‘Coerced sex experience among Indian ever married women’

Studying sexual behavior from a social prospective has important public health concern as sexual activities among females in India takes place within socially sanctioned institution of marriages. However, marriage does not inherently make the sex safe, wanted or pleasurable. This paper presents evidence on the magnitude of and factors underlying coerced sex experiences among married women from a cross sectional survey conducted by NFHS-3. It also examines the pattern across groups of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Logistic regression reveals that the age at marriage, level of education, caste, religion and region, are the main factors that consistently differentiate sexual behavior across social groups. A number of factors such as partner’s consumption of alcohol, standard of living of the spousal family and respondent’s current working status were also found to be correlated with unwanted sexual (coerced sex) experiences. The study will hopefully provide knowledge necessary in designing more informed interventions for the victim.