Gender Inequality and Intimate Partner Violence Among Women in Moshi, Tanzania

Physical violence by a partner during pregnancy in Tanzania: prevalence and risk factors

“…In turn, men might feel threatened by that and react with escalation of power, including the use of violence. 5 In this study, several similar factors, such as not being formally married, not having received the full payment of the bride price, partner having had other wives or affairs, and partner's unwillingness to support their children financially, were also associated with violence during pregnancy. While these issues are known to trigger violence in all stages of life, they might be of special prominence during pregnancy, when there is more pressure on partners to take responsibility and commit to the relationship and a child.…”

“…All these factors have been found in previous studies to be associated with partner violence in sub-Saharan Africa. 5,[8][9][10][11] Importantly, as we are analysing a cross-sectional data set, we use the term "risk and protective factors" to indicate the direction of association with violence during pregnancy rather than to imply causality.…”

“…A 2005 cross-sectional study in Moshi reported a lifetime rate of physical and sexual partner violence of 26%, with a prevalence of 21% within the last year. 5 Unfortunately, it did not investigate violence during pregnancy. The WHO multi-country study in Tanzania, on which this paper is based, showed lifetime prevalence rates of physical and/or sexual partner violence of 41% in Dar es Salaam and 56% in Mbeya, and prevalence rates of 22% and 29% within the last year, respectively.…”

How does economic empowerment affect women's risk of intimate partner violence in low and middle income countries? A systematic review of published evidence

“…The reasons for this are likely to be complex-it may be that the achievement of secondary education or higher may give women greater options to not marry a man who she thinks may be violent or to leave a violent relationship, and to marry men with similar levels of education (Sen, 1999;Jewkes et al, 2002;Ahmed, 2005;Naved and Persson, 2005). Alternatively, women with higher education may also be more valued by their partner (McCloskey et al, 2005), have a stronger bargaining power within their relationship, or improved spousal communication (Hadi, 2005). Lending support to relative resource theories of violence, there was some evidence that women were at increased risk of IPV when they had a higher educational attainment than their partner.…”

“…In Mexico, more than 10 years of education was associated with significantly lower moderate and severe physical violence compared with only 6 years of education (Rivera-Rivera et al, 2004) and in South Africa, post-school education was associated with significantly lower physical violence and physical violence and threat (Jewkes et al, 2002). Less than complete primary was associated with significantly higher physical and sexual violence and threat when compared with some secondary education in Tanzania (McCloskey et al, 2005). In two sites a higher education attainment was associated with significantly higher violence: Albania (Burazeri et al, 2005) and incomplete primary compared with no education was associated with significantly higher physical, sexual and emotional violence in Haiti (Gage, 2005).…”