Paper short abstract:

This paper conceptualises the dialogue and bargaining capabilities of young women and girls within the households in rural India, as they navigate the marriage -education trade-offs. The empirical basis of the paper also includes the statistical analysis undertaken to examine the cessation of early marriage associated with enhanced access to formal education for girls.

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes to develop insights into the marriage-education trade-offs in the lives of girls and young women through a mixed-methods study based in the state of Bihar, India. Education is a core capability, enhancing many other capabilities and well-being freedoms of individuals (Walker and Unterhalter, 2007; Robeyns, 2003). This study builds on the intersections between dialogue and capability approach (DeJaeghere, 2012) on the one hand and voice within an intra household bargaining framework (Agarwal, 1997) on the other. Girls and young women in traditional agrarian societies undertake negotiations and strike bargains in exercising educational choices within households in the event of familial and community pressures to marry early. This paper deploys the ‘three faces of agency’ (Kabeer, 2020) to conceptualise enhancement of the bargaining capabilities attained by women within the household in the larger backdrop of state led campaigns promoting girls’ education.

Invoking Kandiyoti’s (2005) empirically grounded understanding of patriarchal systems, the paper attempts to problematise the dominant narrative on early marriage that highlights the shrinking of the opportunities and the capabilities set for the young women who are married before attaining the legal age (Wodon, 2016). Kandiyoti coined the term patriarchal bargain to address the contest, redefining and renegotiation undertaken by men and women for systems with set ‘rules of the game’. Scholarship on intrahousehold bargaining ( Agarwal, 1997; Katz, 1997) similarly focuses on understanding the gendered relations within the household that takes the form of multiple interwoven spheres of cooperation, non-cooperation and bargaining about the redistribution of resources, rights and responsibilities. Although the bargaining exercise is undertaken within the household it is conceptualised to work in interaction with the shifting gender relations in the world beyond the household, namely market, community and State.

First, the paper undertakes a regression analysis using a novel dataset to examine the decline in the early marriage practice associated with an increase in the attainment of schooling for girls. The Cycle to Empowerment (CTEP), 2016 dataset was created under the aegis of International Growth Centre, India to study the long-term impacts of the one-time in-kind transfer in the lives of the young girls who received the bicycles in Bihar. This dataset overcomes the co-residency bias present in the household survey data collection undertaken in South Asian societies, in that the dataset includes demographic, educational and occupational details of the married daughters of the households, who are ordinarily excluded from the household surveys on account of the customary practice of patrilocality (wife residing with the husband and his family instead of her own natal family). Analysis of the quantitative data (n=1200 households) presents evidence of cessation in the practice of early marriage with enhanced access to formal education for girls. This development has to be contextualised in view of the concerted state policy in Bihar focussed on girl’s education (Karthik and Prakash, 2017) and women’s empowerment (Government of Bihar, 2015; Sanyal et al. 2015).

Extending on Amartya Sen’s (1990) analysis of gender and cooperative conflicts, Agarwal (1997) elaborates on the permeation of the shifting gender progressive norms in the community and state action in the bargaining exercise within the household. In addition to the quantitative analysis, I employ insights from fieldwork undertaken in two districts of Bihar. This analysis uses field observations and semi-structured interviews with girls (N = 42), key informants in the communities (such as teachers in government schools, educators, medical and local government functionaries in government centres) about the changing norms of educational access for girls led by state campaigns. The provincial government in Bihar has consistently promoted girls’ education at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels of schooling (Bora, 2023). The state’s support of gender-progressive policies, the paper argues, has strengthened the voice of girls and the young women in the households and communities. This strengthened voice is visible in many forms, for instance as the broadening limits of what is now included within the domain of contestation within the household, which hitherto remained uncontested. As one of the participants in the field, Meenu remarked on setting a pre-condition of completing her secondary school before marriage and migration to another village to live with her husband. This display of greater autonomy and agency by women in a traditional society, however, may not entirely align with the acceptable gender scripts. The resultant backlash to strengthened voice could manifest as a reimposition of the ‘rules of the game’, wherein freedom to continue schooling is contingent on ‘good’ behaviour and imposition of varying degrees of unfreedom and penalties in the event of transgressions. For instance, Preeti explains her decision to enrol in a course in Humanities stream in a private college (when a science degree was her first choice), in an effort to negotiate and convince her parents to permit her to access higher education.

The findings from the quantitative and qualitative analysis are interwoven in the paper to empirically describe and conceptualise the see-saw act balancing the decision to continue schooling against the practice of early marriage. This decision -making undertaken by the girls along with their families forms the basis of the study to sharpen an understanding of strengthened bargaining capability of young women in a transitioning agrarian society in rural India.