NFHS - Is it an One-sided Study on Domestic Violence?

Have you heard feminists (smugly) quoting that 30% of Indian women face domestic violence?

Have you heard feminists (smugly) quoting that 30% of Indian women face domestic violence?

Most of these statistics come from NFHS - National Family Health Survey.

Did you know that this survey has been systematically designed to show Indian men in bad light?

This is a research article that attempts to throw light on this issue.

National Family Health Survey (NFHS)

National Family Health Survey - This innocent sounding survey is a nation-wide survey that aims to understand health-related info.

In fact, it is a very useful survey, except for the sneaky inclusions that seem unfair.

What exactly makes it biased and unfair?

In the third edition of NFHS, the committee adds a new ‘module’ of questions to the Women’s questionnaire. All are about domestic violence.

Source: Page 493 of this doc

But, men’s questionnaire did NOT have these questions.

What are these new questions?

These additional questions in women’s questionnaire go into detail, probing whether a woman has felt or faced abuse.

In fact, even in today’s NFHS-6 questionnaire, we could see the visible absence of these questions in men’s questionnaire. Here are these questions 👇

Question 1105

Question 1106

Question 1107

Question 1110

Questions 1111-1115

Questions 1122-1123

Questions 1125-1127

Question 1137

But, what’s the problem here?

First of all, it is the woman’s word against the man in this survey.

And, these questions were NEVER asked to men.

In fact, the men’s questionnaire of NFHS-6 has 647 questions vs. women’s has 1138 questions.

Why did they choose not to ask these questions to men? Did they did not want to collect data for domestic violence on men? I wonder why?

Zooming Out

Now, let’s zoom out and see who exactly funded the NFHS-3, which added this sneaky module of questions.

Here is the web page that lists this info.

Too many foreign elements ended up designing a one-sided survey to show India as a land of wife-beaters. Amazing, right?

Now, what do we do?

1. Cultivate healthy skepticism about any stats about domestic violence in India from NFHS, as it is one-sided
2. Urge the current government to include the domestic violence related questions in men’s questionnaire.

How will we know about domestic violence on men when we don’t measure it?

Change can start from here!

PS: This article first appeared as a X thread here

EXPOSE 🚨🚨🚨

Have you heard feminists (smugly) quoting that 30% of Indian women face domestic violence? 👇

Most of these statistics come from NFHS - National Family Health Survey.

Did you know that this survey has been systematically designed to show Indian men in bad light?… pic.twitter.com/sUAEO9GS4X

— Vivek Ganesan (@Vivek_Ganesan) December 14, 2024