[update 28/2/11 - this post was since followed up with a supplementary post exploring the survey questions involved: to read it, click here. The text of this post has not changed]
This statistic comes p.219 of the Timor-Leste Demographic and Health Survey 2009-10 (DHS) which came out in December. It was carried out by the National Statistics Directorate of the Ministry of Finance, with funding from various donors, you can get it from www.measuredhs.com, click here and download the PDF. There's a useful 3-page summary at the beginning which gives you the headlines.
Many governments now carry out a DHS every 5 years or so. As WaterAid’s resident data nerd, I’ve had the joy of reading about 20 different DHS from various countries over the last few years. Like any survey, it has its flaws. Judging by some of the data on sanitation and diarrhoea there have been some serious translation issues (sympathy due here – Timor-Leste has 30+ local languages, check out my language post). However, of all the types of surveys I’ve worked on, DHS is the strongest: large nationally-representative sample, well-tested questions, and a consistent methodology.
So, 1 in 6 Timorese men think it’s OK to rape your wife if she refuses sex. That’s just one of the depressing statistics in the section on gender equality and domestic violence. Over a third of women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and this rises to over half of women in Dili.
64% percent of women (yes, women) believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife if she goes out without telling him. The figures for men are similar and, in fact, women seem to be more willing to sanction domestic violence than men. There’s no space to go into detail on this here – look at p.213-14. Even more depressingly, these views don’t appear to change much in younger women.
Clearly, a lot more work needs to be done on both stopping violence against women, and changing social attitudes so that women themselves see such violence as unjustified. Of course this will take time, but we can be sure that changing social attitudes will take more than posters of Horta and “hapara violensia kontra feto”. Not having much knowledge in this area, I will let the data do the talking and leave the solutions up to the experts (if you work in this area, please leave a comment).
These were the most shocking statistics I read in there, but it’s not all bad news. It’s also worth noting that most of the data is more hard facts than attitudes. For example, under-5 mortality has gone down a lot. It declined from 83 per 1,000 live births during the in 1999-2003 to 64 per 1,000 live births during 2005-2009, which is a decent chunk out of MDG 4.
Less welcome is the data on undernutrition (anecdotally, one reason why publication was delayed for so long…) – 58% of under children under 5 are stunted and 45% are underweight. That’s high compared to similar countries, and is one reason why Timor urgently needs to sort out its food security problems. Of course, nutrition is about far more than food, and I’ll take the opportunity to bang the drum for sanitation here, which is strongly linked to undernutrition, both through its impacts on diarrhoea and on acute respiratory infections – for more see p.6 of this report
I’ve obviously been poring over the DHS data on water and sanitation in a lot of detail and comparing it to previous surveys – a full post on that to follow later. So, I’ll end with a link to a bizarre article on DHS from Tempo Semanal. Often I like TS articles, but this one was a desperate attempt to add political intrigue, headlined with a year–old unrelated quote from Horta complaining about donors always spending money on reports. They evidently failed to notice that (i) this survey was led by the government, (ii) without these surveys the government wouldn’t be able to target resources and policy responses.
In conclusion, I urge you to read the 3-page summary at the beginning of the new DHS (again link here). It really contains a wealth of statistically solid and nationally-representative information about development in Timor-Leste.
This statistic is not convincing for me because of the following reasons:
ReplyDeleteI have read the report and did not find how they define 'rape" and the report failed to acknowledge the fact that one can not precisely translate the word "rape" in any of the Timorese languages, let alone "marital rape". For most Timorese, having sex with an unmarried girl/woman (even without force/both sides doing it with their full consent) this is already a rape for the woman and the men will be fined. If a man look at a naked women (not his wife) perhaps by accident, this is already rape and the men can be fined for this. This is just to mention a few examples. Even in the west, there is a strong disagreement as to what constitutes a rape. Take Julian Assange case for example, it was a consensual sex but condom broke in the middle of it. By Swedish law, this is already a rape... My point is, rape is understood differently in the Nordic countries, Timor-Leste and United states. It is not black and white. If we apply Timorese definition of rape in countries like US, then the statistic will be very very high. Even within TL, there are different understandings of rape between urban-more-educated and rural-less-educated Timorese. Therefore, this statistic is deceiving. This is one of the examples of foreign ignorance of local context.
Josh Trindade .
Josh: in spite of cultural differences, we should all work towards an understanding and definition of rape as "no means NO!" in all situations, whether married or not.
ReplyDeleteThis is the problem. How one can measure rape and produce a statistic when the society still have different definitions and aunderstandings? Example: When the question asked to the Timorese as survey participants, they maybe provide answer based on their cultural understanding of rape. Therefor, there is dissconection between question and answer here....
ReplyDeleteI think this is an important discussion.
ReplyDeleteJosh - the question, as outlined in English (see p.219 of the survey), is "use force to have sex", rather than "rape" (that was my approximation of the term).
We can assume that the concept of *force* was adequately translated into local languages. It should therefore conform mostly to globally understood meanings of rape (sex against will / by force), rather than being misunderstood as being anything to do with being unmarried / accidental sighting etc.
You're right however Josh that the wide variations amongst the answers in districts lead one to suspect that things have been translated in different ways in different languages.
I take your point about "foreign ignorance of local context" - *interpretation* of these figures by malae like myself will always be hard, and potentially wrong, especially not understanding how it was asked in local languages. But it must be remembered that the survey *data collection* was carried out by the government and the enumerators (people asking the questions) were Timorese. So, it should not be suggested that this is just a few stupid malae going into a village asking questions incorrectly.
There will always be issues with translation but if the enumerators are well trained most of these issues can be overcome.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't like is the sensationalism of the Blog title. There is a lot of good information in the survey yet you chose to focus on this one thing.
