High risk sexual behaviors are associated with sexual violence among a cohort of women in Durban, South Africa

Abstract

BackgroundStudies show Gender Based Violence (GBV) to be significantly associated with risky sexual behaviour. In South Africa the incidence of GBV is reportedly high, and there is a strong argument for GBV to be a driver of HIV infection rates. This study describes the prevalence of Forced Sex (FS) experiences of women who enrolled into an HIV biomedical intervention study, and its association with risky sexual behaviour.FindingsIn this study, sociodemographic and behavioural data from women enrolled in the Carraguard™ trial, were assessed in relation to FS using logistic regression. The results indicated that 193/1485 (13%) of women reported ever experiencing FS at the screening visit. Women who were 30 years and older; reported having sex for cash; multiple partners; changing partners during the trial; inconsistent condom use during the trial; and 3 or more sex acts in the 2 weeks prior to screening, were significantly more likely to have experienced forced sex.ConclusionsThe results of this study are broadly consistent with those found in other studies and are similar in profile to women at higher risk for HIV acquisition in our setting. This study indicates a need for GBV prevention to be integrated with HIV prevention programmes.

Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Associated Factors among Male and Female University Students in 22 Countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas

“…In addition, sexual risk behaviour (having had two or more sexual partners in the past year) and having a history of an STI in bivariate analysis was found to be associated with IPV. Similar results were found in previous studies [32][33][34] . Alcohol use in the context of sexual activity may reduce the ability to avoid violence 17,51 .…”

“…Sociodemographic factors for IPV among university students may include, female gender (although some report similar proportions of IPV between females and males) 16,20,24,25 earlier year of study 18 being single 17,19 and residing in a campus residence 19 . Individual risk factors for IPV may include childhood physical or sexual abuse or other prior victimization as well as history of interparental violence 17,18,25,26 substance use (alcohol and tobacco use) 17,[27][28][29] posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and suicidal behaviour 14,16,24,30,31 and sexual risk behaviour, including sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV [32][33][34] . Protective factors may include lack of peer and parental social support 22 lack of life satisfaction 20,24 high religiosity 35 low perceived control 36 lower Gross national income but not family income 37 .…”

Heterosexual oral and anal sex in Kinshasa (D.R.Congo): Data from OKAPI prospective cohort

“…Finally, oral and anal sex were associated with reporting having ever been forced to have unwanted sex or unwanted practices, as shown by other authors [50,76,77]. In fact, forced sex itself can include these sexual practices [78,79].…”

Reported oral and anal sex among adolescents and adults reporting heterosexual sex in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review

“…Condom use was reported in 19 studies during heterosexual anal sex [38, 39, 52, 53, 56, 59, 61, 62, 73, 75, 77, 79, 84, 87, 90, 106, 112, 113, 115, 120], five studies during oral sex [38, 52, 53, 56, 61], and 29 studies for combined vaginal, oral and anal sexual experience [40, 47, 54, 57, 58, 60, 62, 63, 65, 67–69, 76, 80, 82, 85, 88, 92, 97, 98, 105, 107, 111, 116–119, 135]. (Additional file 2: Table S2).…”