The
practice of betrothing female children to men is a very common practice in the northern part of Ghana. A man pays bride-price
to a female child''s parents in order for her to marry him when she grows up. Parents can also pay the bride-price on behalf of their young male children. The practice has been there for hundreds of years. People used to comply to it in times past, even now some do.
But should it be encouraged, taking into account the present system of things?
In the olden days when formal
education and the practice of giving equal opportunities to both male and female children was abscent from the Ghanaian society, a woman''s duty was to give birth and take care of the home. Presently, because of the introduction of formal education into our system, women''s role in society have changed. Women have become conscious of their rights to choose who they want to associate with or wheather to even marry or not. They are not only getting pregnant but they are playing various roles which were the preserve of men in some times past. They are now found in the Parliament House enacting laws, in the Judiciary and at the top level of national administration.
Would they be contributing this much if they were still been forced into early marriages? People who find themselves in such unfortunate conditions are married to strangers at very early ages.
This practice is very rare in the southern sector. It''s as a result of the access to education. Girls who get access to current information know their rights and they stand up for it. The older generation are also not contracting marriages for their young children because they know the benefits they will derive from abstaining from that practice. Comparing this to the
northern area, their access to information and education is limited and sometimes unavailable.
They therefore have no regard for the present formal order of things. They lack good schools, libraries, teaching staff and IT facilities.
Girls in that area who have been exposed just a little to the woe''s of early marriages are running to the capital city. Down south, they live harsh and uncomfortable lives. They work as porters, prostitutes and maidservants etc. in order to suvive. They sleep in the open, infront of shops and other buildings. In course of this many have been raped and impregnated. So, it boils down to almost the same thing.
Early marriages are a danger to the health of the victims. Imagine girls of 16 years satisfying the sexual appetite of their 30 and above year old husbands. This makes us see teenage pregnancies in marriages.
From what has been achieved in the southern sector, formal education, access to information and an intensified campaign and the criminalisationof the practice is what is needed to halt all such related cases and engagements in the northern sector.