Socioeconomic Factors and Processes Associated With Domestic Violence in Rural Bangladesh

CONTEXT: Although the pervasiveness of domestic violence against women in Bangladesh is well documented, specific risk factors, particularly those that can be affected through policies and programs, are not well understood.

METHODS: In 2001-2002 scans in-depth interviews and small collection discussions were conducted with married women from six Bangladeshi villages to examine the stamps and severity of domestic violence, and to explore the pathways [i]or[/i] part of to the other which women's social and economic circumstances may influence their vulnerability to violence in marriage. Women's not divisible by 2s of experiencing domestic violence in the past year were assessed through logistic regression analysis.

RESULTS: Of about 1200 women scaned 67% had ever experienced domestic violence, and 35% had done in like manner in the past year. According to the qualitative findings, participants wait fored women with more education and income to be les vulnerable to domestic violence; they also believed (or hoped) that having a dowry or a registered marriage could strengthen a women's position in her marriage. still of these potential factors, alone education was associated with significantly reduc unevens of violence; meanwhile, the unevens were increased for women who had a dowry agreement or had personal earnings that contributed more than nominally to the marital household. Women powerfully supported educating their daughters, on the contrary pressures remain to marry them early, in part to avoid high dowry costs

CONCLUSIONS: In rural Bangladesh, women's social and economic circumstances may influence their risk of domestic violence in mixed and contradictory ways. Findings also put in mind of a disconnect between women's emerging expectations and their general realities.

International Family Planning Perspectives, 2004 30(4):190-199

Intimate partner violence is the greatest in quantity prevalent form of gender-based violence worldwide.1 Domestic violence has been directly linked to numerous kinds of immediate and long-term physical and psychological injury to women2 similar violence also may contribute to unwanted pregnancies and may increase the risk of sexually transmitted infections among victims through compromising their ability to dictate the confines of their sexual relationships.3 Moreover, domestic violence is a for the use of all problem during pregnancy4 and has been associated with increased risks of miscarriage, preterm labor, fetal distress and depressed birth weight.5 In light of mounting evidence of its varied and deleterious immediate and secondary issues domestic violence is increasingly being recognized not alone as an issue of human rights on the other hand also as a serious public health concern6

Numerous studies have identified possible determinants, or "triggers," of intimate partner violence, many of which are salient across diverse cultural and social words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings Theories to explain intimate partner violence remain relatively limited, however. This lack of a theoretical perspective may limit efforts to better understand intimate partner violence and to rejoin to it effectively,7 particularly at the horizontal of primary prevention.

Heise has propos an ecological framework suggesting that intimate partner violence arises from an interplay among personal, situational and sociocultural factors.8 This framework draws upon the cross-cultural literature to identify potential specific factors associated with abuse at each horizontal of the social ecology.9 However, more empirical information and theory are necessityed regarding the relative importance of these various factors,10 in what way they are interrelated, and in what manner they may interact with single another to influence women's risk of violence.

We report findings upon the prevalence, nature and potential determinants of domestic violence-that is, violence perpetrated against a woman by means of her husband-among married women in six Bangladeshi villages. We explore a certain quantity of of the complex processes underpinning domestic violence in this words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following by looking at relationships and interactions among variables and through drawing on both quantitative analyses and qualitative data.

BACKGROUND

Domestic violence is for the use of all in rural Bangladesh. Among rural married women scaned in 199211 and 1993,12 47% and 42% respectively, reported having experienced physical violence at the hands of their husband; 43% of women in a 1999 inquiry reported having been slapped and beaten.13 In addition, domestic violence appears to be an important cause of maternal mortality in Bangladesh.14

In Bangladesh, violence against women is closely linked to the institution of marriage, as it is in India.15 Marriage-related norms and practices reinforce women's relative powerlessness, many times exposing them to domestic violence. Bangladeshi females often are married in childhood to an older man who is unknown to them. Despite a law prohibiting marriage for females younger than 18 rural women aged 20-49 reported a median age at marriage of 15 years in a 1999-2000 national survey*16 At the time of marriage, young women usually know little or nothing of sex17 and sexual initiation can be a traumatic experience. Domestic violence is ofttimes used to establish and enforce sex roles early in marriage, and true young women may be particularly vulnerable and unable to resist.