Working women earning cash and using mobile phones commit violence on husbands, reveals study in India

The research was conducted by health experts at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai.

Working women, who are earning cash and having access to mobile phones, perpetrate more spousal violence on husbands in India, revealed research conducted by health experts at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai.

The research also noted that ‘with increase in wife’s age, spousal violence on husbands increases’, contrary to the common finding that spousal violence on women declined with age.

They noted that prevalence of violence against husband was higher in a nuclear family.

The study indicated that working women who are earning in cash perpetrate more spousal violence on husbands, and this could be for several reasons.

“For instance, as women gain economic autonomy, men may feel that their masculinities are being challenged, and may indulge in controlling wife, or indulging in alcoholic behaviour, leading to experience of spousal violence by cash-earning women,” according to the research titled ‘Prevalence and risk factors of physical violence against husbands: evidence from India’ (2023), published by Cambridge University Press.

The research was conducted by Aparajita Chattopadhyay, Deepanjali Vishwakarma, Suresh Jungari (all IIPS), and Santosh Kumar Sharma (The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi). They observed that ‘access to mobile phones helps empower women, and this could be a threat to a husband, leading to restricting wife in communication, leading to spousal violence’.

With the tremendous increase in mobile usage, they found that ‘improved social network of a wife, who gets support to indulge in violent acts for varying reasons, reporting of husband’s behavioural traits to peers or relatives though mobile phones by wife, exposure to violent media content, could be possible reasons for perpetration of violence of women on men’.