Is Perpetration of Physical Violence against Wives Associated with Reduced Life Satisfaction of the Perpetrators?

This paper explores the association between men’s physical wife abuse and one aspect of quality of life (QOL), namely life satisfaction among perpetrators using data from a population based cross-sectional survey of 1,507 ever-married men aged 18-49. The survey was conducted between January and June 2011 in one urban and one rural area of Bangladesh.
The results show that physical wife abuse was highly prevalent in Bangladesh (54% in the urban site and 53% in the rural site). Linear regression analysis revealed that perpetration of this abuse was associated with an increased mean life dissatisfaction score of men by 0.23 in the urban and by 0.24 in the rural site.
This finding deepens our understanding of impact of violence against women on QOL. Also, it suggests that intimate partner violence against women needs to be addressed for improving life satisfaction of the male perpetrators. It is also possible that improving men’s life satisfaction, related to other areas may contribute to a decreased likelihood of perpetration of this violence. This important finding indicates that men themselves can benefit from ending violence against women and bears implications for advocacy, policy and programs in the domains of both QOL and intimate partner violence.