Women's Attitude towards Wife-Beating and its Behavioural Impact on their Maternal and Child Healthcare Service Utilization in Selected South Asian Countries

Background: Individual and family attributes play an important role while utilizing any healthcare service. Women’s viewpoint and her like or dislike is crucial to enhance her participation in maternal and child healthcare... [ view full abstract ]

Background: Individual and family attributes play an important role while utilizing any healthcare service. Women’s viewpoint and her like or dislike is crucial to enhance her participation in maternal and child healthcare (MCH) services. The MCH service utilization is a key factor to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality in South-Asian region where more than half of world’s maternal and child death occurs. Thus, any insightful assessment of women’s justification on wife-beating and its behavioural impact on their MCH service utilization will have number of policy implications in South-Asian countries.

Data source and Methodology: The Demographic Health Survey dataset of India (2005-06), Bangladesh (2011) and Pakistan (2012-13) is used for analysis. Descriptive, bivariate, tri-variate analysis is carried out to understand the level and pattern of women’s justification on wife-beating. Further, multivariate analysis (binary logistic regression) is used to understand the adjusted effect of selected covariates on MCH service utilization in South-Asian region.

Results: More than half of women do not justified wife-beating across the situation. The proportion of women not justifying wife-beating is more in Bangladesh (67%) followed by Pakistan (55%) and India (51%). Utilization of all the selected MCH services viz. full ante-natal care, institutional delivery, post-natal care and child’s full-immunization declines as the justification on wife-beating increases in all the selected countries. Multivariate analysis shows that early marriage, no education, illiterate husband, living in rural areas and being poor along with justification of wife beating adversely associated with utilization of MCH services.

Conclusion: Any effort to minimize the violence against women would reap positive result in enhancing the MCH service utilization. Besides addressing the three important A’s i.e. availability, accessibility and affordability of healthcare in these countries there is an instant need to promote the women’s participation in utilizing the service through securing their dignity in family life.