Natal family violence against women remains largely underreported: Study

 A study conducted by a Kolkata-based feminist organisation has found that natal family violence against women is widely underreported. The organisation and its researchers have asked for stricter laws to include natal family violence under the domestic violence laws and sought a wider study into the matter to understand the gravity of this violence in India. 

Swayam, a feminist organisation which has worked across seven districts of West Bengal for the past half a decade worked with over 50 survivors of natal family violence and found that 75% of the women faced verbal and emotional abuse, and 68% faced physical abuse, and 20% faced child abuse. Their research also found that most of the perpetrators of abuse are fathers, brothers, male relatives, followed by mothers and grandmothers in some cases. 

“Women were denied education, mobility, healthcare, and even nutrition. Decisions about their lives were taken without consent. Girls were burdened with care work and restricted in clothing, movement, and relationships,” the study found. They also came to the conclusion that violence is normalised, internalised, and transmitted across generations as discipline, family honour, and concern by the perpetrators. 

The researchers said that cases of natal family violence were largely invisible in mainstream conversations on domestic violence which mostly talks about marital family violence and the community institutes fail to recognise this as a legitimate claim against violence. 

“Violence that women face in their natal families is huge. It starts even before birth through female foeticide and continues in many ways through discrimination, control, abuse, and forced marriages,” Anuradha Kapoor, the primary researcher of the study “The Natal Family: A Neglected Site of Domestic Violence Against Women” said during the launch of the study on July 17, Thursday. 

Ms. Kapoor highlighted that each case of natal family violence is looked at as individual cases and the structural, cultural, and direct nature of the violence is largely ignored. She also said that many women who have sought help from Swayam in such cases have also refused to go public about the issue or even file cases against the abusers. 

“I was sent to my maternal grandparents’ house when I was one year old, three months before my brother was born, and lived there till I was 10. My grandfather would throw me on the ground and kick me. My grandmother would pinch me, bang my head against the wall frequently. My uncles beat me up and smashed my head against the wall when I was little. Eventually, my brother also began beating me up,” a survivor stated while recounting her experience of natal family violence. 

After their study, Swayam has recommended that there is a need to recognise natal family violence as a key dimension of domestic violence. “Strengthen laws and legal aid mechanisms, ensure access to property, education, and livelihood, train frontline workers and institutes to help support the survivors of abuse,” the researchers said. They also called for intersectional research on the subject across the nation to bring police level changes and help find survivor-centered solutions.