Effective Strategies to Reduce Domestic Violence in Society

Domestic violence remains one of the most persistent yet under-addressed social problems in our country. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), nearly one in three ever-married women between 18 and 49 has experienced spousal violence at some point in her life. The numbers tell only part of the story. Behind every statistic is a family where fear has replaced safety, and where children grow up watching abuse become normal. Reducing this violence is not the job of any single agency. It requires changes in how we think, how we earn, how we connect with neighbours, and how the law responds when someone calls for help.

Changing attitudes towards gender roles 🔗

Most domestic violence begins not with a slap, but with a belief. The belief that a husband has the right to discipline his wife. The belief that a woman who answers back is “asking for it.” The belief that family matters should stay behind closed doors no matter what happens inside them. These attitudes are learned early and reinforced often. Changing them is the most fundamental step in reducing abuse.

Data from NFHS-5 shows that around 41 percent of women still justify wife-beating under certain circumstances such as disrespecting in-laws, neglecting the house, or refusing sex. When victims themselves accept violence as deserved, the cycle becomes almost impossible to break from outside. This is why early intervention through schools, community programmes, and religious institutions matters so much.

Educating boys and men 🔗

Boys absorb ideas about masculinity long before they become husbands. If a son watches his father control his mother through anger or silence, he is likely to repeat that pattern. Schools and parents need to actively teach boys that strength is not the same as dominance, and that respecting a partner’s choices, opinions, and body is not weakness. Programmes like UNICEF’s gender-equality modules and the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative have started this conversation, but classroom curricula on consent, emotional regulation, and healthy relationships still need wider rollout.

Engaging men directly through community workshops has also shown results. Studies on rural Tamil Nadu found that controlling behaviour by husbands and alcohol consumption were the strongest predictors of spousal violence, and that key informants in the community consistently recommended de-addiction services and gender-equality programmes as solutions.

Empowering women to assert their rights 🔗

Changing male attitudes is only half the work. Women also need the confidence and information to recognise abuse for what it is. Many women in our country do not know that economic abuse, marital rape, or being denied access to their own children counts as domestic violence under the law. Awareness campaigns, mahila mandals, self-help groups, and media programming in regional languages all play a role in helping women name the violence they face and decide they do not have to live with it.

Enhancing women’s economic independence 🔗

Financial dependence is one of the strongest reasons women stay in abusive marriages. When a woman has no income, no savings, and no way to feed her children without her husband, leaving is not a real choice. Building her economic capacity changes the entire equation.

Research consistently confirms this link. A study using NFHS-5 data found that women’s empowerment through employment, asset ownership, and decision-making power is associated with lower justification for violence and a decreased likelihood of experiencing it. The relationship is not perfectly straightforward – in some households, a husband may react to a wife’s new income with resentment or backlash – but on average, economic agency protects women.

Job training and skill development 🔗

Government schemes like the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) have organised crores of rural women into self-help groups that provide vocational training, credit, and collective bargaining power. Urban counterparts include the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), which trains women in trades ranging from tailoring to digital literacy. These programmes work best when they pair skill-building with market linkages, so that training translates into actual income rather than ending in a certificate that sits in a drawer.

Education as a long-term shield 🔗

Education is the single most reliable predictor of a woman’s bargaining power within marriage. A study published on the role of economic and electronic empowerment in preventing intimate partner violence found that higher education, household wealth, and access to media and mobile phones together reduce IPV prevalence. A girl who completes secondary school is more likely to marry later, earn her own money, and recognise abuse when it begins. Keeping girls in school is, in this sense, an anti-violence strategy.

Financial inclusion and asset ownership 🔗

Bank accounts under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, joint property titles, and direct benefit transfers that route money into women’s own accounts all shift household power. When a woman owns the kitchen gas connection, the ration card, or the land, leaving an abusive home becomes possible rather than unthinkable. Cash-transfer evidence from South Asia shows that even modest amounts of income controlled by women can reduce the frequency of violence in the home.

Building social support networks 🔗

Isolation is the abuser’s most effective weapon. A controlling partner often cuts his wife off from her parents, restricts her friendships, monitors her phone, and discourages her from going out alone. Once a woman has no one to confide in, she has no one to escape to. Strengthening her social connections directly weakens the abuser’s hold.

Community and neighbourhood networks 🔗

Mahila mandals, self-help groups, and neighbourhood committees do more than run savings schemes. They give women a regular reason to leave the house, talk to other women, and notice that their situation is not normal. In many villages, members of an SHG will collectively intervene when one of their own is being beaten, accompanying her to the police station or confronting the husband as a group. This kind of collective pressure is often more effective than formal complaints because it carries social weight the abuser cannot easily dismiss.

