MICS4 Survey Design Workshop

Multiple Indicator Cluster SurveysSurvey Design Workshop

Questionnaire For Individual Women:

Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence

MICS4 Survey Design Workshop

Background

• Violence against women is highly sensitive area.

• It touches upon issues of power, gender and sexuality.

• It affects the well-being and health of women, as well as the well-being of the children who witness it.

MICS4 Survey Design Workshop

Previous Research

• Ending domestic violence requires:

– changing the attitudes that permit such abuse– developing legal and policy frameworks to prohibit

and reject it, and – improving women’s access to economic resources

and girls’ access to education.

Attitudes towards domestic violence

• Attitudinal questions used to assess the acceptance of certain social norms on gender roles

• Positive attitudes do not necessarily signify approval by women of wife-beating, but they signify women’s acceptance of such norms

MICS4 Survey Design Workshop

MICS Indicators

# 8.14 - Attitudes toward domestic violencePercentage of women age 15-49 who state that a husband/partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife in at least one of the following circumstances:– (1) she goes out without telling him, – (2) she neglects the children,– (3) she argues with him,– (4) she refuses sex with him,– (5) she burns the food

Domestic violence is justified by most women

Percentage of women aged 15-49 years who think that a husband is justified in hitting/beating his wife under certain circumstances

52

64

32

35

54

65

66

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Developing countries (excluding China)

Least developed countries

CEE/CIS

East Asia and Pacif ic (excluding China)

South Asia

Eastern and Southern Africa

West and Central Africa

MICS4 Survey Design Workshop

Methodological issues• Measurement of practices of violence against women, although,

possible, raise some ethical and methodological issues

• Possible via long modules

• The attitudinal indicator has been found to be associated with the prevalence of domestic violence; still many women justify domestic violence even if they have not been victims

• It can be used to advocate for the need to change, at the societal level, attitudes that perpetuate its existence