Conceptualizing “agency” within child marriage: Implications for research and practice

Summary & Objectives

The paper aimed to interrogate how “agency” is defined and used in relation to child marriage by academics, NGOs and UN agencies. It sought to examine tensions in current narratives about girls’ agency, especially the tendency to equate agency with making the “right” decision to refuse marriage, and to propose a broader, more nuanced conceptualisation that can better inform research and interventions.

Objectives

The review shows that academic, NGO and UN actors use varied and often narrow definitions of agency in the context of child marriage. Academic work highlights that agency can be ambivalent, constrained, strategic and even expressed through silence or compliance, whereas NGO and UN narratives commonly frame agency as empowerment that leads girls to resist child marriage and other “harmful practices.”

These dominant narratives tend to treat girls as both vulnerable and uniquely responsible for stopping child marriage, overlooking how structural factors, social norms, age, power hierarchies and context shape what options are available and how choices are judged. The paper argues that tying agency only to positive, transformative outcomes erases forms of “everyday” or constrained agency, devalues choices that do not align with external expectations and obscures the continuing agency of girls who are already married.

Recommendations

The authors recommend that researchers, practitioners and policy-makers adopt a broader, explicitly defined concept of children’s agency that recognises constrained, strategic and non-normative forms of action, including when girls comply, remain silent or choose outcomes others view as undesirable.

They call for child marriage interventions to move beyond simple empowerment models that place the burden of change on girls alone and instead engage parents, peers, communities and institutions that shape options and norms. Finally, they urge greater transparency about how agency is defined in research and programming, more work on how legal, political and social environments condition children’s agency over time, and approaches that recognise married girls as agents whose evolving choices also matter for policy and practice.