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Covid 19 lockdown and Intimate Partner Violence

Aabia Tahir Belgaumi, 17235

Research Methods of Psychology

Syed Baqar Mehdi Rizvi

March 21, 2021

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Abstract

Given the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus that took the world by a storm and the resulting stay at home orders

did only have economic repercussions but also social consequences. This research disentangles the impact of

the lockdown specifically on intimate partner violence against women, which has been done with the use of a

pre-established online survey called the “Abusive Behavior Inventory” that included a total of 29 questions to

test the incidence of physical and psychological abuse, in the form of a 5-point Likert scale. The sample

consisted of 73 women with the mean age of 30 who were recruited via Facebook groups as well as NGOs and

were instructed to fill the survey online and alone after they were given informed consent. The results of the

research supported the hypothesis and proved that the incidence of intimate partner violence increased during

the lockdown.

Keywords: Covid-19, intimate partner violence, lockdown, physical abuse, psychological abuse
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COVID-19 Lockdown and Intimate Partner Violence

The world has been in turmoil since March 2020 when the World Health Organization declared

Covid-19 a pandemic and that completely transformed what normal life was to us. Due to the severity of the

virus and its ability to transmit from human to human, a worldwide decision to impose a lockdown was

undertaken in order to control the spread of covid-19. The lockdown in itself though acted as a paradox,

while it was meant to keep people safe in the vicinity of their own homes, many weren’t actually safe. For a

lot of people being out of their homes or being the only one’s at home was the only escape they had from

different forms of domestic violence, which was the case for a lot of women especially. Due to the

lockdown’s requirement though, everyone was stuck at home and with the contributing stressors of the

pandemic, no social life, effects on work, etc. people who were prone to inflicting violence on their partners

normally, further increased the frequency of it during the lockdown. Domestic violence is a broad term and it

encompasses all kinds of violence inflicted against a person in their own home, which especially includes

intimate partner violence, a key focus of our study.

Throughout the lockdown, I personally witnessed many people who stood up with their stories using

the social media platform, where they were not only looking to vent but were desperately looking for advice

about how to escape this inescapable situation. When I researched about platforms that might exist to help

women through this time, I came to the understanding that most of the preventive social welfare hotlines

have been shut down ever since the pandemic and any resources that were previously allocated towards

domestic violence intervention have also been cut down. The realization that there were barely any existing

platforms to not only address this very important issue but to actually help women through it was very heart-

breaking and awful. That is the reason I decided to go ahead with this research topic, hoping I can get results

that not only aid the requirements of academics but also provide statistics that can be used to create

awareness for an issue barely anyone has addressed. And while I do recognize that there are men who also

go through domestic abuse, women are mostly the victim, especially in Asian households, which is why my

research topic is centred on intimate partner violence against women during the lockdown.
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The hypothesis here is that the incidence of intimate partner violence against women increased

during the lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The independent variable was the time or the

existence of a pandemic induced lockdown, where as the dependant variable was the incidence of intimate

partner violence cases during the stay-at-home order. This includes both psychological as well as physical

abuse that our research has aimed to find out about.

A research conducted by Saravana Ravindran and Manisha Shah in India used district level

administrative data on complaints along with google data to conclude that domestic violence complaints

increase 0.47 SD in districts with the strictest lockdown rules [ CITATION Sha20 \l 1033 ] They also took in

factors to observe whether sexual assault and harassment was increasing but since women were enclosed

within the four walls of their homes, it turned out that rates for sexual assault and harassment actually

decreased, especially in districts where the lockdown rules were strict. The irony though is that women are

supposedly thought to be safe since they’re in their homes but that is exactly where so many of them are the

least safe. Another study focused on the risk covid-19 had for mostly married adolescent girls in low- and

middle-income countries such as Bangladesh, Ethopia, Jordan, and Gaza. The study was meant to highlight

the fact that covid has not only been an “unprecedented health crisis but also a profound economic and social

one.” The study took into account people from different countries and demographics and with the help of

primary qualitative data, came to the conclusion that the most disadvantaged group during covid-19 has been

adolescents which includes married girls who not only had to bore greater domestic workload but also dealt

with greater tensions at home and violence which obviously included intimate partner violence. They did

however, also factor in the impact on education and learning, mental health, and general livelihood of girls,

etc. during the pandemic unlike our research [ CITATION Nic20 \l 1033 ]. This trend and focus on intimate

