The Study Of Men And Their Understanding About Domestic Violence In Rural Sindh, Pakistan
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Date
2020-04
Authors
Buriro, Ameer Ali
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This study explores and investigates men’s understanding, views, attitudes and experiences of domestic violence in rural Sindh, in Pakistan. These elements are studied by further exploring the issue of domestic violence in relation to the contexts of marriage, patriarchy and masculinity. Based on literature, these contexts greatly influence the incidents and pervasiveness of domestic violence. Methodologically, this study adopted inductive and phenomenological approaches to gather data. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method was employed to gather in-depth data that form the meaning-making and experience-sharing by the male respondents. Data is in the form a collation of narratives of male respondents from the rural areas of Sindh, Pakistan that discourses the issues of gender relations, masculinity, marriage and domestic violence from these men’s own perspectives and experiences. A total of 42 men participated in the study where face-to-face interviews were conducted with them, guided by domains of enquiries that cover concepts and elements in the research questions. A significant finding of this study is that rural men of Sindh find domestic violence as an acceptable behaviour of men and justified in many circumstances, particularly when women are seen as disobeying their husbands. In addition, the acceptance of domestic violence is closely related to the men’s views about what a man should be, based on their definitions of masculinity, and how a woman should behave, based on patriarchal norms in the society. Different forms of domestic violence are prevalent and occur in areas of study for example, physical, sexual, emotional, economic, verbal and non-verbal violence. The men tend to associate the ideal or real man (murs manho) with hyper-masculine traits, such as being a jhagraloo (a person who is always ready to fight), mardangi (being virile and sexually potent) and demonstrating aggressive, controlling behaviour. The men also articulate highly patriarchal attitudes in relating their ideas about gender relations particularly in the context of marriage and the family. The views about masculinity and the patriarchal attitude about gender relations interact to contribute towards the men’s expressed and implied acceptance of domestic violence. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing insights into male respondents’ views and responses about domestic violence, which is an unexplored area in rural Pakistan, particularly in the province of Sindh. The approaches employed in this study and its resulting findings are useful for future studies relating to domestic violence in rural setting even beyond Pakistan.
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Keywords
Social sciences , Marriage