A third of married women facing domestic violence in Meghalaya: Survey

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

SHILLONG, June 12: According to the tiol Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4), 28.7 percent of married women in Meghalaya have experienced domestic violence even as 57.3 per cent of them owned a house and/or land (alone or jointly with others).

Neighbouring Assam has a lower rate of recorded domestic abuse with 25 per cent of married women reporting domestic violence. The average tiol figure stands at 50 per cent.

The findings also revealed that 91.4 per cent of the women respondents aged between 15 and 49 years who are married usually participated in household decisions.

The survey states that 16.5 percent of women aged between 20-24 years were married before attaining the age of 18 years and 8.6 percent of women aged between 15-19 years were already mothers or pregnt at the time of the survey. The survey also found that 56.2 percent of women aged between 15-49 years are aemic.

NFHS-4 fieldwork for Meghalaya was conducted from April 6, 2015 to September 19, 2015 by Nielsen (India) Private Limited. Altogether, 7,327 households were taken as sample for the survey which includes 9,201 women and 1,146 men.