Food Insecurity and Socio-Economic Determinants of Domestic Violence Against Women in Rural Bangladesh

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and food insecurity are widespread problems affecting millions of people worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Bangladesh, in this regard, is not an exception and thus, it is imperative to understand the dynamics and prevalence of IPV in rural Bangladesh, which would help policymakers to create targeted and effective interventions to combat this pervasive issue. The quantitative analysis of this research is based on secondary data from the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) 2018-2019, a nationally representative dataset of rural Bangladesh. The results show that around 55% of the women are from food-secured households, while others confront various degrees of food insecurity: mild food insecurity (30.48%), moderate food insecurity (11.88%), and severe food insecurity (2.21%). Regarding emotional/verbal IPV, 43% of women are the victims of it, and around 8% of them report experiencing physical IPV in the past 12 months prior to the survey. Moreover, there exists a positive link between IPV and the degree of food insecurity. It revealed that women living in food-secured households experienced the lowest rates of any reported IPV (37.07%). As food insecurity increases, so does the incidence of any reported IPV: 52.39%, 52.65%, and 54.01% among women with mild food insecurity, moderate food insecurity, and severe food insecurity, respectively. The odds ratios from bivariate regression results show that women in households with mild food insecurity (OR = 1.87, P < 0.01), moderate food insecurity (OR = 1.89, P < 0.01), and severe food insecurity (OR = 1.99, P < 0.01) are more likely to experience emotional or verbal IPV than those with food security. The result is also statistically significant after controlling the effect of control variables in all types of regression models, implying the robustness of our estimates. Therefore, the findings highlight the importance of addressing both issues comprehensively to promote gender equality, public health, and women empowerment.