Early Marriage: A Barrier in Pakistani Women’s Education by Rafaqat Ali

Pakistan consists of extremely heterogenous communities that differ in social status, caste,  religion and many other factors. This diversity also reflects in the challenges that women  and girls face across different families and communities. Nevertheless, women are  supressed in one way or another in the highly dominant patriarchal societies of Pakistan.  Although all the challenges that females face in the country are extremely important to deal  with, I personally think that the lack of access to education as desired by the women and  girls in Pakistan is the biggest challenge they face. The reason is that the issue of access to  desired education transcends each of the diverse communities and is shared by women of  all class, caste and religion in their own ways. This essay will look at how early marriage of  girls and prioritizing boys’ education is taking away the right of women and girls to receive  the education that they desire.  

Education is the backbone of a society, and a good nation can only come into being when  the citizens are educated who can think for themselves and who have the right skills and  creative minds to help the country become prosperous. It is very unfortunate that Pakistan  is one of the worst performing nations in education in the world as per the proceedings of  the Summit on Education and Development held in 2015 in Oslo, Norway. As per the  statistics, around 22.5 million kids are not going to school, out of which a huge majority is  girls. When looked at the comparative success rate of continuing education, just 13 percent  of girls make it to the 9th grade out of this huge number of students in Pakistan. The reasons  vary for female students to drop out of schools and many girls do not get to the point of  education that they want to achieve. One of the major hurdles in girl’s education in Pakistan  is the institution of marriage.  

I say marriage is an institution because it is so highly embedded in the fabrics of the society  and culture. A girl specially is seen as an object for marriage that is only complete when wed  to a male person. This whole dynamic has created a partial mentality towards how parents  bring up their kids: boys should be educated while girls should be educated enough to find a  good match for marriage. This means that no matter at what stage of education a girl is at, a  sound and suitable proposal will uproot her from her education and the wedding will  happen sooner or later. There may be exceptions but majority of the girls who get married  have to stay home, give birth to kids and run the house. This disruption of education due to  the institution of marriage is costing the whole nation a huge deal of loss in job market and  in creating thoughtful educated citizens. Who has not heard of the famous African proverb  that sums it up very well “If you educate a man, you educate an individual. But if you  educate a woman, you educate a nation”. 

Following on this beautiful quote, if women are allowed to complete the level of education  they desire to achieve, they will contribute to the science, arts, government and all other  sectors of life in Pakistan, The current system is very disadvantaging women because any  position of leadership demands at least a university education in Pakistan, and the marriage  institution deprives girls from getting university education and thus women never make it to  the leadership positions. For the society to change and for women to be able to shake the  pillars of patriarchy, they must be at the positions where they can challenge the system and 

make a difference. There is a huge struggle that lays in front of the women and their allies,  progressive men, to make sure that women get out of this never-ending cycle of subjugating  women and treating them as objects of house maker and as the victims of the early  marriage institutions. The government has to pass a law that suggests that women who  want to continue their education should not be forced to marry and doing so will have to be  considered as a crime. The reporting of such incidents should be accessible for girls and only  then can the girls get the education they desire, and the system of oppression will change  through these educated girls.