Every time we’ve discussed domestic violence on this blog we end up having the same debate – “Is domestic violence worse amongst desis?” – without having any facts. However, thanks to a recent WHO study of 24,000 women in ten countries, we know a bit more about the way that one desi country (Bangladesh) stacks up to nine others outside the region:
Domestic violence in urban Bangladesh is worse than any of the six other countries where urban domestic violence was measured, and domestic violence in rural Bangladesh is the third worst of the relevant eight countries, after Ethiopia and Peru.
How bad is it? 
In Bangladesh, a cross-sectional survey of women aged 15-49 years was carried out, with 1603 interviewees in the capital city Dhaka and 1527 in the rural area Matlab….Combining data for physical and sexual violence, 53% of ever-married women in Dhaka and 62% in Matlab had ever experienced physical or sexual violence. [Link]
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p>Nor is this the kind of violence that apologists can simply wave away:
In both sites, one in four women who had experienced physical abuse by a husband reported that they had been injured at least once in their lifetime; a third of them in the past 12 months.Among women who had been injured, 68% in Dhaka and 80% in Matlab needed health care at least once as a result of their injuries.
10% of ever-pregnant women in Dhaka and 12% in Matlab were physically abused during at least one pregnancy. Of these, 37% in Dhaka and 25% in Matlab were punched or kicked in the abdomen. [Link]
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p>Much of this violence is hidden from view:
In both sites, 66% of women who were physically abused by their husband never told anyone about the violence…Only 5% of physically abused women in Dhaka and 7% in Matlab ever sought help for the violence. [Link]
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p>Why is domestic violence so high in the one SouthAsian country tested, and is it representative of the region as a whole? My guess is that domestic violence in Bangladesh is high because women have relatively low levels of education and therefore few economic opportunities outside the home.
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p>That would be consistent with the fact that DV is higher in rural than urban settings. If I had the time, I’d graph rates of DV against female literacy, I’ll bet they correlate quite well. [I’ll see if I can do so tonight].
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p>If the lack of female economic empowerment is indeed closely related to rates of DV, then one would expect this to hold for the region as a whole, and for inter-regional variation to follow female literacy as well. [Does anybody have rates within India?]
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p>Is there a cultural / religious component to this too? I can’t tell since Bangladesh is the only Muslim country tested, but it is worth noting that the two countries with worse rates of rural DV are both very heavily Christian countries, and that Thailand and Japan (both Buddhist countries) have quite different rates of DV. My personal opinion is that the economic factors are primary.
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p>I suggest reading the country summary for Bangladesh (which is short), or the introduction to the report as a whole.
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p>Related posts: National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Misogyny kills, Seeing the in-laws
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After all these years I’m unsure that DV is linked to culture and religion the way IMO it is strongly linked to education and empowerment. Abuse is higher where women are dependant and where they don’t know or don’t have rights to empower them. This is true for whether it is the United States, Africa or India. It all always seems to boil down to that. The inability to sustain on one’s own hence the inability to assert power or respect in a relationship.
JoAT – I agree, and just added a sentence to show that. To my mind, the economic factors are the primary ones, and if there is a cultural component, it’ll be smaller and not as coarse as religion. Something more about local subcultures.
how common is husband beating?
I’m going to assume you mean that seriously, and you’re not just being flip. Within the US, there are sometimes incidents of DV that involve both partners brawling.
Women are still more likely to get hurt in such incidents because of the strength differentials, but it is probably erroneous to believe that domestic violence in America always involves solely male on female violence.
How common is this sort of thing? There we end up in a highly politicized methodological thicket, one that has made pariahs out of some researchers. My suggestion to you is to google around for this, and make up your own mind. I don’t want to derail this discussion here with another one.
what/where is Matlab?
I don’t think this conversation will get anywhere without also tending to one of the elephants in the room; the question has to be asked and answered. Are men of color (through one or multiple reasons) more likely to engage in violence toward women. Once that question is answered, a lot of clutter will be cleared away. Without answering that question I think the discussion will involve indirect attributions and euphamisms
good assumption. I was just curious, as whenever people talk about DV, they talk about man on woman violence. I have never seen any kind of research on the opposite. seems a little biased (or something). there maybe quite a few dudes suffering out there. no way of knowing.
I hate that distinction. wh!te vs. non-wh!te. it seems like it assumes all n0n wh!te people have a lot in common with each other, and wh!te people are somehow different from all of that mud.
