Domestic violence and its associated factors among married women of a village development committee of rural Nepal

Abstract

BackgroundViolence against women is a global public health problem occurring in multitude of contexts and domestic violence is considered to be the most pervasive one. Poor enforcement of policies, limitation of researches and expertise in this field largely accounts for persistence of this problem and nature of domestic violence and its associated factors are poorly understood.ObjectivesThis research aimed to estimate the magnitude of different forms of domestic violence and identify its associated factors.MethodsCommunity based cross sectional study was conducted among 355 married women of reproductive age group of Kusheshwor, Sindhuli, Nepal. The questionnaire adapted from the World Health Organization Multi-Country Study was used for the face to face interviews. Occurrence of current domestic violence was used as outcome variable in logistic regression. Descriptive and multivariate analysis were performed in order to assess the magnitude of domestic violence and to identify its associated factors respectively.ResultsSelf-reported lifetime prevalence of physical violence was 29.6 % and past year prevalence was 15.2 %, while corresponding figures for sexual violence were 6.8 and 2.3 %, and for psychological violence were 31.0 and 18.3 %. Lifetime domestic violence was 38.6 % while in past 12 months, prevalence was 23.1 %. Furthermore, 12.4 % of women were experiencing all forms of violence concurrently. Women with controlling husband and having poor mental health were found to be at higher risk of domestic violence.ConclusionsDomestic violence is still rampant in our society with several forms of violence occurring together. In a country like Nepal, differentials power in relationship and poor mental health was found to be positively associated with violent episodes. This study highlights the infringement of women rights which can be the cause for serious public health consequences.

Magnitude and determinants of domestic violence against ever married women in Sohag, Egypt

“…In agreement, [14] we found that a husbandwife age difference more than 10 years was significantly associated with DV which was confirmed by results of univariate regression analysis. As regard working status of the husband, several previous studies [13,[20][21][22] failed to link DV to working status of the husband, similar to our results. These findings are quit strange, especially when considering that money as a cause of DV was reported by more than half the abused women.…”

“…This is because financial independency of the woman is supposed to be protective against DV, moreover, these women who were dependent on their husband for their basic demands, usually accept and tolerate the violence committed against them. However, our results are inconsistent, [5,[20][21][22] where economic independency and presence of ownership were linked to DV and not the opposite which may be explained by different socioeconomic context in which these studies were conducted.…”

“…These findings are consistent with. [8,14] A growing body of literature, [5,[8][9][10][11]13,15,[19][20][21][22] support our findings that low level of education of the participants was significantly associated with DV. Our results showed that more than two-thirds illiterate ones or those having primary education only reported exposure to DV compared to less than half those having university degree.…”

“…Studying sociodemographic characteristics of the surveyed women revealed no significant association between DV and current age of the woman or age at marriage in agreement with [5,[19][20][21] although these findings are inconsistent with [8,14] concerning current age of the participants and [13,22] concerning age at marriage. Moreover, we found no significant association between DV and place of residence, as according to our results more than half the surveyed women resided in both urban and rural areas reported exposure to DV.…”

“…[21] although [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] found that DV was significantly associated with duration of marriage. As regard the major causes of violence and in partial agreement, [14] money was the most frequent cause of fights between the abused women and her husband (57.4%).…”