Lisa Sakai Quinley

Can I Beat My Wife?

Violence Against Women and Girls

Source Organization: Demographic & Health Survey (DHS) Program with data used from Kaggle.

Percentage of Married Survey Respondents who say A Husband is Justified for Hitting or Beating his Wife for Any of Five Reasons

The following chart measures female versus male justification for domestic violence, averages among 70 countries that were surveyed. For questions about whether a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife, women agreed more than men for each of the five situations asked. This seems counterintuitive so it was important to display the finding.


Percentage in Agreement by Country Based on Educational Attainment

For the specific question about whether a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife for any of the five reasons (shown in the animation below), respondents both male and female with higher levels of education tended to agree less. However, the impact of primary or secondary education compared to no education is relatively limited. You do not see a major shift until you compare respondents with higher education. Even among the highly educated, there are still countries where 50% or more of men and women agree with the justifications for wife beating. The images following the animation show the five specific reasons. Data is rounded to the nearest whole number.


Question 1: Is a husband justified in hitting his wife...if she neglects the children?
1 / 5
Question 2: Is a husband justified in hitting his wife...if she goes out without telling him?
2 / 5
Question 3: Is a husband justified in hitting his wife...if she argues with him?
3 / 5
Question 4: Is a husband justified in hitting his wife...if she refuses to have sex with him?
4 / 5
Question 5: Is a husband justified in hitting his wife...if she burns the food?
5 / 5

Comparing Women and Men's Agreement with Domestic Violence Answering: “Wife beating is justified if...for at least one specific reason”

The scatterplot visualizes the question about whether a husband is justified in hitting or beataing his wife for any of five reasons, comparing percentages in agreement by women and men, and by country and by region.


Project Information

Can I Beat My Wife? Is a project that visualizes the acceptance of wife beating amongst countries surveyed by the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Program. It explores the opinions by women and men toward domestic violence and how it can be justified for a number of reasons (1 if she neglects the children, 2 if she goes out without telling him, 3 if she argues with him, 4 if she refuses to have sex with him, 5 if she burns the food). This visual story walks through the countries where the DHS was conducted and the general average acceptance of the five reasons between men and women; how agreement varied based on educational attainment; and the counterintuitive discovery that women agreed more than men for at least one of the five reasons.


Process

Below are some notable assignments that helped in the development of my project. Week 4.6 was Create a Design System for Your Final Project, in which I created a branding system for my data visualization and all its parts–color palettes, typography, examples of charts. Week 5.6 was Design a Visual Narrative Mockup for Final Project, in which I sketched out three different storyboards as potential options for my final data visualization and then created a digital mockup of it.