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Abstract
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Global estimates of intimate partner violence suggest that 27% of ever-partnered women aged 15-49 years have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime, and 13% report intimate partner violence over the past year. These experiences disproportionately affect women in low-income and middle-income countries compared with high-income countries, with past-year intimate partner violence prevalence at 32% in central Africa and 24% in eastern sub-Saharan Africa, at 19% in South Asia, and at 4-6% in Europe and North America.1
However, Li and colleagues' new research emphasises that intimate partner violence reductions are occurring in low-income and middle-income countries and that women's empowerment efforts could be a means through which these reductions are being achieved.
Using data from nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys conducted across 53 low-income and middle-income countries and collected at multiple time points in each country over the period of 2000-21, Li and colleagues offer new insight into change in prevalence of intimate partner violence over time and, secondarily, whether women's empowerment indicators are associated with observed intimate partner violence prevalence. Importantly, these analyses highlight a decline in both physical and sexual intimate partner violence over the past two decades overall, although with some heterogeneity across the countries of study. This is a deeply important finding for the researchers and advocates who fought to include these measures of intimate partner violence in national surveys such as the Demographic and Health Survey, as well as those policy stakeholders that utilised these data to advocate for intimate partner violence prevention at scale. Demographic and Health Survey data on intimate partner violence has only been available since the 1990s and is now the basis of how nations and multilateral organisations track changes in intimate partner violence, highlighting the importance of these national surveys and data for policy and impact.
Language: en |