Exploring the impact of perceived early marriage on women’s education and employment in Bangladesh through a mixed-methods study
Outcomes: Child, Early, and Forced Marriage
View SourceKey Social Norms Take-aways Social norms play a central role in shaping girls’ perceptions and decisions around early marriage, with norms around safety, family honor, gender roles, and acceptable relationships driving both parental pressure and girls’ own choices. Early marriage is often normalized and even desired as a socially sanctioned pathway to security, adulthood, and respectability, particularly in contexts of poverty and limited opportunities, reinforcing cycles of disempowerment.
Objectives This study aimed to explore women’s perceptions of the timing of their marriages in relation to their education and employment status and to identify factors influencing why early-married women perceive their marriages as occurring at the “right time.”
Methods The study used a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design combining quantitative analysis of 5,596 women aged 15–24 from the 2017/18 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey with qualitative data from in-depth interviews (n=6), focus group discussions (n=2), and key informant interviews (n=13). Quantitative analysis employed multilevel mixed-effects Poisson regression to assess associations between child marriage and education/employment, while qualitative data were analyzed thematically to explore perceptions and social norms.
Results Approximately 62% of women experienced early marriage, with a mean marriage age of 15.2 years, and about 55% of those married early believed their marriage occurred at the right time. Women who were working before marriage were more likely to perceive early marriage as appropriate, while those studying were more likely to view it as premature. However, early marriage was associated with discontinuation of both education and employment. Qualitative findings highlighted key drivers of these perceptions, including poverty, safety concerns (e.g., fear of harassment), limited job prospects, intimate relationships, and strong societal norms supporting early marriage as a means of protection, respectability, and economic security.
Conclusions A substantial proportion of early-married women perceive their marriages as timely, particularly those engaged in work, reflecting gaps in awareness and structural constraints shaped by social norms. These findings underscore the need for interventions that address both knowledge gaps and normative pressures—especially around gender roles, safety, and economic expectations—while promoting education, safe work environments, and community-level norm change to delay marriage and support women’s empowerment.
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