Women and Domestic Violence in India: Sociological Perspective.

Violence against women and girls is very high in the present world. Any kind of violence is a violation of their human rights which often causes due to their lack of protest and easy submission in and out of the house. Many researchers have found that, in Indian culture, since the very early periods, women as a group have been dominated by men. Their status in the family and society has been low. Everett Jana Matson has identified five specific factors responsible for the low status of women in India, which are Hindu religion, caste system, joint family system, Islamic rule and British colonialism. The values of Hinduism held that males were superior to females and this practice is still continued.

The main problem is that, the importance of the domestic work has been totally ignored in our society. Domestic violence is behavioral problem which is related to the emotional, psychological and physical aspects. It is observed that, a person who is in an intimate relationship tends to control the other on the bases of gender. India has a long social tradition of having male dominance over women. In the context to the dominant family structure, it becomes a system in the household wherein the father dominates the whole family. Domestic violence includes harassment maltreatment, cruelty and even the threat at assault intimidation.

This study focuses on gender based disparity in family relationship especially, the dominance overpowered by man. The researcher has selected the cases of domestic violence in the court of Sangli district and total sample size is 50 and the researcher has used purposive sample method and analyzed the cases from the legal and sociological perspectives.