Determinants of Women's Attitude towards Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence from Bangladesh

TL;DR

This study identifies key individual and community factors influencing Bangladeshi women's attitudes towards intimate partner violence, highlighting the roles of education, religion, and access to information in shaping perceptions.

Contribution

It employs advanced multilevel statistical models on nationally representative data to uncover determinants of women's attitudes towards IPV in Bangladesh, providing nuanced insights.

Findings

Higher education and access to information reduce IPV justification.

Muslim women and residents of certain divisions are more tolerant of IPV.

Community decision scores influence women's attitudes significantly.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the important determinants responsible for the variation in women's attitude towards intimate partner violence (IPV). Methods: A nationally representative Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2014 data of 17,863 women is used to address the research questions. In the study, two response variables are constructed from the five attitude questions, and a series of individual and community-level predictors are tested. The preliminary statistical methods employed in the study include univariate and bivariate distributions, while the adopted statistical models include binary logistic, ordinal logistic, mixed-effects multilevel logistic models for each response variable, and finally, the generalized ordinal logistic regression. Results: Statistical analyses reveal that among the individual-level independent variables age at first marriage, respondent's education, decision score, religion, NGO membership, access to information, husband's education, normalized wealth score, and division indicator have significant effects on the women's attitude towards IPV. Among the three community-level variables, only the mean decision score is found significant in lowering the likelihood. Conclusions: It is evident that other than religion, NGO membership, and division indicator, the higher the value of the variable, the lower the likelihood of justifying IPV. However, being a Muslim, NGO member, and resident of other divisions, women are found more tolerant of IPV from their respective counterparts. These findings suggest the government, policymakers, practitioners, academicians, and all other stakeholders to work on the significant determinants to divert women's wrong attitude towards IPV, and thus help to take away this deep-rooted problem from society.