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Compassion Australia CEO’s mission to end child marriage

Sydney, Australia

For Clare Steele, International Women’s Day is personal. A mother and advocate living in Newcastle, New South Wales, Steele believes International Women’s Day is “not about empowering ourselves; it’s about promoting others”. As a result, she’s working hard this March to speak up for women – and especially girls – whose voices are not often heard.

Steele’s own daughter is 16-years-old, the age most girls in more than 25 countries are faced with the reality of child marriage. Steele admits that to imagine child marriage for her daughter is to enter the nightmare that one in five girls around the world face before they’re 18, according to a UNICEF report.


Girls walking in Bangladesh. The practice of child marriage in Bangladesh remains common – nationally, nearly 60 per cent of girls are married before the age of 18. PICTURE: Courtesy of Compassion Australia

“My daughter has privilege and opportunity, and she’s been blessed by a family who thinks she’s amazing and thinks it’s her choice how she lives her life,” Steele said. “She’s also been blessed to grow up in Australia so she has institutional support from which she can grow. That doesn’t mean everything in Australia is perfect for women, but we’re so far ahead.”

As CEO of Compassion Australia, a Christian international holistic child development organisation, Steele confronts this every time she walks into a community where Compassion works and realises how much her own daughter has.

“My heart goes out to the mothers and daughters there because their hopes are the same, but they have no ability to bring that about.”

That’s part of the reason Steele wanted Compassion Australia to highlight an end to early child marriage on International Women’s Day, a day that can raise awareness for specific harmful practices and acknowledge issues like child marriage as violating girls’ rights. She also believes that every story of every woman and girl matters because “every woman is made in the image of God. When you go to Proverbs 31:8-9, we know, too, that we need to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and defend the rights of the poor and needy.”



Today’s voices, according to Steele, are children, primarily girls, forced to marry at 12-years-old, and then no longer allowed to play or explore the world. Instead, they must look after a home, start to have children and give up educational opportunities that could change the direction of their futures.


Compassion Australia CEO Clare Steele. PICTURE: Courtesy of Compassion Australia

“It’s not the life you want for a child,” Steele said. “Every facet of life is impacted [by child marriage], such as a girl’s ability to earn economically, which is reduced by nine per cent [when she’s married]. When you’re living in a country of poverty, that’s a big difference.”

A girl also loses her ability to control her life when she is married off without choice, said Steele, and she can no longer control where she ends up. Early pregnancy is highly likely then, even though girls are often not physically or emotionally ready for motherhood, and social barriers are immediate and damaging.

Community workers, for instance, often hear from girl brides that they miss their friends, which influences their mental health and increases the need for care and support services. Child wives can also be exposed to domestic abuse with few options for help.

In other words, child marriage “is a form of gender-based violence that not only deprives girls of their childhoods, education and future prospects, but also makes them vulnerable to all forms of violence,” Steele said.


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Experts agree that part of the solution is for international development organisations to offer educational opportunities at all levels. Data confirms that the longer a girl stays in school, the more likely she is to emerge from the challenges of poverty and begin to flourish. In Bangladesh, for instance, where it is illegal to marry before 18 years old yet a common way of life, Compassion works through local community groups and projects that provide education for entire families.

“Holistic child development, economic resilience, physical wellness, these are the areas we focus on,” Steele said. “The only way to combat child marriage is through a holistic approach. The best solutions will come from the community for the community.”

So what would the world look like if there were no child marriages?

Steele points to the imagery in Zechariah 8:4,5, where, after the prophet defines justice in chapter 7, it says, “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.”

“For me, the church today is meant to be the heart of God and since God cares about justice, the church needs to care about justice,” Steele said. “I think justice looks like boys and girls playing in the streets, not being forced into marriage.”

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