Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

58 Chapter 4
Figure 4.1
Rates of early
marriage of girls
are very high in
some regions
Share of girls ages 15–19
who are married (percent)
Source: Mathur, Greene,
and Malhotra 2003.
Figure 4.2
Early marriage
often leads to early
childbearing
Percent
Source: Mathur, Greene,
and Malhotra 2003.
young women in the developing world give birth before they turn 18 (UNFPA
2003b). In Bangladesh, for example, more than half of all women have their
first child by age 19.
Adolescent fertility rates and progress during the past decade in reducing
these rates vary significantly across regions (table 4.2). Developed countries
have the lowest adolescent fertility rates, at 16 live births per 1,000 adolescents,
down from 19 live births per 1,000 in 1990. Adolescent fertility rates are highest
in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa—and those rates increased between
1990 and 2000.
Underdeveloped physiology, combined with a lack of power, information,
and access to services, means that young married women who bear children
experience much higher levels of maternal illness and death than do women
who bear children when they are older (figure 4.3). Severe complications, such