Over 37% Indian women suffer spousal violence

New Delhi, Mar 3 (UNI) Despite passage of a legislation to provide succour to women affected with domestic violence, over 37 per cent married women suffer from this social menace.

This was significant in view of the women groups complaining that there has not been any significant increase in the budget to provide assistance to these women through establishing more 'short stay homes' and training of protection officers.

According to the Family Health Survey Report III, women in rural areas faced more violence at 40.2 per cent than those in urban areas.

Bihar which is lagging behind in both education and health indicators, especially among women, has the maximum number of women facing physical and sexual abuse from their husbands. Though in other states rural women faced more physical and sexual abuse, in case of Bihar urban women were the worst sufferers with about 62.2 per cent of them facing domestic violence as compared to 58.5% in rural areas.

The incidence of domestic violence among women of Rajasthan was also rampant with about 46.3 per cent of them suffering it followed by Madhya Pradesh 45.8 per cent Tripura 44.15 per cent Manipur 43.9 per cent Uttar Pradesh 42.4 per cent Tamil Nadu 41.9 per cent West Bengal 40.3 per cent and Arunachal Pradesh 38.8 per cent.

The better empowerment of women of Himachal Pradesh was evident from the fact that they suffered lesser violence at homes as compared to their counterparts from other states.

Though Tamil Nadu has better record as far as education of women was concerned, Chennai recored the maximum 40.6 per cent women complaining of domestic violence followed by Kolkatta 26.7 per cent and Mumbai 19.5 per cent. Delhi recorded the least incidents of domestic violence with only 16.3 per cent women facing it.

Spousal violence has been found to be lesser among educated women however, even among them about 16 per cent suffered from violence, the Survey pointed out.

Interestingly, the last National Family Health Survey had shown that many a times women feel that their husbands were entitled to physically abuse them in case food was not cooked on time and other such incidents. However, with spreading education the mindset and attitude of women towards domestic violence is changing.

The attitude of civil society, which earlier used to advocate women to compromise with their husbands even after being thrashed, is also changing. The government has also enacted the Domestic Violence Bill to provide protection to women facing violence at homes and provide them legal right to stay in their matrimonial homes.

UNI