Not Without Norms Change: Cross-national Findings on the Role and Importance of Norms Controlling Girls' Sexuality in Supporting the Practice of Child Early and Forced Marriage

Abstract summarising a Preformed Panel Session at the 2022 International SBCC Summit in Morocco: 

"This panel brings together researchers, practitioners, and funders to a) reflect on the gender norms that regulate or control girls' sexuality and their role in reinforcing the practice of child early and forced marriage (CEFM) and b) determine how we can attend to these norms as part of both systematic- and SBCC-based efforts to address CEFM. This session will allow conference-goers to engage with research conducted in three different high - CEFM communities in India, Bangladesh, and Honduras. We suggest that restrictive gender norms around girls' sexuality span all three contexts and jeopardize interventions to address child marriage. In India, we explore how increases in support for educational attainment among girls, often cited as a critical approach to preventing CEFM, can be instrumentalized to make girls more eligible for early and forced marriages. Similarly, in Bangladesh, we present how the restrictive norms that continue to surround girls, even as their educational attainment increases, can put them at heightened risk for CEFM as they push against boundaries erected to control their sexuality. Finally, in Honduras, we present the concept of 'marianista' gender norms and illustrate how the inflexibility of these norms, which expect girls' passivity, supervision, and regulation, serve to push many adolescents toward early marriages. We conclude that SBCC approaches must reflect an understanding of the specific norms surrounding the behaviors targeted and be designed to address them through multi level approaches. SBCC strategies that attempt to address CEFM without an understanding of these norms will be less impactful."