Women’s Access to Income and Its Effect on Spousal Violence – Experience of Microcredit Borrowers in Bangladesh

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue V, May 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

Women’s Access to Income and Its Effect on Spousal Violence – Experience of Microcredit Borrowers in Bangladesh

ATM Jahiruddina^1*, Tania Afroze², Mir Sohrab Hossain³, Nusrat Zahan Lopa⁴

^1,2,3,4Business Administration Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna 9208, Bangladesh
*Corresponding author

Abstract: – The study investigates microcredit borrower women’s experiences about violence on them by their husbands, with a particular focus on the differences among the women of different poverty groups in this regard. Furthermore, this study investigates the underlying socio-economic circumstances that might have resulted in differential experiences pertinent to spousal violence of the women of different. The study was conducted in the western part of rural Bangladesh with 640 microcredit borrower women with the help of a structured questionnaire survey and a series of unstructured in-depth interviews. The findings suggest that women close to the poverty line (just above or below) experienced significant improvement with regards to spousal violence. Direct involvement of women in managing microcredit funded venture, and at the same time, significant improvement in the household’s living standard resulting from the income of microcredit investment have been found as the main reasons for this improvement. The findings also suggest that violence on women is likely to reduce with longer duration of borrowing period. This study also suggests that participation in microcredit programs, in some instances, has aggravated spousal violence. In most cases, a section of absolute poor borrowers were victim of such situations.

Key words: Microcredit, Domestic violence, Poverty, Bangladesh.

I. INTRODUCTION

Violence against women by their husbands is a severe, prevalent and yet often ignored problem throughout the world. The World Bank has already marked it as a global epidemic (Chowdhury & Morium, 2015).Although different terms are used to describe this phenomenon as growing body of literature emerges on this issue in the recent years, spousal violence and domestic violence are the two terms used most commonly to describe this phenomenon in the context Bangladesh.

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