Empowerment and Domestic Violence

Educational Qualification (EDU) : It is not surprising that education helps woman

to be more vocal against violence. An educated woman will have more chance to

obtain wider knowledge and awareness and these will increase their confidence in

all walks of life. Education helps them to be more aware about their constitutional

rights, legal rights and about the opportunities available to them to make their lives

better. It strengthens women’s inherent abilities to achieve power and status in the

family as well as in the society. Hence, we can expect an inverse relation between

educational qualification of a woman and her suffering from DVIO. Generally

educational qualification is considered as a qualitative variable; but we measure it

by the numbers of years attending formal educational institutions.

Occupation of the Woman (OCUW): Occupation of the woman has been divided

into two categories namely, home maker and working woman. Working women in

ruralareaaremainlyagriculturallabourorengagedinunorganizednon-agricultural

sector. On one hand, we can expect that as working woman contributes to family

expenditure, their importance in the family increases and so there is lower risk of

domestic violence in that family. On the other hand, if the woman is home maker

she have no economic freedom; she has to depend on other family members and

they are expected to go through the higher risk of domestic violence. Occupational

status has been considered as a dichotomous variable indicating OCUW = ‘1’, if

the woman is home maker and ‘0’ otherwise.

Family Type (FAMTY): Incidence of domestic violence may depend on family

structure in which the woman belongs to. This study has considered two types of

family – nuclear and joint. It is very difficult to explain whether domestic violence

is higher in nuclear or in joint family. In joint family there are many members who

can negotiate family dispute and this may lower the domestic violence. Again

we can not deny the possibility that members interfere in domestic quarrel and

accelerate it and in turn it increases domestic violence. Before, estimation it is also

heard to establish that nuclear family protect the woman from domestic violence.

So we set the hypothesis that there is not ant straight forward relation between

family type and domestic violence against women. Family type in our context is

a dichotomous variable taking value ‘1’ when the respondent belongs to nuclear

family and ‘0’ otherwise.

Duration of Membership of Self-Help Group (DUSHGM): The SHG is the platform

where rural and poor women contribute small recurrent savings and take formal

credit via the group for income generating activities or for consumption. It helps

to improve the socio-economic status of woman. The meetings of SHGs at regular

interval make them conscious about their right, health, hygiene, and education etc.

These increase their say in the family. It is, therefore, expected that as the duration

of SHG membership of woman increases, the experience of domestic violence

will decrease. We measure it by the number of months for which the woman is a

member of SHG.

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