I would second this. It has everything to do with education (less educated = poor, for the most part).
This is probably endemic to any group that is poor/less educated – United States, Europe, India, or Bangladesh. The more economic mobility and education women have, the less likely they will be vicitims of abuse (It doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but the chances of it happening are far less).
Sahej – are they still men of color in countries where there are no men of pallor to compare them too? I always thought that phrasing made sense solely for diasporic communities in the western world and not for people in their countries of origin.
Substitute nations ruled by a colonial power in the 19th and 20th century and marginalized communities within nations for men of color
Suma – Matlab is here (look at the colored in section of the map). Unless of course you mean this Matlab.
Regardless of the statistic, the answer (just like most) probably has less to do with color rather than people of color being less educated and more poor than white people.
If one wants to do a comparison of domestic violence, one needs to compare people with the same level of education and poverty, taking samples from white, latino, black, and other populations.
I think two things would argue against that;
1) colonialism was often justified in part as a way to ensure better protection for the rights of women
2) we are having this discussion in the diaspora
Like I said, the substitution above to me would make sense for the term men of color. If men of color are more likely to commit violence against women, what is the use of offering euphamistic reasons like economic or cultural factors. Frankly to me thats just a way to make us feel better about a situation that needs to change. My impression is that the widely-held view that men of color are more likely to engage in violence against women is heavily pre-deteremined by racism. But this post has a study to work off, maybe that is fruitful.
I shudder to think what they would find in North India. My guess is that we would beat out Peru-Sheru by 100% or more.
Based on my experience, Bengali culture is much less patriarchal and authoritarian than those of North India.
I havenÂ’t had a chance to plough thru but here are some reliable resources:
This is the United Nations library on issues related to women for the world. This is the Harvard School of public health that has does some reporting and tracking of WomenÂ’s issues in South Asia based on a partnership between Harvard and some reputable universities and centers in India.
Some dated information available here.
Just based on the chart above, one can see a difference between rural and urban areas. It wouldn’t be stretch to say that people in rural areas are less educated, therefore more likely to engage in such conduct.
here’s some figures for domestic violenve in the US on the NOW website:
Violence Against Women in the United States
MURDER. Every day four women die in this country as a result of domestic violence, the euphemism for murders and assaults by husbands and boyfriends. That’s approximately 1,400 women a year, according to the FBI. The number of women who have been murdered by their intimate partners is greater than the number of soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.
BATTERING. Although only 572,000 reports of assault by intimates are officially reported to federal officials each year, the most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year. At least 170,000 of those violent incidents are serious enough to require hospitalization, emergency room care or a doctor’s attention.
SEXUAL ASSAULT. Every year approximately 132,000 women report that they have been victims of rape or attempted rape, and more than half of them knew their attackers. It’s estimated that two to six times that many women are raped, but do not report it. Every year 1.2 million women are forcibly raped by their current or former male partners, some more than once.
THE TARGETS. Women are 10 times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate. Young women, women who are separated, divorced or single, low- income women and African-American women are disproportionately victims of assault and rape. Domestic violence rates are five times higher among families below poverty levels, and severe spouse abuse is twice as likely to be committed by unemployed men as by those working full time. Violent attacks on lesbians and gay men have become two to three times more common than they were prior to 1988.
IMPACT ON CHILDREN. Violent juvenile offenders are four times more likely to have grown up in homes where they saw violence. Children who have witnessed violence at home are also five times more likely to commit or suffer violence when they become adults.
IMPACT ON HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES. Women who are battered have more than twice the health care needs and costs than those who are never battered. Approximately 17 percent of pregnant women report having been battered, and the results include miscarriages, stillbirths and a two to four times greater likelihood of bearing a low birth weight baby. Abused women are disproportionately represented among the homeless and suicide victims. Victims of domestic violence are being denied insurance in some states because they are considered to have a “pre-existing condition.”
