National Research on Domestic Violence Against Women in

ferences revealed among respective groups are still worthyof note: the highest percentage of respondents withincomplete secondary education indicates the existenceof such facts, and the lowest percentage is among therespondents who have secondary education and ruralresidents.More than one fourth of the respondents who werephysically abused by their husbands while they werepregnant indicate that they were punched or kicked inthe abdomen. The social-demographic indicators werenot significant in this case either, though trends similarto those mentioned above were revealed: women withindependent income were more likely to report such incidentswhile rural women were less likely to do so.According to the majority of respondents, the personwho committed an act of violence against them whilethey were pregnant was the child’s father. The generallyreceived picture does not vary according to backgroundcharacteristics. Although there are some weakly depictedtendencies: respondents who earn money by themselvesand urban residents were more likely to refuseto answer.A large majority of women abused during their most recentpregnancy were living with the perpetrator at thattime. In regard to this question no negative answer wasreceived, however there is a percentage of respondentswho refused to answer. The percentage of the latter ishighest among Tbilisi respondents.The majority of women who were abused while theywere pregnant had such experience before as well. Theplace of residence is important: most rural residentsdeny having experienced such incidents before; the situationis opposite with urban and Tbilisi respondents.The majority of women indicate that, compared to before,the violence reduced or stayed about the same. Ifwe analyze the account received from this last and theprevious questions in relation to the majority saying thatthey have experienced physical violence from their husbands/partnersduring their most recent pregnancies,it is possible that such violence, if not even worse, hadtaken place before too. However, it is also possible thatwe have a certain contradiction among answers, whichis due to respondents’ wish to downplay the severity ofthe situation.Social-demographic characteristics are less importantregarding questions in this group. In other words, somewomen were abused by their husband to approximatelythe same degree irrespective of age, level of educationand having/not having independent income. However,there are still some tendencies which were revealed byquestions in this section. First of all comes the specificityconnected with place of residence: the best situationis (or portrayed this way) with rural residents andthe worst one with urban respondents. Education alsoplays a certain role in this regard: in relation to particularquestions a relatively difficult picture was painted bywomen who have incomplete secondary education.Women’s Coping Strategiesagainst Violence:One third of women who reported violence claim thatthey have fought back against physical assault committedby their husbands. Approximately one fifth of thewomen who reported violence have had such experiencemore than once.The social-demographic characteristics of women werenot revealed to have any important relation to the distributionof the answers received to this question. Although,the differences revealed among the respectivegroups are worth noting (which are not sufficiently reliabledeterminers). In particular, rural residents who haveincomplete secondary or complete secondary educationand do not earn money by themselves indicate havingexperienced such incidents less often than other respectivegroups.Fighting back against the violence has had a certain effecton the life of one fourth of the respondents: theviolence has either decreased or stopped; though a farhigher percentage of women said their situation gotworse due to such behaviour; considering respondents’social-demographic indicators does not change theoverall picture.A large majority of women who reported violence indicatethat they have never physically mistreated theirhusbands/partners, except for when they fought back.But there were some women who reported that suchincidents had taken place once or several times. Whileconsidering social-demographic indicators does notgive us any reliable difference among the answers’ distributionwithin groups, there are still quite well distin-82