Gender based violence against female adolescents and factors affecting it in Bangladesh

Rahman Mizanur, Jahangirnagar University
Mohammad Kabir, Jahangirnagar University

Violence in the domestic sphere is usually inflicted by household inmates. The reasons or grounds of violence vary from individual to individual and on different perspectives. It threatens health, wellbeing, right and dignity of women. In this study, an attempt was made to assess the pattern of domestic violence against adolescent females and also to identify the factors influencing it. Adolescents aged 10-19 years constituted the study population. A multistage cluster sampling technique was adopted to select the sample. Data on 3362 adolescents from rural and urban areas were analyzed. To substantiate the quantitative results, a series of focus group discussion were carried out among the adolescents. Among the sample adolescents, overall prevalence of domestic violence was 33.6%. It was 31.5% among married and 37.9% among unmarried adolescents. Multivariate regression analysis showed that religion; joint family, family size and premarital sexual activity, income are important correlates of domestic violence.