I don't think numbers are any surprise. You would probably find similar numbers in the Bible belt US states and they have a president who doesn't openly campaign against domestic violence laws.
I have to agree with Simon. There are actually alot of good information in the research. The title and the wording of Iain's article in this blog give impression to Timorese readers that, "Timorese are no more than bunch of wife rapers". Or is there anything else hidden, i don't know.
ReplyDeleteTo Iain:
You interpreted it correctly what i mean by "foreign ignorance of local context"
Hi Simon/Josh,
ReplyDeletePoint taken, but I should make it clear that I was not trying to sum up the whole survey, but focus on the domestic violence parts of it as they were particularly shocking to me (and, I would expect, Timorese readers). I felt the need to explain what the survey was to avoid people thinking "oh this was just some dodgy survey".
As mentioned in the original, I will be writing further blog posts on the DHS data, particularly on the water section, which shows some very good news! Timor-Leste appears to be on-track for the water MDG.
So, good news stories to follow...
A blog post title has to invite the reader in. Had I written "new Demographic and Health survey" then people would not click on it. Sensationalist maybe, but the data is in there - I did not make it up.
Ian
Hi Ian,
ReplyDeleteFew notes:
1. If you check the table in p.219 (under "Do you think that if a woman refuses to have sex with her husband when he wants her to, he has the right to..), there are alot of question to be asked. Why is that Manatuto is lowest (0.3) then Ainaro (0.4) and then Dili (1.2). I was expecting Dili is the lowest, because people in Dili are more educated, they have more access to information and other contributing factors. This did not edxplain in the report. This is just one question about the statistic that raised questions in the report, i haven't check others.
2. Talking about sex within Timorese society is still taboo... how they manage to do that? How well trained is the data collectors which i believe consisting of Timorese with high school certificate?
3. Why is that the research focuses on men's voice only. Where is the voice of women as victim here. Women should be asked question like "if your husbend use force to have sex with you, what you will do?" (continue to part 2)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePart 2
ReplyDeleteOn Domestic Violence:
I don't think TL is the highest. If you compare Dili to places like Johanesburg or Mexico city, Dili is still a paradise with very low crime rate. Because crime is low in TL, domestic violence cases stand out in the court which shows in the statistic.
Read the following:
US and Australia, domestic violence not only committed by men but also by women. In the US, more than one million cases of “intimate partner violence” are reported each year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (Goldberg, 1999, A 16). Of the one million cases of “intimate partner violence” reported, female victims outnumber male victims by more than five to one . In 1989, the U.S. Surgeon General also noted that 4,000 women are beaten to death by their partners every year . In addition, as many as 35 to 40 per cent of battered women attempt suicide .
In Australia, a 1996 survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 23% of women who have been married or in a de facto relationship have experienced violence by a partner (KHP, Kids Help Line 1999, 1). Analysis form Kids Help Line (1999), found that, males were identified as the perpetrator in 96% of calls. This finding is consistent with research indicating that males were the perpetrators in 95% of domestic violence situations (Health Department of Western Australia, 1998, cited in KHP 1999, 3). Among injury presentations positively identified as domestic violence in a large, […] study of five Victorian hospitals, women outnumbered men by nearly 5 to 1 (Monash University Accident Research Centre, 1994)
Hi Josh. Sorry I didn't have time to reply to these until now. Following your numbering:
ReplyDelete1. the discrepancies across districts are the main cause of concern (see my first comment above) and I have gone into this issue in detail in another post - http://ianintimor.blogspot.com/2011/02/sex-using-force-in-timor-leste-perils.html
2. talking about sex is taboo in most countries. We can assume that if the respondent didn't want to discuss it then they would refuse to answer. The survey design reveals that women would only be interviewed by women and men by men. As mentioned in my 2nd post (link above) the enumerators go through very rigorous training, written tests etc.
3. This module is men's voice, but women's experience is covered elsewhere. See e.g.
(i) p.217 for women's attitudes to refusing sex with their husband (same questions for men on following page),
(ii) p.232 women's experience of sexual violence,
(iii) p.237 forms of spousal violence
4. Domestic violence (this responds to Simon's point too) - Some of the numbers may not be surprising, Simon, but they are still (or should be) shocking. It is irrelevant to say "well it's worse/similar in other countries". This may be true (e.g. between 6-10% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year in Europe), but is not an excuse. All countries need to work to reduce domestic violence. This blog is about Timor-Leste, and this survey was done for Timor-Leste.
5. Domestic violence is also committed by women, and the DHS covers this too. See p.243
FYI:
ReplyDeleteThe Law regarding Domestic Violence passed by the National Parliament last year and promulgated by the President, published in Jornal da Republica http://www.jornal.gov.tl/public/docs/2010/serie_1/serie1_no25.pdf, the law is in Portuguese.
In article 2, it explains the definition of Domestic Violence which includes Sexual Violence especially section; b) which mentions unwanted sexual intercourse in marriage. In Portuguese " b) A violência sexual, entendida como qualquer conduta que constranja a presenciar, manter ou participar de relação sexual não desejada, mesmo que na constância do matrimónio, mediante intimidação, ameaça, coação ou uso da força, ou que limite ou anule o exercício dos direitos sexuais e reprodutivos; "
Moreover in a research done by UNFPA a few years ago http://www.unfpa.org/women/docs/gbv_timorleste.pdf
Read page 16 Box 1. Community definitions of gender-based violence and one of their point about sexual violence is "Forced sexual intercourse in a husband-wife relationship."
Related news:
Timor-Leste Iha ona Lei Kontra Violensia Domestika
http://timortoday.com/audio/timor-leste-iha-ona-lei-kontra-violensia-domestika/