Association of violence against women with religion and culture in Erbil Iraq: a cross-sectional study

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Background

Violence against women by intimate partners is still a public health problem. The study aims at finding out the prevalence of violence among women residing in Erbil city (Muslim culture) and in Ankawa sub-district (Christian culture), finding out the role of religion and culture on the prevalence, and finding out some other factors (like occupation of husband and wife, age at marriage, woman agreement for marriage, illegitimate relations of husband) that might be associated with violence.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was carried out in Erbil during the second half of the year 2011. Two groups were considered; group one (G1) included women residing in Ankawa sub-district (representing Christian culture), and group two (G2) included women residing in Erbil city (representing Muslim culture). A convenience method of sampling was used to collect the sample (250 women of each group). Questionnaire was designed to collect information about history of exposure to physical, sexual, and psychological violence, in addition to the related factors. These forms were distributed (by women of the Assyrian Women Union) in sealed envelopes to women attending the Mass in three churches located in Ankawa. Women of Erbil group were recruited from the maternity teaching hospital of Erbil. The same questionnaire was distributed to them by the same team. Binary logistic regression was used to show the independent effect of each factor on the prevalence of violence.

Results

Overall prevalence of violence (physical and/or sexual) in G2 ( 20.8%) was higher than that of G1 ( 18.8%). The prevalence of psychological violence was 40% in Erbil, which was significantly higher than the prevalence (24.8%) of Ankawa. The rates of physical and sexual violence were also higher in Erbil (18.4%, and 10.8% respectively) than rates of Ankawa (16.8% and 8% respectively). Factors found to be significantly associated with overall violence were: culture of Erbil, alcoholic husband, wife working as manual worker (compared with professionals), and having children.

Conclusion

Violence against women is a serious public health issue. There was significant role of culture on the prevalence of violence.

Related collections

Most cited references 17

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Intimate partner violence and physical health consequences.

Jacquelyn Campbell, Alison Jones, Jacqueline Dienemann … (2002)

Domestic violence results in long-term and immediate health problems. This study compared selected physical health problems of abused and never abused women with similar access to health care. A case-control study of enrollees in a multisite metropolitan health maintenance organization sampled 2535 women enrollees aged 21 to 55 years who responded to an invitation to participate; 447 (18%) could not be contacted, 7 (0.3%) were ineligible, and 76 (3%) refused, yielding a sample of 2005. The Abuse Assessment Screen identified women physically and/or sexually abused between January 1, 1989, and December 31, 1997, resulting in 201 cases. The 240 controls were a random sample of never abused women. The general health perceptions subscale of the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey measured general health. The Miller Abuse Physical Symptom and Injury Scale measured abuse-specific health problems. Cases and controls differed in ethnicity, marital status, educational level, and income. Direct weights were used to standardize for comparisons. Significance was tested using logistic and negative binomial regressions. Abused women had more (P<.05) headaches, back pain, sexually transmitted diseases, vaginal bleeding, vaginal infections, pelvic pain, painful intercourse, urinary tract infections, appetite loss, abdominal pain, and digestive problems. Abused women also had more (P< or =.001) gynecological, chronic stress-related, central nervous system, and total health problems. Abused women have a 50% to 70% increase in gynecological, central nervous system, and stress-related problems, with women sexually and physically abused most likely to report problems. Routine universal screening and sensitive in-depth assessment of women presenting with frequent gynecological, chronic stress-related, or central nervous system complaints are needed to support disclosure of domestic violence.

0 comments Cited 189 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Intimate Partner Violence in China: National Prevalence, Risk Factors and Associated Health Problems

William Parish, Tianfu Wang, Edward O Laumann … (2004)

0 comments Cited 38 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Intimate partner physical violence among women in Shimelba refugee camp, northern Ethiopia

Girmatsion Feseha, Abebe G/mariam, Mulusew Gerbaba (2012)

Background Domestic violence has unwanted effects on the physical and psychological well-being of women, which have been recognized globally as an important public health problem. Violence perpetrated by intimate partner is one form of domestic violence, a serious human rights abuse and a public health issue, among refugees owing to its substantial consequences for women's physical, mental and reproductive health problems. Because the incidents are under-reported, the true scale of the problem is unknown and unexamined among refugee women in Ethiopia. Thus, this study aim to assess the magnitude of intimate partner physical violence and associated factors among women in Shimelba refugee camp, Northern Ethiopia. Methods A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among a sample of 422 refugee women from March to April 2011. A simple random sampling method was used to select the study subjects from seven zones of the refugee camp. Census was done to identify all households with women having an intimate partner. A pre-tested interviewer guided structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were entered, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS software version 16.0. Descriptive, bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were done where applicable. A p-value less than 0.05 with 95% CI were set and used as a cut-off point to examine the statistical association between the explanatory and outcome variables. Results The prevalence of physical violence in the last 12 months and lifetime were 107(25.5%) and 131(31.0%) respectively. The commonest forms of physical violence reported included slapping 101(61.6%) and throwing objects 32(19.5%). Significant risk factors associated with experiencing physical violence were being a farmer (AOR = 3.0[95%CI: 1.7, 5.5]), knowing women in neighborhood whose husband to beat them (AOR = 1.87[95%CI: 1.0, 3.5]), being a Muslim (AOR = 2.4 [95%C.I: 1.107, 5.5]), and having a drunkard partner (AOR = 2.1[95%C.I:1.0, 4.5]). Conclusions Intimate partner physical violence was found to be high and a serious problem among women in Shimelba refugee camp. Multifaceted interventions such as male counseling, increasing awareness on the consequences of intimate partner violence and the effect of substance use like alcohol will help to reduce intimate partner violence.

0 comments Cited 34 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health

Title: BMC Public Health

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458

Publication date Collection: 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 17 September 2012

Volume: 12

Page: 800

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, Hawler Medical University, Erbil, Iraq

Article

Publisher ID: 1471-2458-12-800

DOI: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-800

PMC ID: 3548749

PubMed ID: 22984840

SO-VID: 7196c536-06ab-4d9c-b758-d084b336e1d0

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Association of violence against women with religion and culture in Erbil Iraq: a cross-sectional study

Read this article at

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Related collections

Inflamed lung in vitro co-culture models

Most cited references 17

Intimate partner violence and physical health consequences.

Intimate Partner Violence in China: National Prevalence, Risk Factors and Associated Health Problems

Intimate partner physical violence among women in Shimelba refugee camp, northern Ethiopia

Author and article information

Journal

Affiliations

Article

History

Categories

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 308

Cited by 11

Most referenced authors 359