Mahila Samakhya: A pathway to delay women’s marriage in India?

Abstract

Women’s age at marriage has been the focus of development strategies across the developing world and is considered crucial for realization of the Millennium Development Goals (Nour, 2006). Early marriage is widely recognized as a human rights violation as girls are denied access to education and economic opportunities, perpetuating the gendered nature of poverty (UNICEF, 2005; Raj, 2010; Otoo-Oyortey and Pobi, 2003). Evidence suggests that adolescent marriage and pregnancy may negatively impact both, women’s reproductive health outcomes and child health outcomes (Finlay et al., 2011; Raj et al., 2010; Santhya et al., 2010). Several studies emphasize the importance of gender relations and socio-cultural framework of the communities women live in for understanding marital outcomes (Dyson and Moore, 1983; Yabiku, 2006; Desai and Andrist, 2010). Women’s empowerment can be a crucial pathway for altering gender norms within the household as well as in the broader community (Doss, 2013). In this paper, we study the impact of Mahila Samakhya (MS), a community-driven women’s empowerment program, on age at first marriage of women in rural India. MS aims at empowering marginalized women in rural India through a range of activities centered around self-help groups (Sanghas) that focus on education, livelihood development strategies, awareness, and self-reliance (Mahila Samakhya 2014: A National Review, 2014). MS was launched as part of National Policy on Education in 4 districts in 1989 and by the end of 2006 was implemented in 80 districts across 9 states in India. The program has continued to expand since then and continues to be functional after roll-out. In our analytical sample we use an additional set of 33 districts in which the program was rolled out after 2006. While the MS program’s focus was on empowering women through education and collectivization, primarily through Sanghas, rather than delaying marriage, we believe controlling the age of marriage for women is an important indicator of empowerment. Using MS roll-out data and the District Level Household Survey’s third wave (DLHS-3 2007- 08), our preliminary results suggest that the MS program does in fact impact the age at marriage. Furthermore, we explore if duration of exposure to the program has a differential impact on different age cohorts.