partner violence (IPV) though isn’t just limited to developing economies and Asian households but in fact,

can be witnessed throughout the world. A study conducted in the United States made use of primary survey

data to deduce how many women reported experiencing intimate partner violence during 2020. This study

used 2,009 adult women but other than the exposure to IPV, this study also focused on the impact the

pandemic had on women’s reproductive health and autonomy. They concluded that stress and economic

crisis were among the factors that contributed to intimate partner violence, in addition to which the social
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distancing and the stay-at-home orders made it even more difficult for women to find resources and support

to escape their situation. According to their research, “16% of all women reported having experienced IPV

in 2020 and overall, they reported that a current or former partner exhibited the following behaviours;

humiliated or emotionally abused them (11%), forced them to engage in any kind of sexual activity (5%),

kicked, hit, slapped or otherwise physically harmed them (6%), and made them feel afraid (10%)” this study

though as discussed above, also indicated that the lockdown made it difficult to access contraceptives and

other SRH services and how it impacted women’s fertility [ CITATION Lau20 \l 1033 ]. Research in Spain also

shed light towards a similar topic and basically was meant to observe the “effect of forced coexistence and

economic stress on intimate partner violence.” Here they made use of online surveys with a national sample

of 13,786 women that helped conclude that there was a 23% increase of intimate partner violence during the

lockdown. They also took into account the impact of economic stress though, along with the stay-at-home

order and found that the increase in the rate of IPV was also observed more in cases where both the

individuals also faced economic stress. They’re results also indicated that couples who had children, had

instances of violence before the lockdown, and couples where the women weren’t as educated, saw a greater

increase in domestic violence during the lockdown. They also used the proper protocol for conducting a

survey about IPV unlike we did, in which case they only promoted their survey as being about effects of the

lockdown on men and women, and not actually about domestic violence. [ CITATION Est20 \l 1033 ] Another

study conducted in Bangladesh to not only test the on the frequency of IPV ever since the pandemic but also

to test the impact it had on socioeconomic conditions, mental health, and food security. Their sample

consisted of Bangladeshi women who resided in the rural areas and it was found that there was considerable

risk to their well being ever since the lockdown and over half of the women who reported experiencing

domestic violence of any kind also admitted that it increased since the lockdown [ CITATION Jen20 \l 1033 ] . A

cross sectional study conducted again, in the United States was also evaluating the association between the

pandemic and experience of IPV for which they collected a sample of 2,405 adults and found that covid-19

related factors would actually increase risks of IPV[ CITATION Max20 \l 1033 ]. Countries like Argentina where

proper hotlines were enabled for the reporting of domestic violence cases also received greater calls ever

since the Pandemic. In fact, there was a 32% increase in calls. However, they also indicated that seasonal
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variation must be taken into account while analysing this data. It is also true that when hotlines are

responsive, victims tend to call directly rather than using other mediums to convey the message such as the

police considering how the calls to the hotline in Argentina made by the police decreased by 62% where as

calls made directly by victims increased by 127% during the lockdown [ CITATION San20 \l 1033 ]. There

wasn’t just an increase in the incidence of intimate partner violence of all kinds but also many cases of

injuries that were reported during the lockdown, which resulted due to said violence inflicted against

partners. Where 16 deep injuries were reported as a result of IPV in 3 whole years, the rate suddenly surged

to 28 deep injuries that were reported just in 1 year of 2020 [ CITATION Bab21 \l 1033 ]. Women who not only

had to bore the weight of a greater domestic workload with little to no help from anyone else and were given

the responsibility of nurturing and caring for people around even more, as a victim of patriarchy and toxic

masculinity, also became a victim of repeated intimate partner violence. Calls to emergency support lines not

only increased in Spain, Italy, France but most countries around the world. The Vancouver Battered

Women’s Support Services in Canada received triple the amount of calls during the lockdown [ CITATION

Nor20 \l 1033 ]. The shelter in-place mandate in China reported that domestic violence has increased three

folds [ CITATION Sco20 \l 1033 ]. One of the studies conducted in the United States although claimed that their

results were contrary to their hypothesis that had set out to prove the increase in severity and incidence of

IPV since the pandemic, however, surprisingly found that “among participants that did report change in

victimization, the severity of victimization was more likely to get better during the covid-19 pandemic

compared with worse”. However, this surprising finding was explained with the researcher’s

acknowledgment of the limitations with which the sample was collected that inadvertently limited

generalisability, therefore the true response rate could not be calculated [ CITATION Kat21 \l 1033 ]

Method

Participants

The participants for the research only included women because our hypothesis was central to the

impact of the pandemic over the well being of women. The number of women who participated in our

research by filling out the survey were 76 of which the responses of 72 were included in the research. The
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mean age of participants is around 30. All of the women lived in an Urban setting and had varied educational

and occupational backgrounds.

