I strongly support your statement. Though in the first case, there should be absolute independence for a girl to get Marry.
Declaring legal age for marriage, doesn’t mean that you are bound to get married after that. But sadly, not every family want to understand that. According to them, this legal age is just a restriction to abide. In this patriarchy, usually men can’t uphold a strong, independent woman who possess intelligence with experience . It’s always preferable that wives should be inexperienced in their life, thus can be controlled.
Another reason is, our society doesn’t let our girls dream and raise their voice to celebrate their liberty. If we cut the bud when it’s small, there’ll be no tree at all- early marriage is just another form of this tactics.
Some families, facing poverty or money problem, always lead their son to get educated and go for his dreams. While female gets remarks as burden.
Even some families make their girls get married in exchange of a sum of money.
In most of the cases, marriage happens as a custom of exchanging the liabilities of a daughter, as if she is among some goods who needs to be recycled.
If we atleast increase the legal age as same as boys, we can expect our girls to get the minimum education and experience. And in this era, when men and woman are walking side by side, our legal marriage age discrimination is just another form of contradiction.
By increasing the legal age, we’re not only stopping a girl to get married before age, but also letting them explore themselves, which is a absolute necessity. When a girl herself will possess enough education to make decisions for herself, it’ll be the perfect age of marriage.