Article: Curbing marital violence through social policies: perspectives from the Bangladesh demographic and health survey Journal: International Journal of Public Policy (IJPP) 2014 Vol.10 No.1/2/3 pp.135 - 160 Abstract: Women's empowerment is usually regarded as an effective way of reducing their vulnerability to martial violence. In Bangladesh, the microfinance revolution resulted in an unprecedented surge in women's economic empowerment. However, the expectation that economic empowerment will reduce marital violence has been belied in Bangladesh, which continues to have one of the highest rates of marital violence in the world. Our objective was to study the correlates of marital violence and hence to suggest social policies to mitigate marital violence in Bangladesh. We examined the association of three aspects of women's empowerment - education, paid work, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) membership with marital violence. We find that a woman who is educated, performs paid work, and holds NGO membership is least likely to be a victim of marital violence. We demonstrate that in the face of well-established patriarchal values in Bangladesh, piecemeal policies are likely to be insufficient in mitigating marital violence. Instead, our study calls for comprehensive social policy packages that simultaneously encourage all three aspects of women's empowerment. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: Curbing marital violence through social policies: perspectives from the Bangladesh demographic and health survey

Authors: Sanjukta Chaudhuri; Shahnaz Abdullah

Addresses: Economics Department, University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, 468 Schneider Social Science Hall, WI 54702, USA ' Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, MA, 01247, USA

Abstract: Women's empowerment is usually regarded as an effective way of reducing their vulnerability to martial violence. In Bangladesh, the microfinance revolution resulted in an unprecedented surge in women's economic empowerment. However, the expectation that economic empowerment will reduce marital violence has been belied in Bangladesh, which continues to have one of the highest rates of marital violence in the world. Our objective was to study the correlates of marital violence and hence to suggest social policies to mitigate marital violence in Bangladesh. We examined the association of three aspects of women's empowerment - education, paid work, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) membership with marital violence. We find that a woman who is educated, performs paid work, and holds NGO membership is least likely to be a victim of marital violence. We demonstrate that in the face of well-established patriarchal values in Bangladesh, piecemeal policies are likely to be insufficient in mitigating marital violence. Instead, our study calls for comprehensive social policy packages that simultaneously encourage all three aspects of women's empowerment.

Keywords: marital violence; Bangladesh; education; paid work; NGO membership; non-governmental organisations; NGOs; microfinance; social policies; female empowerment; women empowerment; economic empowerment; patriarchal values.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPP.2014.059523

International Journal of Public Policy, 2014 Vol.10 No.1/2/3, pp.135 - 160

Received: 07 Mar 2012
Accepted: 30 Nov 2012
Published online: 13 May 2014 *

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Title: Curbing marital violence through social policies: perspectives from the Bangladesh demographic and health survey

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