New Delhi: A Unicef report titled Progress for Children, a report on adolescents, holds that available data for developing countries (India included) show that nearly 50 per cent of girls and women aged between 15 and 49 believe that wife-beating is justified under certain circumstances. About 57 per cent of male adolescents aged between 15 and 19 years in India think that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances.
The figure is 53 per cent for for female adolescents in the same age group.
Countries with available data where prevalence of supportive attitudes among male adolescents towards wife-beating is 50 per cent or higher include the likes of Samoa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, countries with lesser means than India and with much less per capita allocation on development sectors.
"Societal attitudes that convey acceptance or justification of domestic violence may make girls and women more vulnerable to becoming victims," the report said.
However, India fares well in terms of adolescents becoming victims of violence or homicide. In those categories, the Central and Latin American countries like El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela rule the roost.
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