Manama: A high percentage of Qatari women are delaying their marriage to continue their education or pursue a career, a study has found.
Qatari women today want to get married in their late 20s or early 30s and only one per cent of women marry between 15 and 19 years of age, according to the findings of a survey conducted by the Social and Economic Research Institute (SESRI) at Qatar University.
"This situation is not peculiar to Qatar and presently it is a common feature in many Arab countries," said Hanan Abdul Rahim, SESRI Associate Director.
"There are similar figures in other Arab countries too, so it’s not necessarily exceptional to Qatar. In other Arab countries, too, we are seeing the change in the pattern of marriage," she said, as quoted by Qatari daily The Peninsula on Wednesday.
Several reasons are behind the delay in marriages, like education, profession or non-availability of marriageable men, she said.
The study concluded that 60 per cent of women marry after the age of 25 years.
However, after the age of 30 years, the likelihood of first marriage declines significantly in the Qatari Society.
According to the study, 28.1 per cent of Qatari women are married to their first cousins, while 10.1 per cent said they were married to a distant cousin.
