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Causes and Contexts of Domestic Violence: Tales of Help‐Seeking Married Women in Sylhet, Bangladesh
Author(s) -
Das Tulshi Kumar,
Alam Md. Fakhrul,
Bhattacharyya Rituparna,
Pervin Amina
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
asian social work and policy review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.286
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1753-1411
pISSN - 1753-1403
DOI - 10.1111/aswp.12055
Subject(s) - domestic violence , wife , dowry , functional illiteracy , poverty , socioeconomic status , polygyny , gender studies , sociology , welfare , socioeconomics , economic growth , criminology , psychology , political science , demography , poison control , population , suicide prevention , law , medicine , environmental health , economics
Domestic violence ( DV ) against married women is widely prevalent across Bangladesh and this merits nuanced attention. Multifarious factors are believed to perpetuate DV in different socioeconomic contexts within the country. This study aimed to understand the causes and contexts of DV in the Sylhet region (a distinct sub‐culture that carries Sylheti identity). This was a qualitative study based on the experiences of 42 victims of DV who sought help from two social welfare organizations, namely ‘Women Support Program ( WSP )’ and ‘Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust ( BLAST )’, both located in Sylhet. Using in‐depth interviews, we tried to interact with the victims to retrieve the causes and contexts of DV in Sylhet. Findings revealed that a number of factors led to DV . These causal and contextual factors for DV were dowry practice, illiteracy, cultural approval of wife beating, women's silence, polygyny, socioeconomic dependency of the wife, conflicts related to extra‐ and premarital affairs, poverty, stigmatization, and drug addiction of the husband. The study concluded that all these factors could be brought under the umbrella of age‐old patriarchal cultural values that continue to create the contexts where DV takes place unabated.