Practice of Domestic Violence Against Women in Algeria: A Socio-Demographic Reading of the 2019 Multidimensional Indicator Cluster Survey

Abstract

This work aims to highlight the practice of the phenomenon of domestic violence against women in Algerian society, considering it as one of the hidden forms of crime, based on data from the Multidimensional Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 2019) conducted by the National Office of Statistics in collaboration with UNICEF.

This study seeks to emphasize the importance of leveraging social statistical data to diagnose the roots of this violent practice and calls for including indicators of domestic violence against women within the analytical tools used to study this morally inappropriate phenomenon in Arab societies.

The data from the Algeria MICS 2019 show the attitudes of women aged 15 to 49 toward the phenomenon of physical and verbal domestic violence against women, obtained through interviews to determine the social justification for violence as a punitive measure when a woman does not fulfill certain social roles assigned to her, making her vulnerable to various forms of physical and verbal violence within the family space. These practices often remain outside the legal framework and formal documentation, making them “silent crimes” that threaten social cohesion and contribute to the production of deviant behaviors later on.

The study adopts a sociological-demographic approach, based on quantitative indicators and detailed percentages to analyze the relationship between domestic violence and social determinants such as educational level, marital status, and geographic location, while attempting to connect these phenomena to a broader perspective that treats this phenomenon as the product of imbalanced societal interactions, not merely an isolated legal violation