Dr. Ravneet Chawla, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Relations was awarded second prize for her research in the Human Development category in the two day National Seminar on Women and Rural Development oganized at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana on May 2 & 3, 2012 by the College of Home Science and Home Science Association of India (Punjab Branch). The research was titled, ”Documenting Perspectives to Develop Modules for Pre-marital Counselling.”
The abstract of the study follows.
Domestic violence is an issue of great concern. Progress in economy and knowledge has brought many changes in the circumstances that women live in right from the beginning as a girl child, through her youth, adulthood and old age. Yet, the abuse is persistent and more complicated. The working women, and those primarily engaged in running the household only, both have instances of physical, financial, emotional and social abuse. Hence, the psycho-social dynamics of a significant number of women are poor as was observed by the author in the counseling set up of Family Counseling Center, Women and Child support unit, Chandigarh. The outcome has repeatedly been the need for premarital counseling. A pilot study was done on 20 girls and 20 boys who were college going, to identify the areas they perceived that led to conflicts. Perceptions of 20 women and 20 men who were married for 5 to 25 years were also recorded for the same. The broad areas that evolved were matched with the identified areas in the previous case studies and other review based empirical evidences. The areas identified are expected to form a major lead to develop modules for premarital counselling for further studies.
The findings of the study were:
· -Unmarried girls were aware of the violence incidences but had reservations to accept that it could happen with them. There existed the traditional fancy expectations of getting married and not a crisp vision of enormous changes forthcoming. Only three were clear about their future plans with a locus of control within themselves.
· -Unmarried boys were very unsure of ability to discuss with a stranger on the issue of discussing spouse to be. They were cautious of a girl coming in their life and giving her a commitment. They were wary of vocal, demanding, disrespectful girls these days.
· – Married women strongly endorsed premarital counselling and most of them reported a drastic change in life after marriage which they had not foreseen. The issued that led to differences were male dominance in terms of choosing jobs, clothes, food preparation, caring children, attending to the boys’ parents and family, disliking the interference of girls’ parents or even casual visits by them.
· – Most married men were open to premarital counselling. They were unhappy on trivial issues that come up in day to day married life. Very well read ones could negotiate with their wives on differences but there were areas where there were parallels drawn. Two were extremely unhappy and had given in to situations.