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Polygyny and spousal violence in India

were investigated from NFHS-5. Since the data provides information about the other co-wives of women, it is possible to
study polygynous marriage and its relation to spousal violence. In NFHS-5, a question was asked, “Besides yourself, does
your husband have other wives?” Women who indicated that their partners had no other wives were considered to be in
non-polygynous marriages (i.e., monogamy), while those who indicated that their partners had one or more other wives
were considered as those being in polygynous marriages. Hence, a dichotomous outcome variable was derived from the
polygyny variable and coded as 0 = non-polygynous and 1 = polygynous.
Although NFHS-5 provides information at the district level, the survey includes a section on “Domestic Violence” only
at the state level (IIPS & ICF, 2021). Data were collected from only one woman in each household. The present study used
the sample of currently married women aged 15 – 49 years. After applying weight, the final sample size for spousal violence
was 58,699 currently married women. Women who had ever been physically, emotionally, or sexually abused by their current
husband in the past 12 months were categorized as having “experienced any spousal violence.” To calculate physical violence,
the currently married women were asked seven questions, such as “Did your partner: (a) slap? (b) twist the arm or pull the hair?
(c) push, shake, or throw something at? (d) punch with his fist or with something that could hurt? (e) kick, drag or beat? (f) try
to choke or burn on purpose? and (g) threaten or attack with a knife, gun, etc.?” If a woman reported that she had experienced
any of the above acts by her husband, it was considered as an incident of physical violence. Similarly, for the computation of
emotional violence, currently married women were asked “If their husbands: (a) say or do something to humiliate you in front
of others? (b) threaten to hurt or harm you or someone close to you? and (c) insult you or make you feel bad about yourself?”
If one of the answers by a woman was affirmative, it was considered as a case of emotional violence. As for sexual violence,
women were asked: “(a) ever been physically forced into unwanted sex by husband/partner? (b) ever been forced into other
unwanted sexual acts by husband/partner? and (c) ever been physically forced to perform unwanted sexual acts?” If the
response was positive for one of the questions by a woman, then it was considered as a case of sexual violence.
The study examined the possible association between polygyny and spousal violence by doing cross-tabulation.
Multivariable logistic regressions were used to obtain unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios by controlling a number of
explanatory factors such as caste, religion, residence, region, wealth index, age of the respondent, age at marriage, number
of living children, spousal age difference, educational status, work status, decision-making power in the household,
freedom to go out alone, control over money, attitude toward wife-beating, alcohol consumption of husband, and marital
control by husband. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant at 95% of the confidence interval. The odds ratio
larger than one represents a greater likelihood of the outcome than the reference category (non-polygynous women) in the
logistic regression analysis. Statistical analyses were conducted using Stata version 16.
3. Results

In India, around 1.4% of the currently married women (N = 7,183) in 2019 – 2021 reported that their husbands had other
wives. Table 1 presents the percentage of currently married women who experienced spousal violence in the past 12 months
by type of marital union. Out of 58,699 eligible women selected for the domestic violence module, 57,757 were in non-
polygynous union and 942 in polygynous union. In India, 22.3% women were victims of at least one type of physical
violence by their husbands. Among them, 38.5% were from polygynous union and 22.1% from non-polygynous union. It
was observed that all the acts of physical violence were more than double in polygynous union than in non-polygynous
union. Regarding different types of violence, slapping was the most reported act of physical violence, followed by being
pushed, shaken, or having something thrown at them.
Overall, 4.9% women faced sexual violence for the past 1 year – 12.2% and 4.8% of them belonging to polygynous
and non-polygynous unions, respectively. Being physically forced to have sexual intercourse was the most prevalent
sexual violence (10.1% in polygynous and 3.5% in non-polygynous), followed by forced with threats and forced to
perform sexual act that women did not want to. About 11.6% women reported that their husbands had emotionally abused
them. Women in polygynous union (27.8%) were more likely to report emotional violence than those in non-polygynous
ones (11.3%). Saying or doing something to humiliate them in front of others (19.5%) and insulting them or making
them feel bad about themselves was the usual form of emotional violence. All three types of emotional violence were
reported by a higher proportion of women in polygynous union than in non-polygynous union. Overall, more women in
polygynous union reported experiencing either physical, sexual, and emotional violence separately or in combination of
these than women in non-polygynous union.
The socioeconomic characteristics of women who endured violence are depicted in Table 2. As mentioned earlier,
polygynous women experienced more violence than non-polygynous women. It was observed that 50.6% of the
polygynous and 30.8% of the non-polygynous women who belonged to the scheduled castes suffered most from marital
violence, followed by those from others, other backward classes, and scheduled tribes. In particular, among scheduled

118 International Journal of Population Studies | 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1