Wife-Beating

Before I came to Lesotho, I spent a while searching for information and data so I could learn about the country. One excellent source of data on HIV/AIDS for all over the world are the Demographic and Health Surveys. These give you information not only on the HIV rate (it is around a quarter of the adult population in Lesotho), but also collect various additional attitudinal information.

One thing that caught my eye was questions on situations in which wife-beating is justified. I’ve not yet looked in too much detail at this (it would be interesting to split up responses by sex, age and rural-urban) but this table reports averages from across the country of people who say wife-beating is justified under different circumstances. Here is some information about the survey: (i) it was carried out in 2004; (ii) around three quarters of respondents were female; (iii) no one over the age of 50 is sampled.

% who said that wife-beating is justified if...
...she goes out without telling him	28.3%
...she neglects the children	39.2%
...she argues with him	38.0%
...she refuses to have sex with him	25.7%
...she burns the food	15.3%

It’s easy to be shocked and appalled by these figures if you are either a Westerner or an urban dweller in a developing country (75% of Basotho tends to be classified as rural). But I find it interesting to try to find explanations rather than judge too harshly – it is the first step in changing things – so I am pretty interested in the social and survival reasons why there might be such high support for wife-beating. Here are my thoughts:

• First the easy one – male dominance. It is true that, at the time, females were legally minors in Lesotho. Males should ensure their ‘good’ social behaviour and punish them for breaking the rules as if there were children (ignoring the question of whether or not it’s okay to beat children). The law has since changed and it would be interesting to see if there has been any top-down change as a result.
• Around three quarters of those sampled were females. Even if every male said ‘yes’ to each question, a significant number of females also agreed. It could be argued that they have been ‘made to feel’ that this is how females should behave and therefore they agreed with the males.

In addition to the above, I think that there might be issues related to social order and survival.

• Burning food could be seen as a question of immediate survival in a time and place in which food is scarce. I am almost surprised that this had the lowest agreement.
• Neglecting the children might carry a large ‘disgust’ factor by any community.
• Neglecting the children and refusing sex might both be related to a natural human instinct to pass on genes – a survival of the gene. Admitting that this exists might be the first step in altering our behaviour.
• Arguing, going out without telling him and neglecting children might all be about a desire to keep a social order and a generally harmonious environment. Arguing couples and child neglect (when the burden might fall on other people) both carry negative externalities for the wider community.

What are other reasons that I might have missed?