Relating One’s Cultural Practices Around Women, Mental Health to Domestic Violence

An Unsplash image clicked by Sneha Sivarajan

Women in Western countries are affected by different factors when facing Domestic violence than in Asian countries. This could fall back on the individual and communal mindset and many other factors. Coming from India and now working with an NGO in India, I took this opportunity to use my cultural background and the news and lessons I have locally heard while growing up and further analyze this with the added benefit of research articles on similar topics.

For this blog post, I am using 2 interrelated papers — Women and Mental Health: Psychosocial Perspective by Kalpana Srivastava; and Factors Related to Domestic Violence in Asia: The Conflict between Culture and Patriarchy by Jac Brown. What initially started off as not being able to choose between two papers soon became apparent that both are very similar and it is rather better to combine them into one blog reflection.

The key fact after reading both blogs was that though accurate to most extent, there were some not-so-relatable statements made especially in the Factors Related to Domestic Violence in Asia article. One such statement was “There are times when living with an extended family also protects from abuse”*. Having observed culturally and heard by people themselves, I have never heard that staying with an extended family has never aided women from abuse. It might temporarily stop but not when there are many other reasons like generational practices and similar values — it depends on the people in the extended family as well, I guess.

Some of my key points to remember from these articles are:

• Heise model similar to the child’s ecosystem model comprises 4 categories/levels of analysis — personal factors(innermost circle and personal backgrounds of the victim and the perpetrator), the microsystem(family and direct relations), the ecosystem(social environment), and the macrosystem(attitudes and believes that form and shape cultural context).
• “A study comparing face-to-face interviews(FI) and a computer generated(CI) voice asking questions in South India reported 29.8% to 31.3% for FI and 19.3% to 22.6% for CI”* which was published in a 2011 paper.
• “A study reported 37% to 45% of women have been beaten by their husbands, depending on the particular state, depending on particular state”*(1997). “Another study reported in a different state in India, 67% of women had experienced a range of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse by their husbands”*(1999).
• “Rates of DV in 2012 was reported about 25.8% which was similar across urban and rural area settings in the state studied.”*
• “National DV rates appear to be somewhat lower than regional rates of DV which may be related to the influence in urban regions where the attitude to DV is changing.”*
• “There are a few conventions related to documentation of the extent of this problem as there appear to be few common assessment instruments used in these areas compared to research in Western countries.”*

Violence from the terms of this blog and research has been quoted in terms of experiencing physical, psychological, emotional, or sexual violence shown in the past year. Being culturally sensitive was also a key consideration in this research and designing ways to address the direct intervention to improve the lives of the women. All the studies taken into consideration have neem from regional-based and not nationwide in scale.

I could also cross-check and confirm a lot of lessons I had learned growing up in India with the paper on Domestic Violence like:

• Women who have witnessed abuse are more likely to be abused.
• Alcohol use by men can be associated with abuse.
• Age disparity between the husband and wife, the higher the chances of abuse.
• Women under the age of 19 are more likely than women over the age of 30.
• Women with more than one or two children are more likely to be abused. Pregnancy may be related to fewer resources to go around which is associated with having more children.
• There is a link between pregnancy and abuse but this is frequently in the hands of the mother-in-law.
• “The link between a number of children and DV may be explained by the suggestion that more children in a confined space and limited time to go around between the children provides yet another level of stress that may trigger exasperation and abuse.”*
• Change in role or liberation experienced by women who have been victimized and then when they become the mother-in-law, they continue the generational trauma and become the perpetrator of abuse.
• A key factor linked to decreasing abuse has been education. It plays an increased role in reducing the extent of DV experiences, and can also be related to social class and women empowerment.
• Income generation is another factor linked with domestic violence. This is more likely inconsistent as it helps at times and doesn’t in others.
• Factors related to financial problems increase stress levels and hence trigger abuse.
• In rural India, working women are more likely to experience abuse. Women who were perceived as attempting to raise status by working led to DV.
• When there is no shortage of money, women producing income has no effect as a threat to husbands than when there is a need for survival.
• Positive attitude to partner violence is related to increased rates of DV and it becomes a norm in society.
• “Women in rural northern India who have a higher tolerance for violence were more likely to be abused”*, according to some studies.
• Attitudes toward decision-making are linked to DV. When only the husband makes the main decisions, there is a higher chance of DV than when the husband takes their wife’s opinions into consideration. “Men with controlling behavior is linked to domestic violence.”*
• “Women in rural northern India who had the autonomy to make decisions, and to visit family and friends, experienced lower rates of DV”.*
• Family values also play a part in the perpetration of DV. Thus, victims are reluctant to disclose DV for fear of humiliation to their families.
• “When there is DV, women are frequently blamed for it. If abused women terminate their relationship, then they are ostracised by the family and the society.”* This is directly linked to DV.

