Is marriage an overweening life goal for women in India to validate their social and economic standing? This is an issue on which several articles have appeared in the public domain over the last couple of years.
Some have said that women remaining unmarried till they are well into their middle age, i.e., 40 and above is a major concern, while others believe in the idea of live and let live.
Earlier this year, online economic and political magazine, The Globalist, had revealed that “India has 72 million single women”.
It described this figure as “the largest cohort of unattached women that has ever existed in the country’s history”, and “larger than the populations of the United Kingdom and Switzerland put together”.
Coming specifically to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, according to India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 27 percent of Kashmiri women aged between 20 to 49 are unmarried, while the percentage figure for unmarried men in the same age group is 35 percent.
There are many factors responsible for this unmarried status and as far as Indian society is concerned, women are forced into battling the societal stigma attached to the choice of wanting to stay single.
Central government data reveals that in Jammu and Kashmir, the average age for women to get married is 23.6 years and that only five percent of them do get married between the age of 20 and 24.
As far as the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, a woman now gives birth to 1.4 children on an average, which government data suggests is way below the fertility replacement level. As per the data, fertility has decreased by 0.6 children between the previous and the latest Health and Family Welfare survey.
If a comparative study is to be made on fertility rates between urban and rural women, then the latter surpasses the former by double, i.e., 2.5 children to 1.4 children.
Another report claims that there are nearly 50,000 Kashmiri girls who have crossed the “acceptable” age bar for getting married. It says that in Srinagar District alone, there are over 10,000 such women.
This is according to a survey conducted by NGO Tehreek e Fala-Ul-Muslimeen (TFM). The TFM survey cites “unnecessary fashion and trends” as factors responsible for women in Kashmir remaining unmarried.
At first, it was thought that financial constraints and underprivileged lifestyles were responsible for women in the region remaining unmarried, but digging deeper into the issue, TFM found other factors for what it described as a “worrisome trend”.
The NGO said: “The main reason for late marriages, especially in the downtown area of Srinagar, was the lack of financial sources…”
Another reason for late marriages was underprivileged families competing with more affluent neighbours in meeting “give-take formalities”.
A third factor was the growing desire from the groom’s side for marrying educated and employed girls.
It is not the case, however, that all underprivileged women are not getting married. According to the Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Trust (JKYT), every year, it conducts 400 marriages of destitute women and widows across Kashmir.