are you indian?

let us see few more facts

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• The median age of first marriage for women aged 25-49 is 18.7 years ^[1] . For comparison, for men it is 24.5 years.
• 86.4% of women aged 25-49 got married by the age of 25.
• 43.7% of women aged 25-49 got married by the age of 18.
• 16.9% of women aged 25-49 got married by the age of 15.
• Marital rape is not a punishment. It's legal for a man to rape his wife if she's older than 15. Section 375 pretty much explicitly points that out. mArRiAgE pRoViDeS cOnSeNt, based on those same misogynistic notions that we are just property of men and just exist for their pleasure and making babies, not as individuals with our agency.. Ever wonder why the reported count that we are searching "rape statistics by country" on any search engine, click on some website and find India at the bottom of the list? The same DHS survey also finds out that 86% of rapes were either by their present or former husbands. Marital accounts for the majority of rapes in our nation and we don't even consider it to be a crime. Oh and we're not even talking about underreporting here.
• Over 90% of marriages in India are arranged marriages with nearly 90% prevalence of dowry in marriages^[2] and in which couples have some say in choosing their partners was 40% in 2005. But however according to the analysis of the 2011-12 IHDS data^[3] which looked at the decision making at the time of marriage :-
  • In 73.0% of all marriages, only the parents/other relatives of the respondent chose the husband.
  • In 22.7% of all marriage both the respondent and her parents jointly chose the husband.
  • In 3.9% of all marriages, the respondent herself chose her husband.
  • In 69.7% of all marriage, women only met their husbands on the day of wedding/gauna. In only 16.5% of all marriages, women knew their husbands for atleast a month and in 9.1% of all marriages, women knew their husabnds for atleast one year.
• 42.2% of men aged 15-49 believe that domestic violence is justified if she either :-
  • Goes out without telling him
  • Neglects the children of the house
  • Argues with him
  • Refuses to have sexual intercourse with him
  • Doesn't cook properly
  • He suspects she is unfaithful
  • She shows disrespect towards for in-laws
• 36.9% of men aged 15-49 disagree with atleast one of the following reasons whether it is justified for a wife to refuse sexual intercourse and 14.6 of men aged 15-49 disagree with all the three of following reasons :-
  • Knows her husband has a sexually transmitted disease
  • Knows her husband has sex with other women
  • Is tired or not in mood
• 22.9% of men aged 15-49 agree with atleast one of the followings reasons and 4.8% agree with all of the reasons that if a wife refuses to have sexual intercourse then the husband has the right to :-
  • Get angry and reprimand her
  • Refuse to give her financial support
  • Use force to have sex
  • Have sex with another woman
• 50.2% of marriage women aged 15-49 report that their husbands display the following controlling behaviors :
  • Is jealous or angry if she talks to other men
  • Frequently accuses her of being unfaithful
  • Does not permit her to meet her female friends
  • Tries to limit her contact with her family
  • Insists on knowing where she is at all times
  • Does not trust her with any money
• 26.4% of married women aged 15-49 in the past 12 months report experiencing either physical, sexual or emotional violence from their husbands.
  • If we were to exrapolate these numbers, the population of women aged 15-49 in 2016 being 34.59 crores/345.9 million^[4] with 73.1% being married and 26.4% facing domestic violence in the past 12 months, the figure comes out to be about 6.60 crores/66.0 million married women aged 15-49 million facing domestic violence in the past.
  • The real numbers about this are likely to be even higher since DHS/NFHS survey itself does suffer from limitations^[5] such as :-
    • As we know the greater the length of a questionnaire, the poorer is the quality of data, the women's questionnaire was 93 pages long and had 1,139 questions.
    • Poorly trained field agents.
    • Badly phrased questions. For example one question about domestic including sexual violence such as "how old were you the first time you were forced to have sexual intercourse or perform any other sexual acts by anyone, including (your/any) husband?”. Such intimate questions about facing sexual violence are difficult to answer and with such phrasing and poorly trained field agents, it will definitely lead to underreporting.
• 37.0% of married women aged 15-49 cannot participates at all in either own health care, making major household purchases. visit her family or relatives and 16.0% do not participate in making all of these three decisions at all.
• Just 42.7% of married women aged 15-49 are allowed to go alone at all of the three following places :-
  • The market
  • The health facility
  • Places outside the village/community
• 30.6% of married women aged 15-49 were employed in the past 12 months and 80% earned cash compared to 97.1% of married men being employed and 91.1% earning cash.
• As they like to to say that women have it so easy, that we have choices, we just get married, take all our husband's wealth and just live on his income doing nothing and live such an easy life full of privilege such such bearing the burden of domestic work. Women in India spend 352 minutes on domestic work compared to 52 minutes for men, women do 577% more domestic work than men^[6]. Upto 64% of women said that they have no choice in taking up care work. Women's unpaid labor gets unrecognized.
• The burden of domestic work and child care keeps women out of jobs. According to a study in June 2018^[7] by International Labor organisation (ILO), the labor force participation rate in India for mothers living with children aged 0-5 is 25.5% with upto 48% of women stop working within four months after return from maternity leave, for comparison, for fathers with children aged 0-5, their labor force participation rate is 92.6%. In India, 78.2% of women who were outside the labor force that they were outside because of unpaid care work.
• Another study by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), although it wasn't nationwide, it was only seven states namely, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, so it isn't nationally representative study but these were some of their findings^[8] :
  • 60% of men admitted to perpetuating violence against their wives or partners at some point in their lives.
  • 52% of women reported experiencing domestic violence at some point in their lives.
  • 86.2% of men agree with the statement "Women's most important role is to take care of her home and cook for her family".
  • 51.1% of men agree with the statement "A woman should tolerate domestic violence inorder to keep her family together."
  • 65.1% of men agree with the statement "There are times when a woman deserves to be beaten".
  • 93.6% of men agree with the statement "A woman should obey her husband".
  • 76.5% of men agree with the statement "I think a man should have a final say in all family matters".
  • 57.5% of men agree with the statement "A woman cannot refuse to have sex with her husband".
  • 81.8% of men agree with the statement "It would be shameful to have a homosexual son".
  • 48.4% of men disagree with the statement "Daughters/sisters can select the person whom they want to marry".

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References :

[1] 2015-16 Demograhic Health Survey/National Family Health Survey (DHS/NFHS)

[2] Prevalence and evolution of dowry in India

[3] Analysis of intercaste marriage and it's comparison with all marriage

[4] 2011 Census population projections

[5] Limitations of the DHS/NFHS Survey

[6] How unpaid labor keeps India's women and poor unequal

[7] Indian women inordinately burdened by house work and pay the motherhood penalty

[8] The study "Masculinity, initmate partner violence and son preference in India"

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