Factors associated with attitudes towards wife beating among women aged 15-19 in the Acholi Sub-region of Uganda

Abstract

Intimate partner violence is a global public health problem as well as a violation of human rights. Wife beating is an element of intimate partner violence and it involves physical abuse of a woman by her present or former husband or companion. It is quite unfortunate that even with the known dangers of wife beating, there are still women and men who justify this terrifying act of violence. There are global, regional and national estimates of intimate partner violence but specifically, the Acholi sub-region of Uganda, which is the area of study, has the highest prevalence of intimate partner violence as compared to other regions in the country, according to the 2016 UDHS report. This study used the 2016 Demographic and Health Survey dataset to assess the factors associated with attitudes towards wife beating among women aged 15 to 49 in the Acholi sub-region of Uganda. These factors included age; place of residence; employment status; education level; and wealth quintile. The distribution of respondents by their characteristics was shown by the univariate descriptive tables. The association between the independent variables and women’s attitudes towards wife beating was determined by using the Pearson’s Chi-squared test, whose confidence interval was set at 95%; with a p-value of less than 0.05. At multivariate level, binary logistic regression was used and the interpretation of results was based on the odds ratio with a confidence interval of 95% and a p-value less than 0.05 showing statistical significance. The results obtained from this study show that the relationship between women’s attitudes towards wife beating and education level, specifically secondary and higher education, was statistically significant. This was indicated by the odds ratio of 0.479 and the confidence interval (0.276-0.831) for secondary level and the odds ratio of 0.242 and confidence interval (0.117-0.500) for higher education. Furthermore, this study recommends the establishment of interventions to address the transformation of women’s attitudes towards wife beating in the region such as investing in girl child education, empowering women with information concerning human rights, gender and respect and provision of the necessary services for victims of violence.