LEGISLATION. In 1994, the National Organization for Women, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, and other organizations finally secured passage of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides a recordbreaking $1.8 billion to address issues of violence against women. [Link]
Why skirt the effect of culture and patriarchy at all? If education and economic status are the key factors, how can we justify the abuse cases in silicon valley among South Asians? The profile is middle class, educated and fairly well to do and the reasons are sometimes as flippant as using the phone to call a family member or wanting to learn driving or not making idlis for breakfast. I do not have statistics at hand but I am sure you can get them from Maithri or Narika (two organizations in the Bay area that help women affected by abuse and violence), but I have heard several stories – how about we ask each other just to see how many of us have heard of domestic violence being perpetuated in our circles? I knew someone personally who was an engineer and well qualified, married to a physician here in the US who would get beaten black and blue for no reason at all. She managed to leave eventually – but it wasn’t easy and most people within the community kept talking about how there might be ‘two sides to teh story’ and how the guys seemed so respectable, etc, etc. Unless we acknowledge the patriarchy and the chauvinism in our culture and recognize that such attitudes affect violence against women, we are not really moving the dialogue much.
Yet literacy by itself is neutral. The ability to read by itself tells you nothing about a person’s views on moral conduct. If literacy is a marker for access to food or jobs, or from freedom from oppression, then litercy means something. Otherwise, its a flawed assumptions that people need to be able to read in order to behave according to a moral code that prevents violence against vulnerable parties
Gujudude – there could be two mechanisms involved. 1. Perhaps education changes the mindset of men. In that case, we would expect to see increased education for men correlated with a decrease in DV. 2. Perhaps education increases opportunities for women. In that case, we would expect to see increased education for women correlated with a decrease in DV.
The two explanations produce similar observable implications where male and female education both increase together. However, where only male levels of education are rising, they have very different implications.
My bet is that it is the second explanation rather than the first.
ethiopia is not mostly christian. from cia factbook:
Muslim 45%-50%, Ethiopian Orthodox 35%-40%, animist 12%, other 3%-8%
I like idli’s, but DAMN…….
my personal exp. (attenuated as it is since i don’t move in brown circles) is that there is a inverse correlation between level and education and domestic violence. but, i do know of situations where the husband has a ph.d. and the wife has a secondary school education (or less), and these tend to be characterized by a lot of power imbalance and i hear rumors of violence. so i think the most predictive issue is economic/social power imbalance.
I’m sure they play a factor, but if you compare low income/low education with higher income/higher education, holding all else constant, within these patriarchal societies with permeating chauvinistic attitudes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a shift towards lower rates (no one is saying non-existent).
razib, pl explain what that has to do with DV. thx.
i’m talking about bangladeshis above btw.
oh, and matlab is a medium sized town. my grandfather practiced medicine there when my mom was a kid.
I think in the diaspora its only relevent to think of “our” community as circumscribed by ethnicity in certain circumstances and not in a whole-sale way. Moreso than in a home country, a diaspora community is in some ways willfully created.
Both factors are involved I think. Sean Connery made this infamous comment back in the 60s “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong in hitting a woman, though I don’t recommend you do it the same way that you hit a man.” But atleast he didn’t write a book endorsing the subject like this imam loser.
I wonder if it’s the relative gap or the absolute status of the woman (i.e. her lack of other opportunities). My guess is the latter, not the former.
Yes, the ability to read in itself means nothing. How literacy (as Ennis states in post #21, both men and women) translates into economic opportunities where one needs to use literate skills as part of their livelyhood (blue collar vs. white collar) is why the urban-rural divide also makes sense to me. Urban economies are far more dynamic and require skills where literacy plays a big role in the quality of economic opportunities available to you.
With economics isolated (say you’re only looking at middle class and rich people of all races), domestic abuse rates will plummet, but those who engage in such behavior may have cultural reasons/power more at the root cause, rather than being poor and undereducated.
With regards to the question on domestic abuse sustained by men, I read somewhere men were more likely to be abused verbally/psychologically (not physically). This makes sense too, since women do not have the same physical characteristics as men. The ability to deploy abusive tools, tipping the power balance into your favor would cater to each’s strengths.
I’d like to address this because I have experienced the same frustration. Education doesn’t necessarily always help a man combat tendencies towards domestic violence if the environment he lives in makes it OK for him to be a batterer. I know someone personally who is going thru a divorce where she is educated as is her husband and he has lived here his whole life and he was constantly beating her and if not mentally abusing her everyday. This man held a job on wall street.
The thing I have come to realize is that it was happening in a home where his parents made it OK for him to be that way and he grew up in an environment where he simply was not taught to respect a woman. There is also socioeconomic power he had over here where he held the cards to her getting a greencard so she was at his mercy and it went to his head. I know several other such situations where it blows your mind that a man who is educated and part of the average middle class society and from the west would do this. I can’t help but feel like it’s poor upbringing.
