Sought Help for Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against Women: Does it Actually Reflect Women's Experience of IPV? A Study of National Bangladeshi Sample

This cross-sectional study assesses help-seeking behavior of abused women and also focus on whether this help-seeking reflects women's actual experience of IPV using data from the Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey, 2007 (BDHS). A subset of help–seeker (n=770, 20.1%) was identified from survey women who were selected and interviewed for IPV and also living with husband (n=3825). One-fourth (25%) women reported experience of any violence: 10.5% experienced sexual violence in the absence of physical violence, 19.4% experienced physical violence in the absence of sexual violence by husbands. Among those who experienced IPV, only 28.7% tell anyone about the incident and 23.2% seek informal help and 12.6% seek formal help for partner's violence. Again, among women who sought help, 46.4% get assistance from the help provider. Women, who experienced sexual IPV only, 1.68 times more likely to tell anyone about their husband, 1.96 times more likely to seek formal help and 1.70 time more likely to get assistance. For women having experienced severe physical violence, 4.37 times, 3.70 times, 5.51 times and 3.36 times more likely to tell anyone about their husband, seek informal help, formal help and get assistance from help provider, respectively. The results of this study indicate that help-seeking is very low among the victims. These data also show that IPV is common and that most victims do not receive services to address this violence.