduce it.

5. RECOMMENDATIONS

It is evidenced that early marriage is very costly for female students in Finance and Banking students in the government colleges of Bangladesh. They have to suffer a lot due to early marriage. They have to sacrifice their childhood, academic life as well as self-career. It hinders the overall development of the country. Bangladesh’s government wants to declare it a developed country in 2041. But the alarming increase in early marriage is a challenge for the country. Based on the findings of the study, there are some recommendations as follows:

• Firstly, the Bangladesh government should take a strong stand against early marriage. Awareness of students and their parents should be raised that girls should be married after their graduation.
• Media should conduct mass awareness advertisements against early marriage.
• Present female education financial support should be increased up to graduation level.
• Government can remunerate those parents who make their daughter graduate.
• Government should impose the present early marriage rule strongly and parents should face penalties if they give their daughter early marriage.
• Government and non-government organizations should adopt a vast amount of social awareness programs.
• Government, media, and local respected persons should take comprehensive awareness program.
• Respective colleges can adopt awareness campaign programs against early marriage.
• Respective college can reduce tuition fees for the girls who do better results.
• Respective colleges can also arrange meetings with parents and their daughters regarding the negative impact of early marriage.

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