Why is child marriage still a thing?

My mother was married at fifteen in the 70s. Has women and girls' lives improved since then?

It’s Mama Chowdhury’s birthday this week! Ten years ago, I wrote about her journey as a child bride in an essay for Refinery29. She has and continues to serve as my creative muse and the reason why I became a journalist. Below is an updated and repurposed version.

Young girls on a beach in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh in 2018

For decades, Bangladesh has had one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. According to Human Rights Watch, it consistently ranks first globally for the number of child brides under age 15.

“Given how much success some other countries have had at bringing down the rate of child marriage and the increased attention globally to the harms caused by child marriage, Bangladesh’s progress on this issue is disappointing,” Heather Barr, then a senior researcher on women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, told me when I …