Prevalence and Consequences of Domestic Violence among Married Women in Sheybench Town, Bench Maji Zone, Southwest Ethiopia, 2015

Abstract

Background: Domestic violence is one type of gender based violence defined by the World Health Organization as “the range of sexually, psychologically and physically coercive acts used against adult and adolescent women by current or former male intimate partners. The main objective of the study was to assess the prevalence and consequences of domestic violence among married woman.

Methods: A cross-sectional community based study was conducted on selected married women in Sheybench town, South west Ethiopia which is 510kms far from Addis Ababa. Sheybench town has a total population of 7037 among these there are 1438 households. Using Systematic random sampling 333 samples were selected out of 1438 households. A pretested Amharic version qustionarrie was administered for data collection. The data was entered to Epidata and analyzed by SPSS statistical package. The study was conducted from December 2014 to May 2015.

Result: From 324 respondents 47.83% were physically abused, among these bruising and laceration accounts for 42.22% and 6.66% had permanent physical injury. Of all the participants 38.58% were sexually abused, among these 33.60% had unwanted pregnancy. In this study the prevalence of psychological abuse was 72.22%. The study noted that nearly three in four women were experienced at least one incident of domestic violence in their lifetime.

Conclusion: Alarmingly, more than three quarter of women who experienced any physical violence had severe acts that could threaten them in their lifetime.  This needs an urgent attention at all levels of societal hierarchy including policymakers, stakeholders and professionals to alleviate the situation.

Keywords: domestic violence, prevalence, consequences, Ethiopia