Millions of girls around the world are exposed to harmful traditional practices such as child marriage – with strong and negative effects on their future. In Malawi, almost 50% of girls are married before the age of 18 and 10%, before the age of 15 (UNICEF Global Databases, 2019). In addition to being a violation of human rights, child marriage compromises the development of girls and often results in teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, and social isolation, leaving them poorly educated which in turn reinforces the gendered nature of poverty.

Moreover, the age at which a girl gets married is closely related to the age at which she will become sexually active and to the number of children she will have. This is an important fact to consider in the context of developing countries where pregnancy related complications are one of the leading causes of mortality of young girls.

We tested the hypothesis that families take part in harmful traditional practices for the purpose of social signaling.

And, after a preliminary survey, we found out that that Malawian families that marry off their teenage daughters are indeed perceived as as more engaged in the community’s practices, and therefore as more reliable by their neighbours.

So what if we create a new, harmless way for parents to signal they can be trusted?

A low-cost, easy to scale intervention such as a colorful rubber bracelet.

A solution totally unrelated to marriage – so we don’t have to condemn or impose an external view on local traditions.

But, still, an alternative visible to everyone around as a sign of commitment: In order to get it, families have to donate 2 kg of maize, to the poorest households in the village, showing they are devoted community members.

We have partnered with national authorities to collaborate in a large-scale survey with more than 10,000 households nationwide. Through this preliminary survey, we could test our hypothesis and map the areas with higher rates of child marriage to implement the bracelet experiment.

Even as part of a bigger research promoted by the local government about harmful traditional practices, from the first moment, we had the concern of not looking like we wanted to judge, step in or simply modify the local cultural context with a view from the outside. This is one of the reasons that we chose an alternative unrelated to marriage such as the bracelet and the donation drive. And this is why, besides the official authorities, we have partnered with UNICEF local office – that have been working on this field and region for decades – and have received a spontaneous engagement from community leaderships.

In 2019, 412 villages in rural Malawi were randomly divided in two equal groups: one assigned to the bracelet experiment, and the other serving as a control group.

We followed up on them for 16 months.

In the first group, each village have collected on average 50 kg of maize, with 25 pairs of bracelets (for both parents) being distributed in exchange. Although local staff hired by UNICEF was in charge of the process, many community leaders quickly got involved in the organization at their own locations.

During this period, the Malawian National Statistical Office collected data from both. Then, we compared the results.

In the villages where our new sign of commitment was implemented:

Child marriage decreased by 30%.

School dropout rates decreased by 15%.

Teenage pregnancy decreased by 29%.

(National Statistical Office of Malawi, 2020).

In the villages where no experiment was organized, child marriage remained common, and villagers still trusted more others who were ready to marry off their teenage daughters; while in the villages with the bracelet, that was no longer the case. In other words, no one actually liked child marriage to start with – there were just not easily available alternative signals to convey to others that one is part of the community.

In about a year, we delivered a significant blow on a centuries-old harmful practice, even where traditions are most deeply rooted.

And this model is now raising funds to be replicated in other countries.