Intersectional community correlates of married women’s experiences of male intimate partner physical violence in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundIn Bangladesh, little is known about community-level factors shaping married women’s experiences of male intimate partner physical violence (MIPPV); it is also unknown if these factors interact with each other. We examined the (1) association between four residential community characteristics defined by the attributes of ever married women in those communities–younger age, lower education, higher participation in earning an income and poverty; and (2) two-way interactions between these community-level MIPPV correlates.MethodsWe used a cross-sectional sample comprising 14 557 currently married women who were living with their spouses from 911 Bangladeshi communities. Data were collected during 13–22 August 2015. Conflict Tactics Scale-2 measured the outcome–women’s current MIPPV experiences; and multilevel logistic regression models predicted this outcome.ResultsFour community characteristics including higher proportions of women’s earning an income and achieving higher education were not associated with their increased likelihood of experiencing MIPPV. However, women living in higher earning participation, higher educated communities were significantly more likely to experience MIPPV than those in lower earning participation, higher educated communities (predicted probability, p=0.30, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.34 vs p=0.24, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.25).ConclusionThis is the first study to examine interactions between women’s community-level MIPPV correlates in Bangladesh. Although we did not find support for the relationship between women’s most intersectional community-level locations and MIPPV, we did find a currently invisible vulnerable intersectional location: higher earning participation, higher educated communities. Bangladeshi violence against women prevention policies and programmes, therefore, need to engage with these particular communities to tackle head on male responses to these locations to reduce MIPPV.

Intersectional inequalities in younger women’s experiences of physical intimate partner violence across communities in Bangladesh

“…Using standardization addressed the rightly skewed poor community variable. This approach is consistent with earlier research [17,46].…”

“…They may also unable to provide social support and networks for women to resist and men to stop perpetrating violence [28]. In Bangladesh, a study [20] examining the effect of communitylevel factors found that community average per capita household income was a protective factor for physical or sexual IPV, although that association was marginally significant, while another study [17] examined but did not find association between community-level poverty and physical IPV, rendering the association between community-level poverty and IPV inconclusive. Given the lack of empirical evidence using nationally representative data, we wanted to examine whether the interaction between women's intersectional social locations and community types affect their experiences of physical IPV.…”

“…Although poverty is an important risk factor [4,15] and communities in which women live affect their experiences of physical IPV [13,16], this study did neither examine this outcome at women's intersecting social locations of younger age and poverty, nor did it examine how these intersectional locations vary across communities. Since mid-1990s, studies have underscored the importance of communities in shaping women's IPV in the United States [16] and around the world [13] including Bangladesh [17,18]. A few studies [19,20] have also examined interactions among women's community-and individual-level single-axis locations (e.g., interaction between individual-and communitylevel income and women's status) but not their intersectional locations.…”

Intersectional approaches to data: The importance of an articulation mindset for intersectional data science

“…Table 2 summarizes a range of articles from the 172 reviewed; these included autoethnographic (Ashlee et al, 2017), ethnographic (Sharp, 2021) and narrative accounts (de Regt, 2017), qualitative interview-based studies (Meier, 2020; Peretz, 2017; Thorjussen and Sisjord, 2020), quantitative survey designs (Lord et al, 2019; Rahman et al, 2020) and analysis of secondary data (Earnshaw et al, 2021; Ugidos et al, 2020). Table 2 also identifies the main intersectionality-related findings in the selection of studies, highlighting how each study could be grouped together in different ways around engagement with intersectional methods (Ashlee et al, 2017; de Regt, 2017; Wiens et al, 2020), the use of intersectionality to contribute new insights in a disciplinary field or context of study (Lord et al, 2019; Thorjussen and Sisjord, 2020), to better understand social injustices or inequality (Meier, 2020; Rahman et al, 2020; Ugidos et al, 2020), or to engage in acts of resistance or liberation (Ashlee et al, 2017; Peretz, 2017). We explore in greater detail how and why some of these articles adopt additive thinking and articulation relational frames in the next section.…”

Feminism, gender medicine and beyond: a feminist analysis of "gender medicine"

“…The Israeli GM society, led by the former IGM president, states that trauma is less common in women on its webpage, reflecting a lack of understanding of the prevalence and consequences of childhood abuse and adult-life violence experienced by women [ 76 ]. Only one IGM member, Gillian Einstein, addresses violence in her scientific work [ 77 ] and public appearances.…”