However this is where I beg to differ with you. This is also true if the man is white or black or yellow if he has grown up in an environment that doesn’t check his behavior.
To be more clear, rather than invest time in changing a willfully created and small community that is resistant to change, why not just move out of that said community and into the wider culture? There are enough indians in the US that staying in a more patriarchal strand of desi culture is not neccessary. I would say in these instances the easiest way to prevent this abuse is helping people transition from isolation to wider interaction. Changing 50-100 families of a diaspora community in a given area to me seems less important than preventing isolation and facilitating more contact with the wider society.
Education for the woman, on the other hand, reduces DV by allowing her to leave if she gets hit.
[I realize that we agree on both points, I’m just emphasizing them]
Thanks South Asian Woman. I know of a few DV cases involving highly-educated desi couples (both male and female are educated). I think there is even more underreporting in such circles than there is generally because of the stigma associated with DV.
I think it might be a bit simplistic to tie domestic violence to economic status. Lower status groups sometimes have more female-friendly customs than higher status ones, both in South Asia and elsewhere. Dalit and tribal groups often have fairly relaxed attitudes towards marital breakdown as well as less emphasis on patrilineality and patrilocality. There may be cases where an urban, well-to-do family that has shelled out shitloads of money for dowries will encourage their daughters to suck it up, while an adivasi family might not.
i will offer a personal story. my father slapped my mother in 1975 for criticizing his mother. she moved out and went back to her father’s house. my father had to beg her to come back. if my mother hadn’t had a family with resources to take her in, what would have happened?
Any rationale for choosing the countries that they did to poll?
Patriarchy and Chauvanism are very vague terms. What deep seated aspects of our culture do you think should be modified? and how would that curtail violence? I’m definitely in the economic/social stance.
“Culture” and “religion” are not about to change unless on the order of decades. In a diaspora, where most of us are debating from, one can be more fluid about such things, and in my opinion this should be fostered. Let’s face it that we are not about to change the “culture” and “religion” of South Asia, especially from the diaspora.
Due to the religious nature of Jainism, DV is uncommon in our community.
It does occur, but the % is probably miniscule compared to the whole society.
“To be more clear, rather than invest time in changing a willfully created and small community that is resistant to change, why not just move out of that said community and into the wider culture? There are enough indians in the US that staying in a more patriarchal strand of desi culture is not neccessary. I would say in these instances the easiest way to prevent this abuse is helping people transition from isolation to wider interaction. Changing 50-100 families of a diaspora community in a given area to me seems less important than preventing isolation and facilitating more contact with the wider society.”
Sahej,
I agree completely that we should not just think of certain communities when we think of domestic violence — of course this happens across all races – I just feel that we sometimes take the ‘model minority’ idea and apply it to DV i.e. saying that it doesn’t happen more in our community because we are more literate/better educated…all I am saying is that its not necessarily true. Literacy and scoial status sometimes aren’t the best indicators of moral behavior but an environment that encourages patriarchy and chauvinism might just be a reason for peopel to think that they can treat women badly. Also we are attributing way more agency to women in some situations when we talk about moving them away from isolation…..even with social networks and organizations in place, South Asian women don’t easily talk about the abuse that they face..and this is where patriarchy and cultural expectations come in — its very difficult for many women from the South Asian community to seek help and get out regardless of their level of education and socioeconomic status.
Good point. Another point to add, violence is an extreme end product, that is surely unjustifiable in any context. However, it makes sense to attempt to investigate root cause for problematic marriages, irrespective of whether they are violent or not. If there’s any reformation that needs to take place, it’s a culture which forces these male female unions – thereby creating stress conditions so high to bring certain awful, misguided people to the point of violence.
And for any cultural/society-wide change to take place, both men and women must agree to it, and support it. And who perpetuates the forced/arranged/assisted marriage system more than anyone?
What’s the connection between arranged marriages and DV?
I agree. It also has a domino effect in terms of changing attitudes in her children and immediate family. Send a boy to school and he will learn. Send a girl to school and the whole family learns.
Regarding domestic violence – growing up, I witnessed thousands of different incidents where directly or indirectly a boy gets preferential treatment. Sometimes its blatant putdowns and some times its subtle messages girls get about the in evitability of their future roles as wives and mothers.
