12% women faced spousal violence in dist, says survey

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, March 2

In what appears to be a cause of concern for the fairer sex, almost 12 per cent of the married women aged between 18 and 49 years had faced spousal violence in the district during the past two years, a national survey has revealed.

Will help frame policies: Minister

“The women’s schedule in the survey covered a wide variety of topics, including women’s characteristics, marriage, fertility, contraception, children’s immunisations and healthcare, nutrition, reproductive health, sexual behaviour, HIV/AIDS, women’s empowerment, and domestic violence as well. The findings will help frame future policies and programmes,” says Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar, Union Minister of State For Health and Family Welfare.

About the survey

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had designated the IIPS, Mumbai, as the nodal agency to conduct the NFHS-5. The main objective of each successive round of the NFHS has been to provide high-quality data on health and family welfare and emerging issues in this area.

However, it was nearly half than the gender-based violence reported during the previous survey.

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), conducted by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, through the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, has also indicated that the physical violence faced by married women in the age group of 18 to 49 years has also come down by over 30 per cent.

The study pointed out that 11.6 per cent married women aged 18 to 49 years experienced spousal violence between 2020 and 2021. It was almost half than the 20.5 per cent spousal violence incidents reported between 2015 and 2016.

While 12.6 per cent married women who faced spousal violence were from rural areas, 10.2 per cent violence-hit women lived in urban areas.

The number of married women in the same age group who have experienced physical violence during any pregnancy has come down from 2.3 per cent in 2015-16 to 1.6 per cent in 2020-21. These included 1.7 per cent women in rural areas and 1.4 per cent women in urban areas.

The current survey, fifth in the NFHS series, which provides information on population, health and nutrition for India and each state and Union Territory, with district-level estimates for many important indicators, a copy of which is with The Tribune, showed that 0.2 per cent young women aged 18 to 29 years experienced sexual violence in the district during 2020-21.

All such violence-hit young women were reported from rural areas. However, no such case of sexual violence was reported during the previous survey conducted between 2015 and 16.