Empirical Analysis on Potential Risk Factors for Domestic Violence against Women in Ethiopia

Abstract

Domestic violence against women persists to be a major challenge and a threat to women’s empowerment in Ethiopia, while Ethiopia is among the countries which have legal and policy provisions to enhance the rights of women. This study was held based on data obtained from 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey. The objective of the study was to indicate the level of domestic violence across categories of various socio-demographic variables and identify major risk factors associated with domestic violence against women in Ethiopia. Descriptive analysis result showed that out of 2663 sampled women involved in the study about 765(28.5%) were experienced domestic violence perpetrate by current husband or partner. A total of 191(25%) women were experienced emotional violence only, 143(18.7%) were experienced physical violence only, 37(4.8%) were experienced sexual violence only and about 394(51.5%) women were experienced more than one form of violence perpetrated by current husband or partner. The multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that husband’s or partner’s education level, sex composition of living child, alcohol consumption, wealth index and region had statistically significant (P<0.05) effect on domestic violence against women. The results of my investigation have demonstrated that higher educational level and better economic status have been identified as protective factors against domestic violence. Domestic violence against women could be mitigated through enhancing access to better education, encouraging school completion, improving the economic status of women and organizing public educational campaigns that focus on changing gender related attitudes.