“Swarnali did not worry about her situation, instead, after giving birth to a baby boy, she took merely 10 minutes to return to the examination hall.”
On February 14, 2017 I was shocked to read an article published in a leading newspaper about how an SSC examinee at Sarishabari Reazuddin Talukdar High School Exam Centre in Jamalpur gave birth to a boy and went back to her math exam in “merely 10 minutes.”
The story was making the rounds on social media, being celebrated as a shining example of girl power, reaching its peak when an RJ at a popular radio channel talked about this “strong” girl in glowing terms. As a woman, and as a mother, I was deeply disturbed.
I do not see girl power in this story. I see oppression and grave danger to a girl’s life. First, why is a 16-year old girl pregnant in the first place? Given our social context, it is reasonable to assume the girl is also married.
This is against the law.
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The 1929 Child Marriage Restraint Act made it a criminal offense to marry, or facilitate the marriage of, a girl under the age of 18 or a man or boy under the age of 21. The act was unfortunately amended in 2016, which lowered the age for girls to 16 under “special circumstances,” but the amendment was made in November 2016, thus, when this girl was married off, it was done in violation of the law.
This story itself could be grounds for legal action against her family. I realise there is a possibility that she is an older-than-usual SSC candidate and above 18 years of age in which case the article first-and-foremost should clarify that point, so as not to appear complicit in overlooking a case of child marriage rather than glossing over her age as a non-issue.
Second, even if this mother was above 18, a woman does not recover from childbirth in “merely 10 minutes.” After the baby is born, the cervix and uterus are dilated and need to contract in order for the bleeding to stop. The first few moments right after birth are extremely critical since perineal tears and hemorrhaging can cause a woman to lose a lot of blood.
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Thus, even after a natural birth, a mother needs to be monitored to make sure she is out of danger. During childbirth, a mother’s body is full of adrenaline -- the fight-or-flight hormone -- to give her the energy needed to push out a baby.
When we celebrate stories like these, we make other women, who do take time for themselves and their babies, appear weak. We give implicit permission to employers to deny women the maternity leave that they are due because they rationalise that women and babies can do without it. They can’t
It is the same hormone that makes your heart pound and eyes dilate when you need to run away from someone holding a gun, for instance. Understandably, many mothers will often want to get up and be active right after the delivery because of the effects of adrenaline. Just because this young girl got up and went back to her exam, it is not necessarily an indication of her having recovered, rather her adrenaline levels not having returned to normal.
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It is entirely possible that her labour came on very suddenly and there was no time to move her to a medical facility, in which case we should be talking about how we can avoid and better manage such dangerous situations rather than celebrating it.
Finally, celebrating this as an example of girl power gives men and women the impression that “strong” women do not let anything stand in their way, not even the birth of a baby.
This sets impossible standards on women at the expense of their health and even their life. It is not normal or healthy to jump back into things right after having a child.
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Both the baby and the mother need time to recover and bond -- they need months not minutes. When we celebrate stories like these, we make other women, who do take time for themselves and their babies, appear weak. We give implicit permission to employers to deny women the maternity leave that they are due because they rationalise that women and babies can do without it. They can’t.
The 160-word news story from Jamalpur was perhaps a blip on most of our radars, but the very fact that it was a blip and not a storm demonstrates how, as a society, we are comfortable normalising injustices which should, instead, disturb us deeply.
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The World Health Organisation's 'six cleans' for a safe birth[/caption]
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This story should have been about how our legal and social system failed to protect a child from getting married and pregnant. The article should have been about the dangers of birthing in a non-medical facility.
The article should have been about the unreasonable expectations on women to be superhuman. Instead, we are celebrating the “girl power” of a child who just had a baby and had to go back to an exam.
Unless we first learn to identify the injustices being done to women we will never be able to fix them.
Shammi Quddus is a dual degree MBA and MPA/ID graduate student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School. She is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper of the Dhaka Hub. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @shammiquddus.
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