Jeff Kaufman 🔸 comments on What I thought about child marriage as a cause area, and how I’ve changed my mind

[Jeff Kaufman 🔸]

Thanks for looking into this and writing up what you found!

I’m confused why “contraceptive use” is an evaluation criterion ? What harms does this cover that “unwanted pregnancy” doesn’t?

[Catherine F]

Thanks for engaging with the post Jeff :)

My understanding is that contraceptive use is a positive outcome in the prevention of girls/​women contracting STIs from their husbands in this context. Child marriage puts girls at risk of contracting STIs in two ways:
- The marriage is polygamous. This survey is a very small sample size, but provides a sense that at least in Burkina Faso and Tanzania, some marriages are polygamous.
- As the men girls marry are older than them, they are likely more sexually experienced than the girls and have a higher risk of already having STIs and passing them on to their wives.

Erulkar, 2017

[Jeff Kaufman 🔸]

contraceptive use is a positive outcome in the prevention of girls/​women contracting STIs from their husbands in this context

Wouldn’t that only be true for condoms, and condoms aren’t that common? Ex:

Injections, implants and pills were found to be the most common contraceptive methods used by women in this study. There were few women who used condoms (either male or female) for contraception, female sterilization, or who reported using traditional methods of contraception. -- Contraceptive use and discontinuation among women in rural North-West Tanzania

Separately, even condom usage seems like it wouldn’t be a great proxy for how likely these girls/​women are to get STIs, since marriage likely reduces their number of partners?

[Catherine F]

Ah good point! I was assuming they meant condoms. I will rethink this as a metric.