International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | October 2020 | Vol 7 | Issue 10 Page 4063 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Ghosh K et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2020 Oct;7(10):4063-4070 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Prevalence and regional disparity of women's autonomy and intimate partner violence in India: evidence from National Family Health Survey-IV 2015-2016, India Koustav Ghosh 1 , Mithun Mog 2 * INTRODUCTION Autonomy defines the magnitude of access over tangible resources (like food, income, accessible land for agriculture, and wealth) where the individual lives. Similarly, WA defines in operational terms as governing authority over material and non-material resources within or without her partner that affect themselves and own members of the family. 1 Moreover, the power to take decision autonomously, liberty of physical movement, identical inputs within family and ability to take unbiased decision. 2,3 On the other hand, WHO addresses IPV is most usual form of violence against women that includes physical, sexual and emotional abuse and dominating behaviours by her partner. 4 It also occurs in all socioeconomic, religious-cultural groups, and all settings. WHO identified type of IPV which are physical sexual and emotional violence. In India, recent report of NFHS-4 has shown that 41.6% women access money from their own earning, and 7.7% of women have knowledge about microcredit program/loan. About 26.1% women have physical movement for personal/family reasons. 5 Furthermore, women in India 28.1% have WA for her own health care access followed by Nepal 13.4, and 17.6% in ABSTRACT Background: The study was done with the aim to assess the prevalence and regional differences of women autonomy (WA) and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in India. Methods: The study utilizes data from the fourth round of National Family and Health Survey, 2015-16, encompassing a sample of 62,716 currently married in the age group of 15-49 years. Bivariate analysis has been performed to draw inferences from the data. Results: Study portrays that 69% of the currently married women live with any autonomy, whereas, 27%, 12% and 7% of them suffer from physical, emotional and sexual violence respectively. The higher level of autonomy has found in North-eastern and Western, whereas, the IPV was found in Eastern and Central parts of India. The major finding from the study was that women from northeast region have better women empowerment and less violence except Manipur against rest region. Conclusion: Women of rural area is still more sufferer of any form of violence and less empowerment existing many major states of India. For better improvement of women empowerment and minimize IPV against women, government need to give more attention to gain progress in every development fields and enhance rural education for rural women particularly. Keywords: WA, IPV, Regional variation 1 Department of Development studies, IIPS, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 2 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Agartala, India Received: 23 July 2020 Revised: 05 September 2020 Accepted: 07 September 2020 *Correspondence: Mithun Mog, E-mail: mi2un90@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20204377