Spousal Violence and Social Norms in India's North East

Preprint

A body of extant literature suggests that improvements in wellbeing and empowerment of women in the process of development are hindered by traditional social norms, which are often patriarchic. This paper investigates the link between traditional social norms and women’s status, in particular, the women's attitude towards violence and incidence of spousal violence. The study context is the tribes of Meghalaya and neighboring areas, where there is great variation regarding patriarchic versus matriarchic lineage, residence and inheritance customs. For the statistical analysis, we combine information on social norms prevailing among the different tribes from the comprehensive ethnographic atlas People of India with household-level data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS). In addition to individual characteristics, we find the extent to which social norms determine violence against women and under what prevailing norms working women are better-off.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification ; Feminist Economics ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
• Subject: Social Norms ; Spousal Violence

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Pal, Sumantra
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
• (where): Kiel, Hamburg
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/179422
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET