Child Marriage in an International Frame A Feminist Review from India

Child marriage has been given a pre-eminent place in agendas addressing “harmful practices” as defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. India leads the world in the number of women who marry below the age of 18 and is therefore of unique interest to international and national forums. Refusing simplistic labels like “harmful practice”, this book explores the complex history of child marriage as a social and feminist issue in India across different domains. It critically reviews a wide range of historical, demographic, and legal scholarship on the subject. Major concepts relevant to child marriage – such as childhood, adolescence, the girl, and marriage - are analysed in a comparative framework that uncovers the unnoticed presence of the practice in the USA and China. The volume questions existing approaches, analyses the latest data sources, and develops a new concept of compulsory marriage.  A definitive study of child marriage in India in a changing global context, this book will interest scholars and students in the fields of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, childhood studies, development studies and the social sciences. It will also be of great appeal to all those working with civil society organisations, NGOs, states and international agencies in India, and globally.

Introduction. 1. Historical Soundings: India 1800–2000 2. Elements of the International Story and the Question of Concepts 3. Child Marriage in the New Millennium: Law, Policy and the Work of Demography 4. Reintegrating the ‘Other’: Age, Education, Work under Compulsory Marriage. Afterword. Appendix

Mary E. John is Professor at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi, India.  She was Director of the Centre from 2006-2012 and before that the Deputy Director of the Women’s Studies Programme at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India from 2001-2006.  Recent publications include Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory and Postcolonial Histories (New edition, 2021); A Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India (co-edited 1998);  Women’s Studies in India: A Reader (2008) and the co-edited volume Women in the Worlds of Labour: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Perspectives (in press).