Measures

The instrument we used to prove our hypothesis was an Abusive Behavior Inventory, which is a

measure of psychological and physical abuse and was developed by Shepard & Campbell in 1992. The

questionnaire included a total of 30 questions but one of those proved to have a negative correlation with the

total scale, which is why it was removed from the subscale computation. Therefore, the questionnaire we

circulated included only 29 questions, each of which were in the form of a Likert scale. The scale had 5

respective levels that the respondents had to choose from, which were ranging from (1) Never to (5) Very

Frequently. The scoring instructions for the inventory notified us that questions 6, 7, 14, 18, 20, 24, 25, 26,

27, 29, and 30 were specifically indicative of physical abuse while the rest were hinting towards

psychological abuse. The questionnaire that we circulated with the participants also included demographics

that inquired about their own and the abuser’s age, highest education, degree of urbanization, and

employment status. Other than this, the questionnaire was divided into two sections namely; before

lockdown and during lockdown to test the difference in the frequency and incidence of IPV during the two

distinct situations.

Procedure

The sample consisted of 72 women who were recruited via a convenience sampling technique

considering that we chose a female only social group on Facebook and circulated our survey there to be

filled by women who may have gone through this. In addition to this though, we also made use of a

snowballing sampling technique by specifically getting the survey circulated in NGOs to further spread it to

relevant women. The survey was filled by the women online and alone. Informed consent was obtained and

they were made aware of the actual purpose of the research before they proceeded with the survey. The

survey specifically mentioned right in the beginning that the respondent’s anonymity would be maintained

and all the data collected will be solely used for research purposes only. This was done to protect the

respondent’s identity and to ensure an environment safe enough for them to proceed with the survey without
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any hesitation. Not promising anonymity would have led to demand characteristics and hesitance on the side

of the respondent who would not have preferred to speak the actual truth, leading to invalid results.
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Results

Out of the 76 responses we received, 4 had to excluded because those were either incomplete or the

information included was not in line with what had been asked, leaving us with the remainder of 72

responses which were included in the analysis. The age of the women who responded ranged from 19 to 65

and the mean age was 30 while the spouse’ age ranged from 22 to 67 and their mean age was 34. All of the

respondents were living in an urban area and majority of them had an undergraduate degree.

In order to analyse the results and turn the raw data into meaningful correlations, the SPSS software

was used, which formulated our data and provided the necessary correlations. Given the demographic data

we had taken, a correlation was established between the education of the spouse as well as respondent and

the violence to check whether the literacy rate of the spouse had an impact on the violence inflicted. Another

correlation was between employment and violence to see whether the employment status of the individuals

can have an impact on the violence. Lastly, an in-depth analysis was carried out for the correlation between

the incidence of IPV before lockdown and during lockdown. In the case of the hypothesis, the correlation is

significant at 0.01 level using the two tailed test.

Correlations

Spouse's Mean
Highest Education During Lockdown

Spouse's Highest Pearson 1 .057

Education Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .632

N 72 72
Mean During Pearson .057 1
Lockdown Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .632

N 72 72
Table 1

This table indicates the correlation between education and violence during the time of the lockdown

and claims that violence can be inflicted irrespective of the person’s education and literacy rate, no matter

how high doesn’t shield the person from blatant ignorance.

Correlations
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Employ
Mean ment Status of the
During Lockdown Spouse

Mean During Pearson 1 .001

Lockdown Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .990

N 72 72
Employment Status of Pearson .001 1
the Spouse Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .990

N 72 72
Table 2

This table indicates the correlation between the employment status of the spouse and the incidence of violence

during lockdown and given the value of 0.7 which shows an insignificant correlation, it can be established that

the employment status does not impact a person’s ability to inflict violence.

