Arranged Marriages and the Importance of Women’s Education

April 12, 2010 / by  / 3,783 Comments / Filed under Society and Culture

“Arranged Marriages”, the topic that gets a lot of Desi youths scared or tingling. In the US, UK, and in the rest of the Western countries, love marriages are more favored than arranged marriages. The youth of the West wants to be in charge of their own lives and they want to decide initially who they want to spend the rest of their lives with. But are arranged marriages all that bad? In my opinion no, they’re not.

I used to be a big advocate of love marriages and I would degrade anyone who put arranged marriages on top. I thought love marriages was the best, and boy was I wrong. I fell in love and I was in the path love marriage; however, I experienced the struggle that people have to go through when it comes to love marriages, especially when it comes to convincing the girl’s parents that she has found the one.

What Happens Nowadays?
Nowadays the ideal scene is a groom from abroad would go to Bangladesh and spend half to the entire summer in the country looking for a bride with his parents, aunts and uncles, or cousins. The groom’s family mostly relies on aunts or female cousins to find a girl. Sometimes the uncles (or male adults), conduct partnerships in businesses by having their children married.

Does the Bride’s Looks Count?
If I said yes the looks counted, then I would be lying to you. Looks aren’t on the top of the list of the adults, looks are just a minor factor when searching for a bride. The main things that the adults on both side look for are status, education, occupation, and wealth; it’s shallow but it’s how it is. The bride’s family search for those quality when they look for a groom for their daughter; they do so because they don’t want a bad future for their daughter, they want to secure their daughter’s future.

Be Fair or your Market Value is Low
Light skin tone, it’s the main thing people look at after the qualities listed above. If a girl was white as Jessica Alba then she would have proposals thrown at her left and right. It’s a cruel world for all those dark skin people of South Asia; if they were born dark skinned then they would not be favored by society. Fortunately someone found a solution for that and sacked themselves in riches. Being light skin is a big thing for girls when it comes to marriage. In India such products like Fair & Lovely allows a person to lighten up their skin by slowing down the skin’s pigmentation. For guys being fair is not all that serious but gives them a boost in their “market value” to get approvals. However, for girls being fair is a very big thing in society. Light skin girls are favored more than dark skin girls. If you’re like me, then we would both think that Desis are the most racist group of people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we are.

For example, last year one of my Pakistani friends went Karachi and spent 3 months there and got married before returning to the USA. And Karachi is in the desert so it’s hot an humid there, he told his wife to use Fair & Lovely to prevent herself from getting darker, go figure.

Do Arranged Marriages Work Out?
Surprisingly, it does work out for the most part; the divorce rate for arranged marriages is A LOT lower than love marriages. There are rare cases in which it doesn’t work out because the couple were pressured to marry each other for the sake of their family reputation. In some cases girls are emotionally blackmailed to get married to the groom of their parents’ choice. In India (thanks to Bollywood’s motto of “follow your heart”) and in Bangladesh, the idea of arranged marriages are disappearing. In Bangladesh this type of marriage can now be considered as “semi-arranged marriages” in which a boy and a girl gets introduced to each other by their parents or elders, and they spend time together to get to know each other (in public places), after 3 months or so, sometimes the time varies, they decide if they want to get married. So in “semi-arranged marriages” the final word comes from the couple.

How is this Related to MuktiBangla’s Mission?
I gave you an idea of how things are among the middle-class and aristocrats. Now let’s go to how marriage occurs among people living in poverty. In reality, in the rural uneducated areas, corrupt rich men seek out families who in desperate financial positions. And some of these men live abroad; they have money so they take advantage of the poor. The poor family is so desperate that they would even sell off their daughter to gain a handsome amount of cash. The young girl, given off to marriage by her family against her will, is now the wife, and also the property of, the rich husband. The young girl has no idea what sex is, nor is she introduced to it in civilized manner. The husband rapes her on the wedding night and she eventually gives birth to a child nine months later. Once the husband gets tired of the girl he kicks her out along with the child or children and seeks some other girl to marry. The divorced wife, with her children, and with no education, struggles in poverty till her death.

When it comes to poor families, girls who are very fair skin and pretty are targets. Corrupt men pay a significant amount of money for the prettiest girls.

It’s really sad but that’s reality. However, as months pass, more and more poor women are being educated and the feudal, perverted, corrupt ways of forced marriage are disappearing.

I wrote this article in a way introduce the importance of education for women. Forced marriages are disappearing as poor women are being educated and learning that getting married and procreating is not what life is about. There is more to life than being a slave. Women keep their families in tact; once the main female of a family is gone, the family starts to break apart. So, if we aggressively educate women then the social fabric in Bangladesh would stay strong and moral. So far in Bangladesh the birth rate and the death rate are very close since, women’s education is favored by big time NGOs and their aggressive move to educate the poor. The literacy rate for women have improved since the 1990s, after democracy was introduced; however, we need to do more to catalyze the process. As MuktiBangla gains momentum, as the organization ages, let us remind ourselves that education should be the key factor in Bangladesh’s transformation to become a middle-income country in the coming years.

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