Studies on marital violence (MV) in Bangladesh have primarily focused on the women of the mainstream Bengali people, although half of the population is men, and there are also ethnic minority communities with diverse gender constructions. The current study examined the gender differences in MV among the matrilineal ethnic minority Garo, patrilineal ethnic minority Santal, and the patrilineal mainstream Bengali communities in rural Bangladesh. Adopting a cross-sectional design, we randomly included 1,929 currently married men and women from 24 villages. We used cross-tabulations as well as multivariate logistic regressions to estimate the ethnic and gender differences in MV. Data revealed that women were widely exposed to different types of MV, while only a few men experienced such abuses. It showed that 95.6% of the women experienced emotional abuse, 63.5% physical abuse, 71.4% sexual abuse, and 50.6% poly-victimization, whereas these rates were quite low among the men (emotional = 9.7%, physical = 0.7%, sexual = 0.1%). No men reported poly-victimization. The odds ratio (OR) for emotional, physical, and sexual MV were respectively, 184.44 (95% CI = 93.65−363.24, p<0.001), 449.23 (95% CI = 181.59−1111.35, p<0.001), and 2789.71(95% CI = 381.36−20407.08, p<0.001) for women compared to men. Data further revealed that matrilineal Garo women experienced less MV (emotional = 90.7%, physical = 53.4%, sexual = 64.0%, poly = 38.8%) than the patrilineal Santal (emotional = 99.4%, physical = 67.3%, sexual = 71.3%, poly = 53.9%) and Bengali women (emotional = 96.6%, physical = 69.6%, sexual = 78.8%, poly = 58.9%). Multivariate regressions also showed that the Bengali society perpetrated more physical (OR = 1.90, 95% CI = 1.27−2.85, p = 0.002) and sexual (OR = 2.04, 95% CI = 1.34−3.10, p = 0.001) MV than the Garo society. It appears that MV is largely a gendered issue in the country. Though both women and men can be the victims of MV, the nature/extent of victimization noticeably differs according to the social organization. Matrilineal society appears to be less abusive than the patrilineal one. Interventions aimed to prevent domestic violence in rural Bangladesh should take these findings into account.

Previous studies exploring the influential factors associated with attitudinal acceptance of wife abuse (AAWA) did not widely focus on the relation between women's social mobility (WSM) and different dimensions of AAWA in rural Bangladesh. This current study examined the association between WSM and different dimensions of AAWA in the context of socio-cultural differences among the Bengali, the Santal, and the Garo ethnic communities in rural Bangladesh. Adopting a cross-sectional design, 1,929 married men and women were randomly included in the study from 8 Bengali, 8 Santal, and 8 Garo villages where 50.2% were women and 49.8% were men. Of the sample, 33.2% Garo, 33.2% Santal, and 33.6% Bengali participants were included in this study. Data revealed that 45.5% of women had low social mobility and the prevalence of different dimensions of AAWA was high and varied among the study communities. We used descriptive statistics, chi-square, and binary logistic regression analysis to estimate the association. The multivariate binary logistic regression analysis results revealed that the likelihood of attitudinal acceptance of overall abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse, abuse on disobeying family obligation, and abuse on challenging male authority were significantly lower for the respondents who belonged to families where women enjoyed high mobility compared to those who belonged to families where WSM was low. This study also showed that the Bengali and the Santal participants were more likely to accept different dimensions of AAWA compared to the Garos. This study suggests that WSM should be considered in policy-making and implementing interventions to reduce the different dimensions of AAWA in rural Bangladesh.