Is There a Correlation between Religion and Wife Beating? An Empirical Study of 11 Countries

Abstract

Wife beating, spousal abuse, domestic violence, or whatever else you want to call it, has been around for centuries, probably since the beginning of human existence. There are several reasons why this kind of behavior exists, but the present paper will not get into those reasons. For more on this aspect of the topic, see the items listed in the reference section of this paper.

The goal of the present paper is more modest, to merely measure the extent of support for wife beating, and determine whether wife beating is more acceptable in some religions than in others. In order to be included in this study, a country had to have a large Muslim population and also a large non-Muslim population. The most recent wave of World Values Surveys examined 60 countries. Of those, 11 countries had both a large Muslim population and a large non-Muslim population.

The present paper is part of a series on wife beating. Studies in this series examine male and female views on wife beating to determine if women think differently about this issue than men; a longitudinal study to determine whether wife beating has become more or less popular over time; two studies that examine the relationship between religion and wife beating; a study that ranks the acceptability of wife beating in 60 countries; and a study of attitudes toward wife beating in the United States. Links to these studies are provided in the reference section of this paper.

Keywords: Spousal Abuse, Wife Beating, Domestic Violence, Feminism, Gender Studies, Gender Equality, Islam, Muslim, Religion, Women's Rights, Assault, Battery, Battered Woman Syndrome, Country Studies, World Values Survey

JEL Classification: D6, D63, J12, J16, K14, K42, O51, O52, O53, O54, O55, O56, O57