Masculinity, Intimate Partner Violence and Son Preference in India

Development, 2003

Nata Duvvury and Madhabika B. Nayak outline a broad framework for understanding domestic violence and masculinity based on emerging data from an ongoing multi-site project in India. They highlight the links between norms and practices of masculinity and violence and the affects of socio-cultural, political and economic processes.

Anthropology, 2024

Asian Social Science, 2012

Background: Violence is a major problem in India with family, domestic and honour-related violence having significant impacts on the wellbeing of Indian families and communities. There has been little attention paid to men's experiences, particularly in the Indian State's of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. The objective of this study was to provide baseline data on Indian men's experiences of violence and the key predictors such as age, income, education and religion.

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 2007

Using a cultural ecological framework, the authors examined key psychological antecedents of a pressing public health problem in Tamilnadu, India: the persistence of extreme forms of female neglect including female infanticide and feticide. Community-based respondents (N ϭ 798) were recruited from Tamilnadu, a south Indian state, from villages with highly male biased sex ratios. Study 1 examined beliefs about behavioral gender transgressions in the villages that are identified as having extremely male-biased sex ratios. Study 2 examined the same participants several weeks later, investigating beliefs about biological gender essentialism and attitudes toward violence. Although behavioral and biological aspects of gender were essentialized differently, a regression analysis controlling for SES and marital status found that the more men essentialized female identity, the more they endorsed violence against women and the less anxiety the felt. The authors conclude by discussing the cultural psychological implications of this asymmetry in the essentialist beliefs about gender.

The Journal of Development Studies, 2017

We find a puzzling correlation in the data on domestic violence and children's outcomes in India. Using the 2005-2006 National Family and Health Survey, we see that girls in families experiencing spousal violence are less worse off than boys when only fathers report a son preference while the gender bias reverses when only mothers report having a son preference. To shed light on the puzzle in the data, we present a noncooperative theoretical framework based in economic theories of domestic violence, whereby differing parental son preference and bargaining over investments in girl and boy children potentially explains the observed relationship.

Population geography, 2020

Without exception, the desire for boy child has been a common phenomenon in the South Asian countries including India. Although the preference for sons in India has declined over the years, it persists across states, albeit in different degrees. Son-preference has various adverse out comes including low child sex ratio and low rate of fertility transition, attracting the attention of scholars from various fields. While the phenomenon of son-preference is largely due to cultural beliefs and norms which cannot be altered significantly within a short period of time, there are a set of interdependent socioeconomic factors helping the persistence of such a practice. These factors need to be identified and proper policies must be outlined to curb this prejudiced attitude. Present study attempts to understand the current scenario of son-preference across the states in India and identify the factors along with their persistence. The study concludes that son preference continues to be prevalent in the Indian society albeit with different intensities across regions. Strong son-preference attitude prevails in northern, central, eastern and north eastern regions of India while western and southern states record lower son-preference. Northern, central and eastern regions also record the lowest child sex ratios. Since fertility rates are on the decline and couples are opting for the small family size, preference for boy child will only accentuate the skewness in sex ratio. This is where policy intervention is necessary.

Over the last century, India has been consistently showing imbalances in the sex ratio. According to sociologists and economists, it is the reflection of high son preference prevailing over the last century in India. The main objective of the study is (i) to see the ideology and pattern of son preference among adult men respondents (ii) to see the variation in son preference by zone, state and its relationship with child sex ratio and its comparative account by its women counter respondents, and (iii) to identify the determinants of son preference through some socioeconomic variables and its differentiation by gender using National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) data of 2005-06. The study is based on mainly 40,020 men aged 15-54 years from all states in India and only for making comparison 81,844 reproductive aged women (15-49 years). It is seen through our data that Indian fathers prefer two children with at least one son in their families. Many of them prefer two sons out of the two children. The groups in the lower strata in the development tree show high intensity of son preference. These groups are the illiterate men in rural sector and who are scheduled tribes, agricultural labourers or have low income. Incidence of son preference is seen more among men than women in some selective socioeconomic groups such as urban area, lower age group, primary to higher educational level, men with no occupation and professional or higher level, and well to-do families. On the other hand, women of urban areas, higher educated, belonging to professional job category show less son preference than men but in general women"s bias on son preference is more than men. Nevertheless, it can be said that only social development like education, good health facilities or modernization or urbanization may not be sufficient to neutralize the gender inequality but it is recommended that improving literacy status, especially of women, and minimized gender gap will help to stop or minimize the son preference in India.

The Indian women are generally considered to be quite traditional having a strong son/male preference and belief in the established customs. They also tend to impart these traditional values to their daughters and daughters-in-law. The young women, who are thus, conditioned from their very childhood to be meek and docile, lose their self-confidence and always silently submit to whatever is imposed on them. The increasing level of education has increased their level of confidence and makes their views independent but they too remain socially conditioned and often compromise their own ideologies just to satisfy her family. However, there are some women who are not only confident of themselves and free of traditional bindings on their mentality but also vehemently oppose female feticide and support the assertion of women"s rights.

Space and Culture, India, 2019

At a time when there is a severe dearth of men centric versions of intimate partner violence and the perpetuation of the same by men shows anomalous surge around the world, it is essential to investigate the predictive factors of the same with its intricacies from perpetrators perspectives too. Understanding the factors instrumental in making perpetrators of violence, especially when violence on women is the demonstration of men's failure to appreciate the inherent poise and parity of women, can enable us to have policy interventions to involve men as a part of solution in our efforts towards combating all forms of violence, resulted from aggressive masculinity with gender stereotypes, which sanctions use of violence as well as a sense of entitlement over women. This study attempts to encapsulate the links between IPV perpetration and perpetrators' attitude towards gender equality, childhood gender inequity & violence experiences and explores the associations between education, age, occupation and income of perpetrators on IPV. A quantitative research design was followed in this study where 1600 men from four different districts, having different gender equality and development indices, within Gujarat, India were selected by proportionate random sampling. The results of this study vividly demonstrate the ubiquity of IPV, a petrifying crime pervasive around the world. It also underlines how strong and deeply rooted patriarchal attitudes internalised within men are intricately linked to their inclination towards IPV. Childhood gender inequity, as well as violence experiences of men, is also emerged as a set of proximate factors found to be significantly correlated with their propensity to be violent towards women. This study immensely contributes towards policy recommendations which will help generations to disapprove of violence on women and grow up with gender equity attitudes.

Human Arenas, 2020

Although the prevalence of a traditional negative attitude toward women is widely discussed in Indian culture, a scholarly tool to assess the same has been lacking. We developed a psychometric tool (the Traditional Attitudes toward Indian Women (TAIW) scale, Singh and Aggarwal 2019) to measure traditional negative attitudes toward women in the Indian cultural context and report its relevance for predicting violent attitudes toward women. The present paper offers a detailed discussion on the sixteen items of TAIW scale while positioning them in the relevant literature. The discussion is structured around the four broad dimensions (i.e., Perceived Feminine Frivolity and Selfishness; Extra-familial Patriarchal Attitudes; Within-Family Patriarchal Attitudes; Perceived Feminine Weakness) of the scale as identified in the parent study. The insights offered by the different statements, along with their implications for gender-based violence, have been discussed.