If you had thought that married women, who are working and financially independent, are self-sufficient and thus much happier, you are in for a rude shock. In a first-of-its-kind of study in India, researchers at the RTI International, a North Carolina-headquartered research institute, Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and a few US institutions, found out startling facts about these women.
The study pointed out that financial independence of women often builds insecurity among husbands, leading to physical, sexual and psychological violence against them.
This study specially focussed on the low income urban populations in Bangalore. Instances of women being physically abused by their husbands are staggeringly high across the Indian subcontinent, said the main author of the research paper, Suneeta Krishnan.
The study conducted in southern India examined the association between spousal employment status and physical domestic violence. The study group consisted of 744 married women, aged between 16 and 25, residing in low-income communities in Bangalore. Participants were studied across two years and interviewed three times.
“We often assume that when a woman is earning, she has a greater role in decision-making. But in our formative research conducted in Bangalore, women viewed employment as an excess burden, in addition to taking care of home and children. Domestic conflict seemed to be more likely to occur in such situations. Furthermore, in case of employment instability among husbands, household conflict appeared to increase,” Krishnan added.
The study then registered that women who were unemployed at first visit and had begun employment by the next visit had an 80% higher odds of violence, as compared to women who maintained their unemployed status. Similarly, women whose husbands had stable employment initially but then faced loss of jobs/salaries, had 1.7 times the odds of violence, as compared to women whose husbands maintained their stable employment.
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