While this exists to some extent everywhere, its a bigger problem in India. This lack of education and enpowerment delegates women to a subsidary role in most communities. Some communities have disproportionately high problems with in equality of women. Like Amba mentioned, this is absent in most lower classes among rural communities( atleast as per my personal experience). I think this is mainly because women play a signifcant role in a family’s earnings giving them more power.
I think my own personal experiences contributed towards me being sort of a feminist now.
South Asian Woman,
To me you’ve got three things rolled up into this.
One is the model minority myth wherein affluence = good moral behavior. Thats a problem in itself
And then you’ve got it seems like social isolation
And third is desi patriarchy. Which by itself is dreadful and seems to equate women with property.
Thats a very complex mix and my point is that I don’t think attacking this from the angle of the encouraging less social isolation is easiest. The other two things are deeply imbedded in society. The affluence = good moral character myth is a part of US and Indian society. And the women as property noxious idea is something in Indian society we are not likely to change from the Diaspora. But agencies like the ones you cited seem able to move people from these noxious but small environments. Thats my quibble with what you said originally. Other than that, DV is horrible in all cases, as is all violence done against the more vulnerable. All such actions demean all of us as people.
South Asian Woman:
Exactly. Literacy plays a big role in spreading awareness about DV….but it can’t be directly used as a measure of DV. We used to have a maid (back in India). She worked in 4-5 homes and earned appreciably higher than what her husband did. She was not educated while her husband had a high school diploma. This lack of education did not diminish her “bargaining power” in the relationship. She never took any shit from her husband and occasionally confronted him.
This is painful to put down, but in light of some of the comments, which seem to want to relegate DV to the realm of the poor and ill-educated, I should tell this. My mother was abused by my father on several occasions. She has a B.A. and had a good job, my father was a successful chem engineer. She didn’t leave him because of me, and because of cultural expectations. She’s a proud, independent and very liberated woman (for a desi woman of her generation), so if she didn’t leave, I imagine plenty don’t. When I turned eighteen, she divorced him. There are a lot of reasons women stay in bad relationships besides lack of money/education.
“forced/arranged/assisted marriage system
What’s the connection between arranged marriages and DV?”
I concede it’s tenuous, but I contend that arranged marriages are problematic in that they put two people in the same room together, before they are able to think of anyone else but themselves. This is likely to create an environment that is ripe for violence, assuming the person has a tendancy towards violence (taking into account their economic status, predispositions, etc..)
To me you’ve got three things rolled up into this.
One is the model minority myth wherein affluence = good moral behavior. Thats a problem in itself
And then you’ve got it seems like social isolation
And third is desi patriarchy. Which by itself is dreadful and seems to equate women with property.
Thats a very complex mix and my point is that I don’t think attacking this from the angle of the encouraging less social isolation is easiest. The other two things are deeply imbedded in society. The affluence = good moral character myth is a part of US and Indian society. And the women as property noxious idea is something in Indian society we are not likely to change from the Diaspora. But agencies like the ones you cited seem able to move people from these noxious but small environments. Thats my quibble with what you said originally. Other than that, DV is horrible in all cases, as is all violence done against the more vulnerable. All such actions demean all of us as people.
Sahej,
I agree that there are several issues that are rolled up in one when we talk about DV in the South Asian community – and I in fact think that Narika and Maitri and such organizations provide tremendous service by trying to help the women but I’ve talked to some of people who volunteer there – its very, very difficult to get women to leave or reduce their isolation because they fear being ostracized for the rest of their life – either by their own families or by the communities. The economic issue that Razib’s mother sitaution highlighted plays an important role too – if a woman has nowhere to go to, what does she do? There’s also an issue of overt and covert power. I had a close friend in an arranged marriage with children who had a very menacing and prone-to-anger husband where she tried to leave 2-3 times but eventually decided to stay because she said that his family would ‘find her anyway’ and then her life would be hell. Again, this is an engineer here in the US. Her husband’s family while very well educated is also extremely patriarchal.
Where I disagree with you is to say that we cannot affect patriarchy or change it in the community — I think speaking out about it and having more open discussions help atleast in acknowledging the connection between DV and patriarchy issues in the community. If we have more discussions within the community, the next time a woman tries to leave people may understand it better or be more encouraging… – that along with the wonderful work done by several organizations should help with bringing about change.