A Qualitative Investigation of the Different Nature of Domestic Violence Against Women in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

In the modern era of technology women of Pakistan are still facing different types of domestic violence such as physical, mental, verbal, financial, socio-cultural and emotional. It is a great challenge for policy makers to address these challenges and problems for ensuring women’s’ social, economic, and cultural autonomy. The study is plan to investigate, the socio-economic and demographic conditions of the selected participants for the qualitative study, the nature of the violence against women and the different types of the challenges such as psychological, emotional, socio-cultural, financial and health conditions. A qualitative research design has been adopted for taking meaningful and in-dept information about the different types off violence’s from the participants, selected for the qualitative interview. In this qualitative study three randomly selected Districts of Punjab, such as Faisalabad, Lahore and Gujranwala, 12 in-dept interviews and six focus group discussion were conducted equally from each District for having insight into the different dimensions and aspects of violence against women. Thematic analysis has been carried out to analyze the qualitative data collected from three Districts. Thematic analysis demonstrates that women are facing physical, psychological and emotional, financial and health violence. For ensuring women’s social, economic and cultural autonomy, it is suggested that psychological counseling programs for men should be introduced at the community level to address emotional dysregulation, low self-esteem, and aggression, as these psychological traits are very important predictors of intimate partner violence in the study. Anti-dowry awareness campaigns must be implemented through media and community outreach.

Key Words: Domestic violence, women, psychological violence, Socio-cultural violence, Social autonomy, Punjab, Pakistan