COVID Pandemic and Spousal Violence Against Indian Women: An Exploration of NFHS-4 (2015–2016) and NFHS-5 (2019–2021) Data Sets

Abstract

We explore the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on spousal violence (SV) against Indian women using NFHS-4 and NFHS-5 datasets on Indian married women. We observe that probabilities of experiencing less severe physical violence and sexual violence actually declined as compared to NFHS-4 level for women from the group of states that were surveyed during pandemic period (Phase-2 states) whereas for the group of states that were surveyed prior to pandemic (Phase-1 states) no such significant decline in SV was noted under NFHS-5 survey vis-à-vis NFHS-4 level (except for the level of emotional and psychological aggression which shows a significant decline). The same counter intuitive result was observed for consolidated SV index, which declined for Phase-2 states during COVID-19 pandemic, whereas no such decline under NFHS-5 was observed for Phase-1 states, while we are controlling for different socio-demographic variables and level of women empowerment.