Eighteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Pakistani women are brought up in a patriarchal society that teaches them to be obedient and submissive towards their husbands. This makes them more vulnerable to domestic violence (DV). DV has profound negative impact on the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of a victim. According to the various studies conducted worldwide. In this paper the author is studying the impact of domestic violence on the self-esteem of female victims in our society and to determine the relationship between DV and the socioeconomic status of the victims. It is a triangulation cross sectional method research, in which two different sets of questions were used: qualitative and quantitative. The quantitatively data was collected from 330 female victims of DV and ten of the randomly selected participants were interviewed for qualitative analysis. Impact of physical and emotional abuse on the self-esteem of the respondents, especially on their self-image and confidence, was measured by using Hudson’s Index of Self-Esteem (ISE) Scale. Data were analysed by SPSS. A total of 330 females were included in this study who reported almost all types of DV but most common were verbal and physical abuse as stated by 286 (86.7%) and 247 (74.8%) women. Self esteem was found low among all types of violence but significant (p-value = 0.04, OR = 1.91, 95% CI= 1.01-3.62) association was found with physical abuse. Significant association (p – value = 0.001) was found with various types of violence and socioeconomic variables like qualification, source of income, and monthly income. It is concluded from the study that low self esteem was found in all victims of DV though impact of physical violence is significant on self esteem. Along with it DV was found more among females from low socio-economic backgrounds.