Understanding Intimate Partner Violence in Rural Bangladesh
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Report Understanding intimate partner violence in rural Bangladesh Prevention and response Ruchira Tabassum Naved, Fiona Samuels, Virginie Le Masson, Aloka Talukder, Taveeshi Gupta and Kathryn M. Yount May 2017 This report is part of a larger study on Violence Against Women and Girls in South Asia. To view all outputs from this project please visit odi.org/vawg-southasia Overseas Development Institute 203 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8NJ Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399 E-mail: [email protected] www.odi.org www.odi.org/facebook www.odi.org/twitter Readers are encouraged to reproduce material from ODI Reports for their own publications, as long as they are not being sold commercially. As copyright holder, ODI requests due acknowledgement and a copy of the publication. For online use, we ask readers to link to the original resource on the ODI website. The views presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of ODI. © Overseas Development Institute 2017. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Cover photo: A counsellor at the National Helpline Centre for Violence Against Women and Children, Bangladesh © Fiona Samuels ODI 2016 Acknowledgements The study was carried out with funding from the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID), through the South Asia Research Hub. We would like to thank the full study team who carried out the fieldwork. We are also grateful to all our study respondents in Dhaka, Gazipur and Mymensingh who gave us their valuable time to answer our many often highly sensitive questions. We hope that findings from this study can make a difference to the lives of boys and men, girls and women in Bangladesh and beyond. Understanding intimate partner violence in rural Bangladesh: prevention and response 3 Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abbreviations 8 Executive summary 9 1 Introduction and study objectives 13 1.1 Introduction 13 1.2 Research objectives 14 1.3 Structure of the report 14 2 Conceptual framework 15 3 Research methodology and description of study sites 17 3.1 Research methodology 17 3.2 Description of study sites 19 4 The national context 23 4.1 Prevalence of IPV in Bangladesh 23 4.2 Multilevel risk factors underlying IPV 27 5. Gendered social norms, risk factors and triggers of IPV 30 5.1 Norms around marriage and marital relationships 30 5.2 Norms and practices around adolescence 38 5.3 Norms around IPV 41 5.4 Sexual harassment and sexual violence against unmarried adolescent girls 44 4 ODI Report 6 Intimate partner violence – definitions, prevalence multi-level influences 48 6.1 Types of IPV and perceived prevalence 48 6.2 Perceived change over time in IPV 50 6.3 Multi-level influences on IPV 51 7. Policy and responses to IPV 57 7.1 Policy framework and government multi-sectoral programme 59 7.2 Response to GBV/IPV 70 7.3 Prevention: building community awareness to tackle GBV 64 7.4 Norm setters 69 8 Conclusions and recommendations 72 8.1 Conclusions 72 8.2 Recommendations 73 References 75 Understanding intimate partner violence in rural Bangladesh: prevention and response 5 List of boxes, figures and tables Boxes Box 1. Bangladesh: conventions ratified, and policies and legislation enacted relating to violence against women 23 Box 2. Social norms of masculinity, femininity, corrigibility of women and sanctity of marriage 33 Box 3. Men’s fears about women working outside the home 35 Box 4. Fatema’s son 37 Box 5. Violence as discipline 41 Box 6. Adolescent boy supports a girl to take action against sexual harassment 44 Box 7. Rape, homicide and culture of impunity 47 Box 8. A child bride 52 Box 9. Natal family attitudes towards daughters and IPV 53 Box 10. Equal rights to divorce – a double-edged sword for women? 55 Box 11. A government-run shelter for women and girls in Gazipur 60 Box 12. Informal systems for saving a marriage 62 Box 13. Knowing where to get help 64 Figures Figure 1. Conceptual framework – seeing IPV through an ecological and institutional lens in fragile-state contexts 14 Figure 2. Map of study sites 20 Figure 3. Prevalence of rural and urban men’s perpetration of different form of violence 24 6 ODI Report Tables Table 1. Total number of interviews (by type and by site) 18 Table 2. Profile of study villages 21 Table 3. Reasons given for acceptability of violence, BDHS 2007 29 Table 4. Acts of different types of IPV reported in in-depth interviews, Gazipur and Mymensingh 49 Table 5. Calls to telephone helpline (part of the Multi-Sectoral Programme) by year and type of assistance required 60 Understanding intimate partner violence in rural Bangladesh: prevention and response 7 Abbreviations BASA Association for Social Advancement ASPADA Agro-forestry Seed Production and Development Association BBS Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics BDHS Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey BLAST Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust