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The Constitution of India, which every citizen has a duty to uphold, prohibits discrimination on grounds of sex. Moreover, as one of the 154 nations that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women's Convention), India is obligated under international law to eliminate violence against women in all its forms, including wife-beating. At the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, the Indian Government, along with 186 other UN member states, adopted the Beijing Platform of Action that specifies the need to take steps to eliminate violence against women. Nevertheless, in India, as in many other settings, violence against women is pervasive, and wife-beating is a widely accepted form of behaviour, justified by both men and women as a woman's lot. Here we show that factors associated with wife-beating reflect women's powerlessness and …