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Age of consent
Why is it in the news?
- A new study calls for a need to distinguish between self arranged marriages among older adolescents and forced child marriages to protect teens from social stigma, parental backlash and punitive action.
More in the news
- The study is based on a qualitative study of 15 girls, aged 15-20, from Jaipur, Delhi and Mumbai, who had been in a consensual romantic relationship.
- Some of these resulted in self-arranged marriages.
- The participants included those who entered into a romantic relationship when they were aged 12-19 years.
- These case studies involved intra- and inter-caste and interfaith relationships with boyfriends who were older and younger than 18.
- These cases were from between 2010 and 2016 to assess the impact of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012.
- What it Concludes?
(1) It makes a case for an age of consent that is lower than the age of marriage to decriminalise sex among consenting older adolescents.
(2) This will protect them from the misuse of law for enforcing parental and caste controls over daughters.
Source
The Hindu.