The Correlates of Violence against Women in India: Findings from the Recent National Demographic Health Survey

Abstract

Violence against women is a serious human rights abuse and public health issue in India. The Intimate Partner violence (IPV) cases among Indian couples are very high. This article aims to find the determinant of Intimate Partner Violence in India. The data are drawn from the fourth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-IV). According to Demographic Health Survey guidelines, IPV is measured using 13-item questions in women questionnaire. This section is analysed to fulfil the objective of the study. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression is used to find out the unadjusted and adjusted odds ratio. The analysis is carried out using STATA version 14. The prevalence of IPV, emotional violence (EV), physical violence (PV) and sexual violence (SV) is 33.15, 13.23, 29.68 and 6.60 respectively. The likelihood of IPV increases with the increase in marital duration. All kind of violence is less likely to occur in rural areas (IPV: AOR=0.86, p<0.01; EV: AOR=0.81, p<0.01; PV: AOR=0.85, p<0.01; & SV: AOR=0.92, p=0.09). Hindu women are more likely to face all kind of violence than women in other religion. Alcohol consumption is one of the predominant factors for IPV in India (AOR=3.08, CI=2.96-3.21, p<0.01). From this study, we find that marital duration, the age difference of spouses, number of children, place of residence, caste, religion, and education of couple, alcohol consumption and wealth index are some of the important predictors of IPV in India.