These are more linked to culture and societal norms than religion. Though beliefs may impact DV, it has not yet been researched.

From the other paper, there was more of a correlation in terms of how these reasons for DV were related to mental health issues. The main part of the focus of this paper has been definite terms like health, and mental health, and theories like Social support and its relation to mental health, Social learning theory of violence, Symbolic interaction theory, Relation between poverty and poor mental health, and Social position, poverty, and health. I mainly used this paper as a backbone and structure setup for the paper on Domestic violence. Still, I learned a few important points which I would like to mention:

• “Gender considerations in health promotion and healthcare have to highlight the mental health risks and the socioeconomic and cultural determinants of mental health.”*
• “Economic independence, physical, sexual, and emotional safety and security are primarily needed for good mental health.”*
• Gender-based discrimination could be classified as a gross violation of human rights and leads to disability caused by poor mental health in the current society.
• “Women in developed and developing countries alike are almost twice as likely as men to experience depression. Other leading causes being violence and self-inflicted injuries.”*
• Social support plays a huge role in women’s mental health. When they have s support system, they can focus on themselves and prevent taking a toll on their physical and mental health.
• “Violence is like an endemic in the society.”* A staggering 1/5th of the women have either experienced sexual abuse or at least been stalked by someone known or unknown to them.
• “Human aggression and violence are learned conduct, especially through direct experience and by observing others’ behaviors. Aggressive behavior patterns are learned by modeling and imitation. Rewards and punishments also play a crucial role in behavioral patterns.”*
• Women who have witnessed violence are observed to have depression and poor self-esteem.
• Domestic violence can have a significant impact on long-term health implications.
• The vicious cycle of adversities in women from a poor and uneducated background had a higher risk of poor mental health. Higher levels of education act as a protective buffer against poor mental health in these cases. Similar for higher political and social status.
• “A strong inverse relationship exists between social position and physical and mental health outcomes. Adverse effects are 2–2.5 times higher amongst people in more disadvantaged positions.”*
• This can also be said that women’s problems are mainly not internal or personal deficiencies. Instead, the problems arise from societal ones such as sexism and racism.

Another point I would like to add is more about religious believes as it wasn’t addressed much in either paper. Having experience with people living in these areas, one of the key points of observation has been that these people are very contradicting in their beliefs, especially women. The men are either very religious or not at all religious. But the women, are taught growing up to be religious and hence, they are very religious and believe in gods. But at the same time, due to their hardships, they do not believe in waiting for gods to help them get through and are very self reliant in that sense. They focus on just surviving and getting through day by day and not thinking about their resilience and strength. When there are religious festivals and occasions, the women take up the front in prayer preparation, having community events, etc but at the same time let the men take the spotlight.

Another thing about religion and Indian society is the stigma around menstrual health. It is treated as a taboo and stigma, especially amongst people even those in slums. Women are not allowed to participate in religious events or go to religious places during their periods. They struggle to go and buy products required for their menstrual hygiene. They struggle with isolation during their periods. There is a huge stigma while purchasing period products as using those products is like a taboo. Menstrual products are also not that affordable and filled with chemicals in the affordable ones. We are thinking of addressing some parts of menstrual health as well in our intervention.

Bringing both of these readings along with my thoughts, I feel these two solidified my thoughts on these topics and provided a more psychological perspective and a statistical perspective. These have mainly added to the strength and resilience analysis of the women in the Koliwada slums for our project. We had previously collected some observations of the women in those slums but looking at the type of influences and struggles they might have gone through provided another perspective. This also tied up to the local perception they have toward women’s mental health. We plan to use this as background research to help us implement our initiative with the help of the NGO.

References:

The main papers focus on for this blog post are:

Women and Mental Health: Psychosocial Perspective by Kalpana Srivastava

Factors Related to Domestic Violence in Asia: The Conflict between Culture and Patriarchy by Jac Brown

*All the double quotes in the writing are taken from the referred two blogs word to word.