Effect of justification of wife-beating on experiences of intimate-partner violence among men and women in Uganda: A propensity matched scores approach

Abstract

In some communities, rationalization of men’s controlling attitudes are associated with justification of gender norms such as wife-beating as a method of correcting spouse behaviour. In this quasi-experimental study, we investigate the causal effects of acceptability of gender norms justifying wife-beating on experiences of sexual, emotional and physical intimate partner violence (IPV) among Ugandan men and women. We analysed the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey data using propensity-score matching. The exposure variable is acceptability of gender norms justifying wife-beating measured on binary scale and the outcomes are respondent’s life-time experiences of sexual, physical, and emotional IPV. We matched respondents who accepted gender norms justifying wife-beating with those that do not using 1:1 nearest neighbor matching with a caliper to achieve comparability on selected covariates. We then estimated the causal effects of acceptability of gender norms justifying wife-beating on the study outcomes using a logistic regression model. Results showed that of the 4,821 (46.5%) out 10,394 respondents who reported that a husband is justified in beating his wife for specific reasons, the majority (3,774; 78.3%) were women compared to men (1,047; 21.7%). We found that at population level, men and women who accept gender norms justifying wife-beating are about 1.5 times more likely to experience each of the three forms of IPV. In the sub-group analysis, men who justify wife-beating were more likely to experience emotional and physical IPV but not sexual IPV. However, women who justify wife-beating were more likely to report experiences all of the three forms of IPV. In conclusion, acceptability of gender norms justifying wife-beating has a positive effect on experiences of different forms of IPV by men and women in Uganda. Government should tackle the drivers of acceptability of gender norms justifying wifebeating at the societal level.