Used a
Pressured knife,
you to have Physically gun, or
Pushed, Slapped, sex in a attacked the Choked other
grabbed, hit, or way that Physically Threw sexual parts or weapon Spouse's
or shoved punched you didn’t Kicked forced you you of your strangled against Highest
you you like or want you to have sex around body you you Education

Pushed, Pearson 1 .899** .651** .792** .619** .846** .789** .787** .738** .105
grabbed, or Correlation
shoved you Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .380
tailed)

N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Slapped, hit, Pearson .899 1 .606 .872 .599 .910 .763 .847 .791 .121
or punched Correlation
you Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .312
tailed)
N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
Pressured Pearson .651** .606** 1 .538** .860** .587** .692** .524** .513** -.122
you to have Correlation
sex in a way Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .308
that you tailed)
didn’t like N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
or want
Kicked you Pearson .792** .872** .538** 1 .610** .904** .845** .919** .927** .143
Correlation
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Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .231
tailed)
N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Physically Pearson .619 .599 .860 .610 1 .589 .735 .570 .607 -.021
forced you Correlation
to have sex Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .863
tailed)
N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Threw you Pearson .846 .910 .587 .904 .589 1 .788 .902 .821 .142
around Correlation
Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .232
tailed)
N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Physically Pearson .789 .763 .692 .845 .735 .788 1 .838 .823 .089
attacked the Correlation
sexual parts Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .458
of your tailed)
body N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
Choked or Pearson .787** .847** .524** .919** .570** .902** .838** 1 .915** .157
strangled Correlation
you Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .187
tailed)
N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Used a Pearson .738 .791 .513 .927 .607 .821 .823 .915 1 .161
knife, gun, Correlation
or other Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .178
weapon tailed)
against you N 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72
Spouse's Pearson .105 .121 -.122 .143 -.021 .142 .089 .157 .161 1
Highest Correlation
Education
Table 3

This table here is a summation of the total correlation observed for the physical abuse before and during the

time of the lockdown.

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Discussion

Given the results obtained from the responses of the survey, it can be established that the hypothesis

our research set out to explore has been proven correct and the statistics fully support it. Therefore, the

government-imposed lockdown did significantly increase intimate partner violence against women in

Pakistan.

The results also indicate that no other variable that we researched in terms of the demographics had

an impact on the violence inflicted. The reason wasn’t a lack of literacy or the stress of no job, but quite

literally ignorance that could be observed throughout the spectrum. The spouse was capable of inflicting

violence against his wife whether he had an adequate education and was considered well educated or not and

whether he was employed or not. I guess the patriarchy has been instilled and brainwashed into the minds of

men in our society to such an extent that it has made them toxic from within and they quite genuinely do not

see any value in the opposite gender. With that said, however, our study should have inquired about other

variables that could also have been the result of the increase in violence during lockdown, therefore a

potential existence of extraneous variables that were ignored by us. As seen in the case of other studies

conducted worldwide, the stress of an economic crisis and resentment with the partner were also reasons for

inflicting violence. What ever the reason may be though, the point of our research was to prove that for

whatever reason the violence was being inflicted before the pandemic, it increased further because the

women were unable to leave their homes and were stuck with their spouses who also couldn’t leave and this

inescapable situation for the couple led to greater tension in homes. Another limitation on our part was the

lack of protocol we addressed while conducting research about IPV as [ CITATION Est20 \l 1033 ] did in their

study when they promoted their survey with the title of effects that the lockdown had on men and women,

and not domestic violence. This could also have been more strategic because this way we would have gotten

more responses as compared to how many we got currently because we probably scared away a lot of

women who might have been hesitant about speaking out regarding this, irrespective of the promised

anonymity. Also the survey could only reach people living in the Urban areas of Pakistan so we were unable

to get any insight into what went on in rural areas, which limits the generalisability of our research. It does
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however, indicate that enough generalizations can be made to conclude that serious action must be taken to

address this issue.

While the first lockdown has ended in Pakistan a little while ago, the third wave of the Covid-19

virus is also already hitting Pakistan, which is an even greater risk given the UK strain that is suspected to

spread even faster and can be more severe. Therefore, a chance for another lockdown being imposed in

Pakistan is quite high so the results of this study are quite relevant and must be used to realize how important

it is to establish proper emergency hotlines for violence intervention and to undertake preventive measures

which can help these poor women who do not have to suffer through such a situation again. Especially since

some of the studies worldwide indicated that countries where proper hotlines were established, the calls

received by victims increased during lockdown [ CITATION San20 \l 1033 ] and this is a facility that should be

available in Pakistan as well. It is about time that our women are given the priority and resources are

allocated towards their protection and the men inflicting violence are held accountable.

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