54% of Indian women say wife-beating can be justified: the survey behind the headline

The remark that started it

In 2012, Justice Bhaktavatsala of the Karnataka High Court was hearing a divorce case involving a 28-year-old woman who said her husband beat her regularly. According to press reports of the hearing, the judge told the woman to go home because her husband took care of the family — and suggested the husband treat his wife to a nice dinner. When the wife's lawyer, an unmarried woman, argued the case, the judge reportedly told her that family matters should not be argued by spinsters.

The nation was shocked — again. But the surveys underneath the outrage tell a more uncomfortable story.

What the surveys actually say

Emily Oster, an economist at the University of Chicago, and Robert Jensen researched the economics of gender in India — work that became the "unlikely savior of Indian women" section of the book SuperFreakonomics. Oster discussed the research here.

Their summary of India's National Family Health Survey findings is the source of this article's headline: 51 percent of Indian men said wife-beating is justified under certain circumstances — and, more surprisingly, 54 percent of women agreed. If, for instance, a wife burns dinner or leaves the house without permission.

Read that again. A majority of Indian women surveyed did not merely endure the norm; they endorsed it.

Why the judge's remark landed

This is what made the Bhaktavatsala episode more than one judge's bad day. The remark was outrageous, but it was not exotic — it was the majority opinion wearing a black robe. A culture in which most women themselves consider a beating justified for burnt dinner will produce judges who say so in open court. The courtroom was a mirror, not an aberration.

The takeaway

Wife-beating is never okay. And the survey numbers point to the harder truth: laws and outrage change behavior at the margins, but the norm will not fall until the women it harms stop defending it. More than the men, it is up to the woman to put an end to this — not because she is to blame, but because she is the only one whose refusal counts.