Abstract
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is recognised as a fundamental violation of women’s human rights and a widespread phenomenon in Africa. Women’s low socioeconomic empowerment, cultural acceptability, and lack of social support exacerbate the health and psychosocial outcomes of IPV among African women. To date, there is no systematic research on IPV and its association with healthcare use among adult women in Uganda. Therefore, we conducted the present study on IPV among Ugandan women of childbearing age (15–49 years). Cross-sectional data on 7536 women were collected from the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS—Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2016). The objectives were to assess the predictors of IPV as well as help-seeking behaviour for victims of IPV. IPV was assessed by women’s experience of physical, emotional and sexual violence and healthcare use was assessed by self-reported medical visits during the last 12 months. Logistic regression methods were used to analyse the data. According to descriptive findings, which showed that more than half of the women reported experiencing any IPV (55.3%, 95%CI = 53.6, 57.0), emotional IPV (41.2%, 95%CI = 39.6, 42.8) was the most prevalent of all three categories, followed by physical (39.3%, 95%CI = 37.7, 40.9) and sexual IPV (22.0%, 95%CI = 20.7, 23.3). In the multivariate analysis, higher age, rural residence, religious background (non-Christian), ethnicity (Banyankore and Itseo), secondary/higher education and husband’s alcohol drinking habit were positively associated with women’s experience of IPV. Husband’s alcohol drinking was found to be a significant barrier to seeking help among those who experienced IPV. In conclusion, our findings suggest a noticeably high prevalence of IPV among Ugandan women. There are important sociodemographic and cultural patterns in the occurrence of IPV that need to be taken into account when designing intervention policies. Special attention should be given to women living with husbands/partners who drink alcohol, as this might increase their odds of experiencing IPV, as well as reduce the likelihood of seeking help.
Highlights
Violence against women (VAW) is a recognised social and public health concern in most sub-Saharan African countries [1,2,3,4,5]
Based on the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey, the present study shows the recent estimate of the prevalence of Intimate partner violence (IPV) and its sociodemographic predictors among women of childbearing age (15–49 years)
More than half of the women aged 15–49 in Uganda reported experiencing some form of IPV by their husband
Summary
Violence against women (VAW) is a recognised social and public health concern in most sub-Saharan African countries [1,2,3,4,5]. Intimate partner violence (IPV), generally referred to as abusive actions, such as physical, sexual or psychological aggression, as well as coercive acts by a current or former intimate partner, is the most common form of violence against women (VAW) [6,7,8,9]. Lack of quality data makes it hard to quantify the magnitude of the problem, but, given the general acceptance about IPV and lower socioeconocomic empowerment of women, it is assumable that the phenomenon must be widespread. A key reason why investment in women’s socioeconomic empowerment does not commensurately reduce the prevalence of VAW, especially IPV, could be the fact that a large proportion of men and women still tend to take some degree of IPV for granted. The themes that generally emerge from the literature are those surrounding women’s empowerment factors and favourable attitude toward IPV. Not much is known about the situation of IPV, especially in impoverished countries such as Uganda
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