Violence Against Women studied in connection to Gender Discrimination and Gender Biased Norms in India

Ghosh, S. (2025) Violence Against Women studied in connection to Gender Discrimination and Gender Biased Norms in India. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00129959

Abstract/Summary

This PhD thesis analyses the issue of violence against women (VAW) in India in connection to gender discrimination and gender biased (GB) norms against women. My first paper examines the association of domestic violence with gender disparity in various dimensions in the Indian society. Using secondary data sources, I find that district-level gender disparities have notable associations (both direct and inverse) with various measures of domestic violence (DV) in the households. My second paper examines the association of various forms of VAW with son preference (SP) and sex ratio at birth (SRB) in India through a panel data analysis. The main findings of this paper are here that with rising SRB and SP in the districts (which is evidence for a strong bias favouring male children), women on average face significantly more violence, in line with previous literature. My third paper analyses the primary data collected from a field experiment done in and around the city of Kolkata, India. It studies the effects of education through entertainment (edutainment) on the revealed opinions of people regarding the sensitive topics of GB norms and VAW. My main results indicate that the treatment group responded to the sensitive items on a list survey more than the control group on average. I find that exposure to the treatment led to an overall reluctance among participants to reveal attitudes towards the sensitive topics of GB norms and VAW. Additionally, edutainment participants reveal regressive attitudes for gender-norms, while progressive attitudes for VAW, even when asked indirectly.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/129959
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00129959
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Economics
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