Determinants of Intimate Partner SexualViolence against Women in India

Abstract: Intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) is a public health problem andprimarily affects women. Almost 30% of all women who have been in arelationship with a man, have experienced physical or sexual violence by theirpartner in their life. Even though sexual violence is being investigated inIndia, the determinants of sexual violence are thus far little investigated,specifically the determinants of IPSV. The purpose of the study was toexamine the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of IPSV againstwomen in India. The study was carried out using a quantitative method basedon secondary data from the National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS-4). Thevariables used was age, residential area, education, religion, wealth index andemployment (current/all year/seasonal). Descriptive statistics, Chi-square testand a multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to analyze the data.The results indicated that younger women experienced more IPSV than olderwomen, and women in rural areas lived through more IPSV than women inurban areas. However, were women with urban residency were more likely tobe exposed to IPSV, which indicates that urban residency can be a risk factorfor sexual violence. A remarkable finding was that the prevalence of IPSVamong working women was higher (9%) than nonworking women (6%), butthat the adjusted ORs showed no correlation between working status andIPSV. Current study has added further evidence of IPSV in India, usingnationally representative samples. Younger women with lower educationshould be emphasized and seen as a risk group for IPSV. An in-depth studyregarding the partner’s characteristics in India is warranted and an importantstep to chart additional determinants for IPSV.