Socio demographic determinants of violence among school-going adolescent girls in a rural area of North India: A cross-sectional study

Background: The 'United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life".[1] Violence can take many forms, including physical, sexual or emotional and varies in its severity. Gender discrimination, norms and practices mean that adolescent girls are likely to experience certain forms of violence, such as sexual violence, at much higher rates than boys. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a rural block of North India. A total of 500 adolescent girls in the age group of 13-19 years studying in class VIII to class XII in 10 government and private senior secondary schools of the Lakhanmajra block were included in the study. A pre-designed pre-tested semi-structured interview schedule was used. Results: In this study, we found the prevalence of physical, sexual and emotional violence among adolescent girls as 6.6, 5.4 and 5.2%, respectively. The most frequent perpetrator of physical violence was the parent and of sexual violence was the neighbour followed by friends or relatives. Higher emotional violence was experienced by adolescent girls from middle-class families (P< 0.05). The prevalence of physical violence among adolescent girls was maximum in the younger age group 13-14 years (10.2%), followed by 15-17 years (4.0%). This association was found statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusions: There are several restrictions on free communication about violence-related topics in our highly conservative society. Blaming the victim is the rule rather than the exception and sexual abuse is usually linked to a loss of virginity and family honour in our patriarchal society. Hence, girls may be more reluctant to disclose their experience of violence.