Working women, who are earning cash and having access to mobile phones, perpetrate more spousal violence on husbands in India, revealed research conducted by health experts at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai.
The research also noted that ‘with increase in wife’s age, spousal violence on husbands increases’, contrary to the common finding that spousal violence on women declined with age.
They noted that prevalence of violence against husband was higher in a nuclear family.
The study indicated that working women who are earning in cash perpetrate more spousal violence on husbands, and this could be for several reasons.
“For instance, as women gain economic autonomy, men may feel that their masculinities are being challenged, and may indulge in controlling wife, or indulging in alcoholic behaviour, leading to experience of spousal violence by cash-earning women,” according to the research titled ‘Prevalence and risk factors of physical violence against husbands: evidence from India’ (2023), published by Cambridge University Press.
The research was conducted by Aparajita Chattopadhyay, Deepanjali Vishwakarma, Suresh Jungari (all IIPS), and Santosh Kumar Sharma (The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi). They observed that ‘access to mobile phones helps empower women, and this could be a threat to a husband, leading to restricting wife in communication, leading to spousal violence’.
With the tremendous increase in mobile usage, they found that ‘improved social network of a wife, who gets support to indulge in violent acts for varying reasons, reporting of husband’s behavioural traits to peers or relatives though mobile phones by wife, exposure to violent media content, could be possible reasons for perpetration of violence of women on men’.
A stirring finding of the study was that with increase in wife’s age, spousal violence on husband increased. Older women gained authority with age, leading to more violence on husbands with increasing age of wife. The qualities that masculine women possess are confidence, assertiveness, independence, the researchers observed.
It revealed that in India, spousal violence against men stands at 29 per 1,000. The proportion of currently married women committing spousal violence against their husband varied from 2 per 1,000 in Sikkim to 90 per 1,000 in Tamil Nadu in NFHS-4. It was observed that the prevalence of spousal violence against husbands increased rapidly in the majority of the States, except Sikkim, Goa, and Mizoram, during 2005-06 to 2015-16.
Role of nuclear family in spousal violence
The prevalence of violence against husband was higher in nuclear family (34/1,000) compared to non-nuclear family (28/1,000); higher among those who live in poorest household; who were exposed to TV (31.4/1,000), or working and getting paid in cash (43/1,000) than those who were not working.
The researchers noted that the prevalence of violence against husbands was higher among those women whose
- husbands consumed alcohol (56.1/1,000)
- when women were afraid of their husbands (31.4/1,000)
- who had childhood exposure of parental violence (66.9/1,000)
- husbands displayed increasing marital control behaviour
Overall prevalence of violence was low in India as compared to other countries following low levels of reported violence against men, or societal pressure to prove masculinity, and remain silent about abuse for the fear of shame, and limited awareness.
The study used large-scale nationally representative National Family Health Survey (NFHS 4) data with the sample size of 62,716 married women aged 15–49 years.