Family and informal support 🔗

Research on coping strategies among abused women in Mumbai found that one of the most commonly used responses was joint meetings involving both the marital and natal families to address the abuse. While this approach has limits – natal families sometimes pressure women to “adjust” and return – strong ties with parents, siblings, and extended kin remain a lifeline for many women. Public messaging that encourages natal families to keep their doors open to married daughters, rather than treating them as someone else’s responsibility, is an important cultural shift.

Workplace and digital networks 🔗

For working women, colleagues and professional networks add another layer of protection. Internal Complaints Committees under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 are mandatory in most organisations, and while they target workplace harassment specifically, the existence of someone to talk to outside the home matters. Mobile phones and social media have also expanded support – women now reach helplines, online counsellors, and survivor groups privately. Evidence suggests that women using mobile phones and internet-based applications are less vulnerable to spousal violence, partly because the information and contact they provide breaks isolation.

Legal and policy reforms 🔗

Laws against domestic violence in our country are not weak on paper. The challenge lies in enforcement, awareness, and access. Strengthening each of these is the fourth pillar of any serious strategy to reduce abuse.

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 🔗

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 was a landmark piece of legislation. For the first time, it defined domestic violence broadly to include physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and economic abuse, and extended protection to wives, live-in partners, sisters, mothers, and other women in a domestic relationship. The Act gives an aggrieved woman the right to apply for protection orders, residence orders (so she cannot be thrown out of the shared household), monetary relief, custody orders, and compensation. It also gives her free legal services under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 and the right to simultaneously file a criminal complaint under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

The Act also created the role of the Protection Officer in every district to help women file applications and access medical, shelter, and legal services. Magistrates are required to dispose of applications within sixty days of the first hearing. These provisions are strong, but their effectiveness depends on whether districts actually have trained Protection Officers, whether police know how to respond, and whether shelters have space when a woman needs one.

One Stop Centres and helplines 🔗

To make services more accessible, the Ministry of Women and Child Development launched the One Stop Centre Scheme, popularly called Sakhi, in April 2015. According to government sources, there are over 750 One Stop Centres operational across the country, offering medical aid, legal assistance, psycho-social counselling, and temporary shelter for up to five days under a single roof. The Women Helpline 181 connects callers to these centres around the clock. Expanding the reach of OSCs to every block, not just every district, and ensuring they are staffed with trained counsellors and lawyers is essential.

Better policing and faster courts 🔗

Even the best law fails if a woman who walks into a police station is sent home and told to “settle the matter.” Sensitisation training for police, dedicated women’s help desks at every station, and faster court proceedings are repeatedly flagged as gaps. The Act requires periodic training of police officers and judicial officers on its provisions, but implementation varies sharply across states. Strengthening this enforcement infrastructure is what turns a law from a printed document into a real shield.

De-addiction and mental health services 🔗

Alcohol abuse is one of the most consistent triggers of household violence. Policy responses that combine de-addiction services for husbands with counselling support for couples – without forcing women to stay in dangerous situations – show promise. Mental health support for survivors, including trauma counselling, is equally critical and remains badly underfunded.

Bringing it all together 🔗

No single intervention will end domestic violence. Changing gender attitudes without giving women economic options leaves them stuck in unhappy marriages they cannot leave. Giving women jobs without changing male attitudes can trigger backlash. Passing strong laws without training police makes those laws invisible to the women who need them. The four strategies – attitude change, economic independence, social support, and legal reform – only work when they reinforce each other. A girl who finishes school, earns her own income, has a self-help group to lean on, and knows she can call 181 has all four shields in place. Building that combination for every woman is the work of a generation, but it is the only realistic path forward.

What do you think? Which of the four strategies – changing attitudes, economic empowerment, social networks, or legal reform – do you believe should be prioritised first in your own community, and why? And what role can young people in colleges play in normalising conversations about domestic violence within their own families?

References

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11193235/
2. https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/wp/2024/english/wpiea2024239-print-pdf.pdf
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9115811/
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11694290/
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9733227/
6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277539518305211
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366274267_Domestic_Violence_against_Women_in_India_Does_Empowerment_Matter
8. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/2021
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Women_from_Domestic_Violence_Act,_2005
10. https://www.godigit.com/government-schemes/what-is-one-stop-centre-scheme