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Consanguinity in wedlock: A cross sectional analysis of Indian DHS data

Santosh Sharma, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Deepanjali Vishwakarma, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

In Indian society there are myths that women will be safe if she will be marry in the same community and she would be able to live their life freely without any control by others, which needs to be analyzed and investigated to its roots. However, this study restricts its scope to the marital-control behavior as wedlock within the consanguineous marriages in India. This piece of research attempt to looked at whether women might marry their prior acquaintances in response to high rates of marital control behavior displayed by husband. Data for 91,933 ever-married women aged 15–49 years were analysed from the NFHS-4 conducted in 2015–16. Findings revealed that the degree of marital control and sexual abstinence by husband remains higher among women with in consanguineous marriage as compared to non-consanguineous. High degree of marital control leads to surprisingly higher prevalence of sexual violence among the consanguineous marriages, which means marital control by husband emerged to be the main prompt of Sexual violence. Hence, it can be concluded from the results that at the ground reality the women are not safe in a marriage, especially breaking the myth she is in more trouble in a consanguineous marriage.

Keywords: Biodemography and genetics, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session 60. Patterns of Union Formation Around the World