A prospective study to find the prevalence of domestic violence against married females of rural India

Abstract

Background: Starting from Vedic age to twenty first century, women have never been given equal freedom as of males. It is always the women who have to be on the tight rope, subject to inequality and looked down as an inferior sex. The aim and objective of the study was to estimate the prevalence of domestic violence.Methods: 776 married females were selected by systematic random sampling from the field practice area under primary health care. Prior a pilot study was carried out among 25 married class IV female workers. A predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used and all the confidentiality was maintained. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 21 software.Results: Average age of the respondents was 28.13 years with range 18 to 56 years. Overall 96% respondents were literate, whereas literacy rate in rural population in parent district was 67.8%. Majority number of respondents were housewives i.e. 58.37%.Conclusions: Various sociodemographic factors like age of the women, education of women and perpetrator, age at marriage of women, and the socio-economic status shows inverse relationship with occurrence of domestic violence. More economic empowerment, along with higher education, may provide women with the ground of awareness protesting platform eventually promoting protective factors against domestic violence.