[Developing countries] In developing countries, especially in rural areas and in those cultures in which the male has a strongly dominant role, beating the wife has been considered the right of husbands. In Ecuador, it was reported that over 80% of women had been beaten by their partners. A study in the biggest slum in Bangkok found that 50% of married women are beaten regularly. Half of all divorce petitions in Bolivia cite violence as the primary cause. In Colombia there are no labour, civil or criminal laws covering domestic violence, sexual harrassment or marital rape.
In Pakistan, 99% of housewives and 77% of working women are beaten by their husbands. Wife battering is consistently under-reported in Arab society. 446 Palestinian men engaged to be married had witnessed their mothers being beaten at least once a year; 50% at least once in a lifetime; and 3% saw or heard their fathers threatening their mothers with a knife, gun or other weapon. In another study, 54% of Palestinian men justified violence if their wives refused to have sex with them; another 47% justified violence if their wives did not respect their parents-in-law. Greater than 50% of abused victims return to their husbands, many rationalizing their predicament with the Arabic proverb that says "It is better to feel deprived and humiliated while nobody knows than to be humiliated while everybody knows".