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Why Do Women Support Wife-Beating More Than Men in India? Evidence From the National Family Health Survey (2015–2016)

The motivation of this article comes from the observation that in India, more women than men justify violence. This study seeks to analyze this issue through an interplay of familial relationships along with micro-level factors in explaining attitudes. Also, this article aims to associate women’s perception of subjugation level with her lower sense of entitlement toward medical care and child vaccination. We use the National Family Health Survey 2015–2016 data of India of 47,514 married couples to analyze the above issues. Logistic odds ratios predict the factors of violence justification, and a bivariate probit model is used to analyze the joint probability of seeking antenatal care (ANC) and complete child vaccination. We find that (a) there is a significant variation within couples in their responses to the justification variables; even when both spouses disapproved of violence, around 18% of women reported facing the same. This number is 40% when both justified, (b) the higher the number of marital controls women face, the odds of justifying violence increases by three times, (c) also, the joint probability of utilizing both full ANC and Vaccination decreases by 11 percentage points with women living in the most restrictive marital environment. When international conventions and countrywide efforts are geared toward eliminating domestic violence, it is surprising that women themselves justify getting beaten by their husbands over domestic issues. Therefore, policies need to break the vicious chain of normalizing social norms that promote violence.