among those ages 20-24. There is a parallel decrease in the proportion of marriage that starts before menarche, a particularly welcome change. Table 4.2 Simulate mean age at marriage, census and survey data: Source 1951 census 1961 census 1974 census 1981 census 1989 BFS BDHS 2004 BDHS 2007
Males 22.4 22.9 23.9 23.9 25.5 27.5 23.63
Females 14.4 13.9 15.9 16.6 18.0 20.0 15.47
Age difference 8.0 9.0 8.0 7.3 7.5 7.5 8.16
Rising age, a t marriage has been almost universal features of demographic change in Asia over the last 20 years, and Bangladesh clearly no exception. Increased female education and employment opportunities, together with changing ideas about choice of a spouse, are usually proposed as the underlying causes. In Bangladesh, such socioeconomic influences may be less important than inherently demographic forces. As a reflection of rapid population growth, younger cohorts are considerably larger than older cohorts are. Because of the tradition in Bangladesh that women marry men much older than they marry themselves, there is a numerical shortage of eligible bridegrooms. For instance, 4 million females age 15-19 were enumerated in the 1981 census compares to only 3.24 million men age 20-24 a ratio of 123 females to 100 males. This imbalance represents an unfavorable marriage market for women. Parents face problems in finding suitable husbands for their daughters. Marriages are thus delayed. Another consequence is a shift in marriage transactions whereby the bridegroom’s family demands a large dowry. Both anecdotal and empirical evidence indicates that this is happening (Lindenbaum 1981)
4.3 Contraception: The modern methods of contraception are in fact technologies, which apparently gave women the ‘right’ to control her reproductive behavior. Women in the early twentieth century launched births control. This demand was certainly radical from the feminist point of view and perhaps genuine in those times. Nevertheless, it is also true that women have demanded reproductive