Attitudes towards justifying intimate partner violence among married women in Bangladesh.

This study examines womens attitude towards intimate partner violence among 331 Bangladeshi women in five selected disadvantaged areas of Dhaka city. This study used a shorter version of the Inventory of Beliefs about Wife Beating (IBWB) to measure womens attitude towards intimate partner violence. The results revealed that the mean score on the wife-beating scale of 15 items was 7.81 (SD = 4.893). Significant amounts of the variance (42.9%) in womens attitude towards intimate partner violence can be attributed to respondents education (B = -0.60 p < 0.001) husbands education (B = -1.251 p < 0.01) exposure to mass media (B = -1.251 p < 0.01) respondents current age (B = 0.081 p < 0.05) age at marriage (B = 0.215 p < 0.01) intimate partner violence victimization within the last 12 months (B = -1.533 p < 0.001) and women receiving micro-credit (small-scale loan or financial assistance) (B = -2.214 p < 0.001). The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings.