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Wife Abuse in Tamil Nadu

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Abstract

Wife abuse is a major public health and human rights problem. Using an ecological framework, data from National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2005–2006) of 3446 women were analyzed to determine the factors associated with wife abuse in urban and rural Tamil Nadu, India. The prevalence rate of wife abuse in the year prior to the interview was 25.8% and was similar across urban and rural areas. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that in urban and rural Tamil Nadu, the micro level variables explained the highest percentage of variance in wife abuse followed by the ontogenetic, the exo system, and the macro system variables. Some of the variables that were significantly associated with wife abuse in Tamil Nadu were witnessing parental violence, drinking habit in husbands, emotional abuse, patriarchal ideology, and positive attitudes towards abuse. Implications of the results are discussed within the socio-cultural milieu of the respondents.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to convey my heartfelt thanks to the reviewers for their excellent comments. My sincere thanks to Ms. Vishalini Carolyn Street, Lecturer, Temasek polytechnic, Singapore for proof reading and Dr. Aravindhan Natarajan, school of social work, Visiting Assistant Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University for providing important suggestions on the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Social Work, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, Singapore

    Srinivasan Chokkanathan

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  1. Srinivasan Chokkanathan
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Chokkanathan, S. Wife Abuse in Tamil Nadu. J Fam Viol 27, 275–285 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-012-9430-8

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