Women, girls more independent

Before the Lower House passed the legislation which amended the country’s marriage acts, Singh said there are increasing numbers of female-headed households with three times more females under 19 who are heads of households than males. Singh also said the country had to look at the effect of Carnival on sexuality and the availability of legal abortions and sex education in schools, suggesting these were all of greater importance than the legislation of early or forced marriages.

However, Minister of Arts and Culture Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly challenged Singh’s association of Carnival with sex, saying many people enjoy the season in ways that enhance their cultural expression. She questioned what she said was his fixation with Carnival and sex while she thought Carnival was equated with culture.

According to Singh, family life experts estimate that about 15 per cent of all live births are to adolescent parents with the average age of first sexual intercourse being 14. He said there were about 3,000 pregnancies a year in schools and wondered how the legislation would deal with that situation. He added that when the last census was conducted by the Central Statistical Office in 2011 more than 40,000 children were born to persons under 19 and 6,000 children were born to persons under 14, which he said was a high indicator of teenage pregnancies.

He said, “These statistics demonstrate that only a fraction of those were in the context of marriage and related to such social scourges as incest, rape, and generally early cohabitation as a socio-cultural norm.” He said statistics prove that girls have almost equal access to educational opportunities as boys - 97 per cent - and have been excelling through to tertiary levels where they have been outnumbering and outperforming boys. He said gender equality in education has seen this country ranked higher than many developed countries and these statistics make the legislation virtually obsolete. He said the study also showed his country had fewer females out of schools than some developed countries, meaning more girls were making use of the education system, so there was no evidence of forced marriages of those who were 12 to 16-yearsold.

“With higher levels of education, girls are delaying marriage and also because of the advice of parents, religious leaders and elders.”