Intimate partner violence against women: experiences from a woman-focused development programme in Matlab, Bangladesh.

This paper explores the association between microcredit-based development programmes and domestic violence against women perpetrated by their husbands. A sub-set of cross-sectional data collected in 1999 from 60 BRAC-ICDDR,B study villages in Matlab, Bangladesh, was used. Data were analyzed to characterize group-level differences among study women regarding the reported occurrence of violence (physical and/or mental) and to identify its predictors. About 17.5% of women had experienced violence from their husbands in the past four months, the proportion being greater among BRAC households (p = 0.05). Results of logistic regression identified age, schooling, age of household head, and self-rated poverty status of household as important predictors of violence, but not level of BRAC membership. The study concludes that the greater level of domestic violence reported during the initial stages of BRAC membership subsided with the introduction of skill-development training among participant women over time.