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Demography
Published in: Demography 1/2013

01-02-2013

A Survey Experiment of Women’s Attitudes About Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Rural Bangladesh

Authors: Kathryn M. Yount, Nafisa Halim, Sidney Ruth Schuler, Sara Head

Published in: Demography | Issue 1/2013

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Abstract

According to the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in poorer countries, 50 % of women of reproductive age report that wife hitting or beating is justified. Such high rates may result from structural pressures to adopt such views or to report the perceived socially desirable response. In a survey experiment of 496 ever-married women aged 18–49 years in rural Bangladesh, we compared responses to attitudinal questions that (1) replicated the 2007 Bangladesh DHS wording and portrayed the wife as transgressive for unstated reasons with elaborations depicting her as (2) unintentionally and (3) willfully transgressive. The probabilities of justifying wife hitting or beating were consistently low for unintended transgressions (.01–.08). Willful transgressions yielded higher probabilities (.40–.70), which resembled those based on the DHS wording (.38–.57). Cognitive interviews illustrated that village women held diverse views, which were attributed to social change. Also, ambiguity in the DHS questions may have led some women to interpret them according to perceived gender norms and to give the socially desirable response of justified. Results inform modifications to these DHS questions and identify women for ideational-change interventions.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
The recent legal provisions of up-to-death penalty for violence against women in Bangladesh should discourage IPV against women (Bhuiya et al. 2003); however, access to legal services for poor rural women is limited because such services are largely city-based and have associated psychological and financial costs. Discussions with villagers also suggest that IPV against women is neither condoned nor fully condemned, but that at times, one needs to resort to violence to control one’s wife. Thus, some argue that the deterrent provided by legal provisions is limited to more extreme forms of violence (Bhuiya et al. 2003).
 
2
Variations in the question, however, preclude strict comparisons (Yount et al. 2011). The question in 1999–2000 read as follows: “It is normal for couples to have quarrels and disagreements. During those quarrels some husbands occasionally severely reprimand or even beat their wives. In your opinion, do you think a man would be justified to beat his wife: If she goes out without telling him? If she neglects the children? If she argues with her husband? If she fails to provide food on time?” The question in 2007 read: “Sometimes a husband is annoyed or angered by things that his wife does. In your opinion, is a husband justified in hitting or beating his wife in the following situations: If she goes out without telling him? If she neglects the children? If she argues with him? If she refuses to have sex with him? If she does not obey elders in the family?”
 
3
This age range differed slightly from the DHS (15–49 years) to include only adult women, defined as at least 18 years.
 
4
Few sampled households had more than one eligible woman. Reporting of age and date of birth was inconsistent for some respondents, and one selected respondent had a reported age outside the designated age range (62).
 
5
A limited number of questions were modified for suitability in the study villages. For example, the question on membership in community-based organizations included more detailed response options in our survey than in the 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS).
 
6
We did not collect data on personal experiences of IPV, and such experiences could have differed across experimental groups; however, the results in Table 1 suggest that the groups differed on very few observed attributes, including other measures of marital power (e.g., decision making). Future research focused on understanding the determinants and consequences of attitudes about wife hitting or beating certainly could collect data on women’s own experiences of IPV.
 
7
For most transgressions, the ordering of question sets within pairs (A:D, D:A, B:E, E:B, C:F, F:C) did not affect the percentage of women responding yes to the personal attitudes questions for the DHS-control and unintended transgression variants of the questions. Yet, when women were asked first for their perceptions of community norms regarding hitting or beating a wife who willfully transgresses, they personally justified such violence marginally more often for two transgressions—going out without telling the husband and not obeying elders in his family.
 
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Metadata
Title
A Survey Experiment of Women’s Attitudes About Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Rural Bangladesh
Authors
Kathryn M. Yount
Nafisa Halim
Sidney Ruth Schuler
Sara Head
Publication date
01-02-2013
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Demography / Issue 1/2013
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Electronic ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0143-7

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