BRAC Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee BUHS Bangladesh Urban Health Survey CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women CLS Community Legal Services CMES Centre for Mass Education in Science DSK Dushtha Shasthya Kendro EVAW Ending Violence Against Women FGD Focus group discussion GBV Gender-based violence GEMS Gender Equity Movement in Schools Icddr,b International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh ICRW International Center for Research on Women IDI In-depth interview IGT Intergenerational trio IPV Intimate partner violence KII Key informant interview MoWCA Ministry of Women and Children Affairs NGO Non-governmental organisation NIPORT National Institute of Population Research and Training ODI Overseas Development Institute PI Principal investigator POPI People’s Oriented Program Implementation P4P Partners for Prevention UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNFPA United Nations Population Fund UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund UP Union Parishad VAWG Violence against women and girls WBGSN World Bank Survey on Gender WHO World Health Organization 8 ODI Report Executive summary Intimate partner violence (IPV) in Bangladesh is pervasive, particularly among younger people and unmarried with 1 in 2 ever-married women aged 15 and over reporting adolescents. physical and/or sexual violence during their lifetime (1 in The literature review identified individual-level risk 4 during the past 12 months). Our research highlights the factors for male perpetration of IPV as including poverty, tensions between traditional gendered norms and changing education level, age, and childhood exposure to violence gender roles, responsibilities and dynamics as a result of (either witnessing or experiencing violence at home). women’s increased access to education, employment, which Risk factors at the household/relationship level include has in turn increased their mobility and empowerment – women’s increasing economic power, quality of the marital tensions that can drive IPV directly and indirectly. There relationship, the number of partners a man or woman is a relatively supportive legal and policy framework, has, and the number of children. And at the community/ with laws against child marriage, domestic violence, and society level, risk factors centre on social norms that define granting equal rights to file for divorce. But this has yet masculinity, norms around dowry and bride price, norms to change the lived reality for women and girls, in which around acceptability of violence, and norms around religion. male perpetration of IPV is considered normal and is even expected to correct ‘bad’ behaviour – i.e., when a girl or woman transgresses (or is perceived to transgress) rigid and Prevalence of IPV conservative gender norms that reinforce women’s inferior Although many participants suggested that IPV was not position relative to men. widespread and not tolerated (with male informants The report presents findings from a literature review and denying that IPV occurred in their community), when from qualitative research conducted in 2016 with women probed, the reality seemed somewhat different. Demands and men from five villages in two districts of Bangladesh, around dowry emerged as a strong driver of IPV, either Gazipur and Mymensingh, selected because of their high at the time of marriage or subsequently. Physical IPV is rates of IPV. Interviews were also carried out at national expected (by men and women) as part of a man’s duty to level in Dhaka. Research methods included key informant discipline his wife. The most common reasons given to interviews with a wide range of stakeholders (government justify wife-beating included a woman not obeying her and non-government), in-depth interviews with young husband, not seeking his permission to go out or take a men and boys and female survivors of IPV, focus group decision, and intervening in matters regarded as his domain. discussions (with single-sex groups) and intergenerational Other reasons included not taking proper care of her in- trios (male and female). This research is part of a broader laws or quarrelling with them, or religious commandments study of three South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Nepal (Hadith). Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to and Pakistan) to explore the underlying drivers, triggers, violence given that IPV is most prevalent in the early years risks and influencing factors for IPV. of marriage. Yet many informants felt that young girls in particular are not ready for the demands placed on them in marriage, which can put them at greater risk of IPV. National context While informants categorised emotional and economic Despite a seemingly strong legal and policy framework, violence perpetrated by husbands as IPV, there is no IPV remains widespread in Bangladesh. Prevalence rates concept of sexual violence within marriage. When range from 49.6% for physical violence to 28.7% for probed, it became clear that most informants believed psychological violence and 27.2% for sexual violence.