Key Social Norms Take-aways This study highlights the powerful yet complex role of community gender norms in shaping men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Bangladesh. Norms held by senior men—those aged 35–49, often household heads and community influencers—set expectations for masculinity and marital conduct. In communities where senior men endorsed more equitable gender norms, junior men (ages 18–34) were significantly less likely to perpetrate diverse forms of physical IPV. These findings suggest that senior men’s norms can exert a constraining effect on younger men’s violent behavior, potentially through mechanisms of social enforcement, modeling, or moral authority. However, this effect does not negate the influence of early exposure to violence. The study finds no evidence that more equitable community norms buffer or weaken the strong, independent association between childhood violence and adult IPV perpetration. Thus, community norms and early-life experiences function as parallel drivers of IPV, each requiring targeted intervention.
Objectives To examine how exposure to violence in childhood and community-level gender norms among senior men are associated with the lifetime count (scope) of physical IPV perpetrated by junior men in Bangladesh, and to test whether equitable norms mitigate the effects of childhood violence.
Methods The study analyzed cross-sectional data from 570 junior married men and 938 senior married men across 112 urban and rural communities from the 2011 Bangladesh UN Multi-Country Study of Men and Violence. The outcome was the number of distinct physical IPV acts a man reported ever committing. Childhood violence exposure was measured through self-reports of seven violent events. Community gender norms were constructed from senior men’s responses to eight attitudinal items, then dichotomized to identify communities with the most equitable norms. Multilevel Poisson regression was used.
Results Half of junior men reported having ever perpetrated physical IPV, and nearly two-thirds had experienced violence in childhood. Living in a community with highly equitable senior male norms was associated with a 47% reduction in the scope of IPV perpetration. Exposure to childhood violence was associated with a 32% increase in IPV scope. No significant interaction was found between the two factors, indicating that community norms did not mitigate the effect of early trauma.
Conclusions To reduce IPV perpetration among men, interventions must both shift community gender norms—particularly among influential senior men—and prevent or address childhood exposure to violence. These dual approaches are essential for breaking the cycle of intergenerational IPV.