African Domestic Violence:Prevalence,Causes Trends And Its Panacea

Domestic violence has gained global attention for the last four decades,but few researches aimed at revealing the situation of African women who struggled in an environment where both gender condoning for patriarchal power is the prevailing ideology.This research seeks to provide attempt to reveal the prevalence,underpinning causes and map the last ten years African domestic violence.The research attempted to select four countries' DHS data from the four geo-political regions of the continent.However,yet there hasn't been any West African country that displayed data on Demographic Health Survey using DV-module for third term.Thus,the research relied on manipulating and analyzing the ten years,three terms data of the three countries(Egypt,Malawi and Rwanda)on Domestic Violence.Overall,the prevalence steadily declined in Egypt in the last decade.Whereas,in Rwanda it primarily increases and then dips down in the second half,and in Malawi it showed an increment.The study analyzed 3,108 women responses which were selected for Domestic violence module and excluded the missing data to critically analyze the underpinning factors associated with the perpetuation of behavior.And finally,suggested on challenges facing women empowerment in Africa.Methodologically,the research employed binary multivariate logistic regression in analyzing fourteen independent variables pertaining domestic violence,among which gender empowerment was treated as a single variable.Unexpectedly,domestic violence proved no association with empowerment(definition as convened in DHS)in Rwandan and Malawian women,but in Egypt(OR1.25,pv<0.05).Besides,domestic violence was associated with partner's/husband's educational level,where women of lower educational level husbands survived higher domestic violence frequency,and likewise,non-working females face less odds of domestic violence.In light of these facts,gender empowerment wrestling the conservative traditional patriarchal power deems to elicit more domestic violence.Here it raises the issue of men exclusion from the overall campaign of emancipation and related fallacy of assumptions underneath the act.Moreover,polygamy has associated with domestic violence in Rwanda and Malawi.Muslim Egyptian women suffer more frequent violence compared to their Christian counterpart.Women from poor wealth index category and/or drunkard husbands face higher frequency of the violence all over the countries under study.By and large,the research reveals argumentative facts against some universal assumptions on the means to gender empowerment,but then it shades light on the yet pragmatic theoretical outlooks.