Association between gap in spousal education and domestic violence in India and Bangladesh

Abstract

BackgroundDomestic violence (DV) against women is a serious human rights abuse and well recognised global public health concern. The occurrence of DV is negatively associated with the educational level of spouses but studies dealing with educational discrepancies of spouses show contradicting results: Wives with higher education than their husbands were more likely to ever experience DV as compared to equally educated couples. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between spousal education gap (SEG) and the prevalence and severity of DV in India and Bangladesh.MethodsNationally representative data collected through the 2005/2006 Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) and 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) were used. In total, we analysed data of 69,805 women aged 15–49 years (Bangladesh: 4,195 women, India: 65,610 women). In addition to univariate and bivariable analyses, a multinomial logistic regression model was used to quantify the association between education gap and less severe as well as severe domestic violence. Adjustment was made for age, religion, and family structure.ResultsWives with higher education than their husbands were less likely to experience less severe (OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.77–0.89) and severe (OR = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.72–0.87) DV as compared to equally low-educated spouses (reference group). Equally high-educated couples revealed the lowest likelihood of experiencing DV (severe violence: OR 0.43, CI 0.39–0.48; less severe violence: OR 0.59, CI 0.55–0.63). The model’s goodness of fit was low (Nagelkerke’s R2 = 0.152).ConclusionsOur analysis revealed no increased DV among wives with a higher educational level than their husbands. Moreover, the results point towards a decrease of severe violence with an increase in education levels among spouses. However, the model did not explain a satisfying amount of DV. Therefore, further research should be done to reveal unknown determinants so that suitable interventions to reduce DV can be developed.

Using an Ecological Framework to Understand Men’s Reasons for Spousal Abuse: An Investigation of the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007

“…Findings indicate that an increase in the educational level of men lowers the chance of abusing their partners. This finding is consistent with previous research findings on abuse and education (Hadi 2009;Koenig et al 2003;Rapp et al 2012). Our findings regarding wealth and abuse indicate that men who have more wealth abuse their wives less than those who have less wealth.…”

“…In Bangladesh, women are more likely to be a victim of intimate partner violence if they are young (Akhter 2008;Koenig et al 2003;Rahman et al 2011), they are married to a man younger than 30 years of age (Bhuiya et al 2003), they possess a limited education (Bates et al 2004;Hadi 2009;Parveen 2007;Rahman et al 2011;Salam et al 2006), they are married to a man with limited education (Hadi 2009;Koenig et al 2003), both the husband and wife have low levels of education (Rapp et al 2012), they are from a poor household (Rahman et al 2011), and they married at an early age (Akhter 2008;Parveen 2007). Past and current experience with marriage also impacts the level of spousal abuse with higher rates found when both the husband and the wife have had multiple marriages (Salam et al 2006) and the husband's mother had a history of abuse from his father (Naved and Persson 2005).…”

Associations of marital violence with different forms of contraception: Cross‐sectional findings from South Asia

“…Covariates were social equity indicators (respondent age, respondent and husband education, household wealth quintile, and urban vs rural residence) and gender equity indicators (parental marital violence [father's abuse of mother], female child marriage, position in the household, preference for a son, and actual number of living sons and daughters). These covariates were selected on the basis of previous research documenting their associations with marital violence and contraception in South Asia [5–12,22–24].…”

Severe partner perpetrated burn: Examining a nationally representative sample of women in India

“…Severe partner perpetrated burn as compared to no IPV Study findings advance the state of knowledge in several areas. When examining factors that typically increase a woman's socioeconomic status, education has been shown to reduce the odds of victimization among women in India b u r n s 4 1 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 8 4 7 -1 8 5 4 [25,26]. In contrast, higher education didn't offer protection from SPPB in adjusted models.…”