Community perceptions on domestic violence
against pregnant women in Nepal:

.Describe the purpose, advantages and limitations of community perception on domestic violence against pregnant women in Nepal.

Purpose of the research study

The purpose of this research is to explore the perspective of people living in Dhulikhel Municipality in Nepal of Domestic violence against pregnant women.

Advantages of the Research studies

1. The Dhulikhel Municipality recognized different forms of violence facing pregnant women, which is threatening their physical and psychological health, and presenting obstacles to seeking antenatal care.
2. They recognized some of the cultural violence which were considered harmful i.e giving birth to sons, denial of food and forcing pregnant women to do hard physical work during pregnancy.
3. In a culture where violence was normalized and family reconciliation are promoted above individual health was perceived to cause women to tolerate and accept the situation . The research got to open up the community eyes and promote the health of the pregnant women.
4. The community got a chance to suggest actions and strategies to address the continuing violence against pregnant women which indicated a societal transition towards increased awareness.

Limitation of the Research study

1. Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) in Nepal has not clearly addressed gender-based violence (GBV) as an issue of health policy.
2. Integrated services for survivors of gender-based violence are being offered on a limited basis through some hospital based programs.
3. Literacy rate of women in the region on Dhulikhel Municipality is lower (70.3 %) than that of men (88.6%).
4. Only one individual per household was selected during the study thus limiting the research and getting the right info.
5. Marriages of 18 years old and below girls remains a persistent problem in Nepal that affects children, because it makes them vulnerable to gender-based violence as they are taken in the extended family as extra pair of hands even when they are pregnant by in-laws which is considered as emotional abuse.
6. Pregnant women felt powerlessness to address the injustices they experience
7. Some of the women don’t go to antenatal checkups because they don’t know about it.
8. Language barrier.

2. Discuss different epistemological perspective of community on domestic violence against pregnant women in Nepal  and approaches used to design the study.

Epistemological perspective of this study

Epistemology – the study of criteria by which researchers classifies what does and does not constitute the knowledge.

Epistemological perspective – is the view by which the researcher  classifies what does and does not constitute a knowledge.

So the different epistemological perspective of the community on domestic violence against women in Nepal is are truth, belief and justification 

Truth

The truth is that domestic violence against pregnant women in Nepal is happening and many people are engaged in it from the husband and the extended family since in Nepal after a woman is married they join the extended family and live with them and this is the genesis of domestic violence.

Belief

The belief of cultural specific forms of violence such as forcing pregnant women to do heavy lifting and hard physical work were considered infrequent, but nevertheless occurred.

The women in Nepal especially the mother-in-law  believed that since they had worked hard when they were pregnant, their daughter-in-law should do so too.

The belief of having a son over a daughter was greatly preferred because it was rooted in the culture, traditional and patriarchal.   

Approaches used to design this study.

1. Study design

The qualitative study was chosen to explore perception and experiences of domestic violence against pregnant women, which quantitative would not be able to capture.

The researcher used focus group discussion (FDG).

Socio-ecological model of Heise (23) which is based on the model of Belsky (24) and Brofenbrenner (25), Was used as a theoretical framework to better understand the direct and indirect influences of social groups in a community on pregnant women’s health and health seeking behavior.

2. Study setting 

The study was carried out in community centers in different geopolitical divisions of Dhulikhel Municipality 

3. Study participants

Participants were purposely invited to take part in the study by the first author in collaboration with four female social mobilizers(Group of trusted residents with at least with school leaving education) working in the area.

The social mobilizers used existing channels for disseminating public information to invite volunteers from the community to participate in Focus Group Discussion (FDGs).

Only one individual per household was included in the group in order to maximize openness and willingness to talk without fear of reprisal or future consequences.

4. Data collection

Volunteers were divided according gender separated groups i.e Sons groups and daughter-in-law groups. Also the sons groups and daughter-in-law groups were also separated from the older generation, father-in-law and mother-in-law groups in order to avoid gender dominance and subordination.

All focus discussion groups were conducted in private rooms where social mobilizers normally provide informal education and conduct community meetings. Participants were informed of the aim of the study and were also given liberty of leaving the discussion if they felt uncomfortable.

Semi-structured topics guide were used to conduct the focus group discussions, and no major changes were made after the pretest.

The topic guide covered items such as attitude about violence targeting pregnant women, and community responsibilities for care and assistance of survivors.

The focus discussion groups were audio recorded with permission of the participant and were transcribed in verbatim from the audio recorded and then translated into English to enable the international team of authors to participate in analysis of the material.

5. Data Analysis

The main concepts in the data were identified by three authors who separately went through the transcript line by line, sorted and coded the data manually into categories and sub-categories. 

Analyze and suggest possible ways to further improve the selected study.

This qualitative research study was done carefully because it brought out the intended purpose of exploring the way the people of Nepal view on domestic violence against pregnant women.

The different methods that were used to gather and collect the data was great as they involved the community and also involve personnel who have interacted with the community at large in a day to day running of the community. 

The data analysis process was good as the main concept was done by three authors who separately went through the transcript line by line, sorting and coding   the data manually. This increased the way the result was good.

Suggestion on improving the study is that the next time a research like this is done they should incorporate a lot of people not just one person per household and also carry out the research in different places in a study area to represent a whole place or a country.

Ministry of health in the study area should address the issue of Domestic violence not only towards the pregnant women but also across board, also address the issue of early marriages.

Kunta Devi Pun, Jennifer J. Infanti, Rajendra Koju, Berit Schei, Elisabeth Darj

& on behalf of the ADVANCE Study Group (2016) Community perceptions on domestic violence

against pregnant women in Nepal: a qualitative study, Global Health Action, 9:1, 31964, DOI:

10.3402/gha.v9.31964