The cognizable crime of domestic abuse and its effect on quality of life: A study on the female workers of the informal sector of West Bengal

Pages: 500-507
Dishari Gupta and Ishita Chatterjee (Department of Applied Psychology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata )
Sugandha Pramanik (Guest Lecturer, Jogamaya Devi College, University of Calcutta, Kolkata )

Violence against women is a major problem in India and it has a range of 6% in a single state like Himachal Pradesh to as high as 59% in another (Bihar). Intimate Partner Violence is a nationwide challenge and women with barriers in obtaining support are especially at a risk for poor health outcomes. Women workforce participation is essential for the economic development of a country. Social constraints often hinder productivity of women. As per NSSO survey in 2009-2010, the total employment in the country was of 46.5 crore comprising around 2.8 crore in the organized sector. The remaining 43.7 crore comprises of workers are in the unorganized sector. Informal Sector is the largest employer of unskilled workers. The NCRB reports percentage share of domestic violence against women has grown from 3.8% in 2007 to 4.3% in 2011. West Bengal reports a total of 19772 cases of cruelty by husbands and relatives, the rate being highest in India closely followed by Rajasthan, Tripura and Kerala. The present study was carried out on women working in the informal sector and the groups included were informal care givers or aayas, domestic help or maid servants and small enterprise workers. An attempt has been made in the paper to understand the kind of intimate partner violence these women face and how that impacts the quality of life. Multistage stratified random sampling technique was applied to collect data from 408 women workers from 5 districts of West Bengal namely Howrah, South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Purulia and Nadia. Different groups of female workers i.e Aaya, Domestic Help and Small Scale Enterprise workers differed significantly in terms of Quality of Life with the section of Domestic Help having least satisfaction in Quality of Life. The three forms of abuse namely physical, psychological and sexual significantly predict Quality of Life of which physical violence is the highest predictor. All the forms of violence are positively correlated to QOL. The study also suggests that there is an immediate need for young women’s responsive initiatives to enable them to avoid such experiences and prepare them to cope with such harassments.