Poverty, Consent, and Choice in Early Marriage: Ethnographic Perspectives from Urban Tanzania

The assumed inability of adolescents to voluntarily consent to marriage is a key definition of child marriage. Using ethnography, this study approaches consent, self-determination, and fulfillment as dependent on the ability to make choices, not only between actual alternatives but also between perceived alternatives. In contexts of severe poverty, more attention is needed to the lack of viable alternatives open to families, and their motives in this context. In this study, 171 persons were interviewed in two majority-Muslim neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam. Some girls reported wanting to marry early, since poverty forces them to become adults capable of supporting themselves at roughly age 15-16, regardless of the personal wishes of their parents or guardians. Prior research tends to assume that early marriage prevents girls from continuing their education. This study suggests that educational opportunities are often closed off to girls before marriage. Policy recommendations given here are that organizations can more effectively address early marriage by (1) shifting the focus from legislation to urban poverty alleviation, (2) creating more employment opportunities for the poorest women in the city, (3) campaigning for more gender-equal attitudes in the informal employment sector, and (4) reducing financial costs of secondary schooling for adolescents.