Impact of British colonial gender reform on early female marriages and gender gap in education in India

Child marriage remains a pressing global challenge, with approximately 12 million girls married before adulthood each year. Research shows that child marriage negatively impacts women’s socio-economic status and limits their human capital accumulation. While raising the legal minimum age of marriage is often proposed as a tool for women’s empowerment, the effectiveness of such reforms remains uncertain, given their interaction with cultural norms and institutions.

In colonial India, early marriage for females was the norm, with women marrying at an average age of 12.7 years, though there were significant regional variations. In this paper, Sutanuka Roy, and Eddy H.F. Tam examine the impact of colonial legal reform on gender outcomes in India, focusing on the British legal reform of 1929, which abolished female child marriage below the age of 14.

KEY FINDINGS

• An anticipation effect: female child marriages increased in 1931 but declined sharply in the post-independence period.
• In affected regions, underage female marriages declined, and female educational attainment improved in the long term.
• The shift from short-term backlash to long-term compliance highlights the importance of extended time horizons when assessing interventions targeting deep-rooted cultural practices.
• The study enhances our understanding of how colonial institutions shape contemporary gender outcomes through both formal institutional channels and informal cultural mechanisms, also highlighting the role of historical institutions and cultural norms in policy discussions.

AUTHORS

• Sutanuka Roy, Research School of Economics, Australian National University
• Eddy H.F. Tam, King’s Business School, King’s College London

MEDIA CONTACT

• press[at]wid.world