Indian teenage girls face gender disparities in education and nutrition and experience early marriage leading to a negative cycle of premature child-bearing, high rates of maternal mortality and child under-nutrition, says UNICEF in its State of the World’s Children, 2011 report that focuses on adolescence. India is home to more than 243 million adolescents, who account for a quarter of the country’s population.
Even though the economic rise in the last 10 years lifted millions out of poverty and uplifted the overall health and education levels of adolescents primarily in cities and towns, challenges still remain. The most crucial of them is discrimination and gender bias against girls.
“Adolescent girls face a greater risk of nutritional problems than adolescent boys, including anaemia and underweight,”says the report released on Friday.
Underweight prevalence among adolescent girls aged between 15 and 19 is 47 per cent in India — the world's highest. In addition, over half of girls in the same age group are anaemic.
Health implications
This has serious health implications, since many young women marry before 20 and being anaemic or underweight increases their risks during pregnancy.
Anaemia is the main indirect cause of maternal mortality, which stood at 230 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2008, it says. India’s maternal mortality rate is one of the world's highest and the government is nowhere close to attaining the Milliennium Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality by three quarters between 1990 and 2015.
Nutritional deprivation continues throughout the life cyle and are often passed on to the next generation.
To make matters worse for young girls, many of them are sent to schools by their parents, which is evident from low gender parity in secondary school enrolment.
Girls still being considered a liability, a large number of parents arrange early marriage to get rid of them.