Intimate Partner Violence against Women: Experiences from a Woman-focused Development Programme in Matlab, Bangladesh

This paper explores the association between microcredit-based development programmes and domestic violence against women perpetrated by their husbands. A sub-set of cross-sectional data collected in 1999 from 60 BRAC-ICDDR,B study villages in Matlab, Bangladesh, was used. Data were analyzed to characterize group-level differences among study women regarding the reported occurrence of violence (physical and/or mental) and to identify its predictors. About 17.5% of women had experienced violence from their husbands in the past four months, the proportion being greater among BRAC house-holds (p=0.05). Results of logistic regression identified age, schooling, age of household head, and self-rated poverty status of household as important predictors of violence, but not level of BRAC member-ship. The study concludes that the greater level of domestic violence reported during the initial stages of BRAC membership subsided with the introduction of skill-development training among participant women over time.

Keywords
Violence; Domestic violence; Empowerment; Microcredit; Women's status; Women's role; Bangladesh