Violence against women in relation to literacy and area of residence in Ethiopia

Objective: This study explores violence against women in a low-income setting in relation to residency and literacy. Setting: The study was conducted within the Butajira Rural Health Programme (a Health and Demographic Surveillance Site), which includes rural and semi-urban settings in south-central Ethiopia. Design: This is a community-based cross-sectional study and is part of the WHO Women's Health and Life Events multi-country study. It included 1,994 randomly selected married women. Methods: A standardised WHO questionnaire was used to measure physical violence, residency, literacy of the woman and her spouse, and attitudes of women about gender roles and violence. Analyses present prevalence with 95% confidence intervals and odds ratios derived from bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models. Results: In urban and rural areas of the study area, the women were of varying ages, had varying levels of literacy and had spouses with varying levels of literacy. Women in the overall study area had beliefs and norms favouring violence against women, and women living in rural communities and illiterate women were more likely to accept such attitudes. In general, violence against women was more prevalent in rural communities. In particular, violence against rural literate women and rural women who married a literate spouse was more prevalent. Literate rural women who were married to an illiterate spouse had the highest odds (Adj. OR=3.4; 95% CI: 1.7–6.9) of experiencing physical violence by an intimate partner. Conclusion: Semi-urban lifestyle and literacy promote changes in attitudes and norms against intimate partner violence; however, within the rural lifestyle, literate women married to illiterate husbands were exposed to the highest risks of violence

Hidden violence is silent rape: sexual and gender-based violence in refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands

Although women, young people and refugees are vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) worldwide, little evidence exists concerning SGBV against refugees in Europe. Using community-based participatory research, 223 in-depth interviews were conducted with refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands. Responses were analysed using framework analysis. The majority of the respondents were either personally victimised or knew of a close peer being victimised since their arrival in the European Union. A total of 332 experiences of SGBV were reported, mostly afflicted on them by (ex-)partners or asylum professionals. More than half of the reported violent experiences comprised sexual violence, including rape and sexual exploitation. Results suggest that refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands are extremely vulnerable to violence and, specifically, to sexual violence. Future SGBV preventive measures should consist of rights-based, desirable and participatory interventions, focusing on several socio-ecological levels concurrently

Conflict, Crisis, and Abuse in Dharavi, Mumbai: Experiences from Six Years at a Centre for Vulnerable Women and Children

Nayreen Daruwalla and colleagues describe the Centre for Vulnerable Women and Children, which serves clients coping with crisis and violence in the urban setting of Dharavi, Mumbai

Investment under ambiguity with the best and worst in mind

Recent literature on optimal investment has stressed the difference between the impact of risk and the impact of ambiguity - also called Knightian uncertainty - on investors' decisions. In this paper, we show that a decision maker's attitude towards ambiguity is similarly crucial for investment decisions. We capture the investor's individual ambiguity attitude by applying alpha-MEU preferences to a standard investment problem. We show that the presence of ambiguity often leads to an increase in the subjective project value, and entrepreneurs are more eager to invest. Thereby, our investment model helps to explain differences in investment behavior in situations which are objectively identical

What factors are associated with recent intimate partner violence? findings from the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a global public health and human rights concern. Despite a growing body of research into risk factors for IPV, methodological differences limit the extent to which comparisons can be made between studies. We used data from ten countries included in the WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence to identify factors that are consistently associated with abuse across sites, in order to inform the design of IPV prevention programs.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Standardised population-based household surveys were done between 2000 and 2003. One woman aged 15-49 years was randomly selected from each sampled household. Those who had ever had a male partner were asked about their experiences of physically and sexually violent acts. We performed multivariate logistic regression to identify predictors of physical and/or sexual partner violence within the past 12 months.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Despite wide variations in the prevalence of IPV, many factors affected IPV risk similarly across sites. Secondary education, high SES, and formal marriage offered protection, while alcohol abuse, cohabitation, young age, attitudes supportive of wife beating, having outside sexual partners, experiencing childhood abuse, growing up with domestic violence, and experiencing or perpetrating other forms of violence in adulthood, increased the risk of IPV. The strength of the association was greatest when both the woman and her partner had the risk factor.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>IPV prevention programs should increase focus on transforming gender norms and attitudes, addressing childhood abuse, and reducing harmful drinking. Development initiatives to improve access to education for girls and boys may also have an important role in violence prevention.</p

Mechanisms of Psychological Distress following War in the Former Yugoslavia: The Role of Interpersonal Sensitivity

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This study was funded by a grant from the European Commission, contract number INCO-CT-2004-509176. AN was supported by a Clinical Early Career Research Fellowship (113295) and a Project Grant (104288

The role of information search and its influence on risk preferences

According to the ‘Description–Experience gap’ (DE gap), when people are provided with the descriptions of risky prospects they make choices as if they overweight the probability of rare events; but when making decisions from experience after exploring the prospects’ properties, they behave as if they underweight such probability. This study revisits this discrepancy while focusing on information-search in decisions from experience. We report findings from a lab-experiment with three treatments: a standard version of decisions from description and two versions of decisions from experience: with and without a ‘history table’ recording previously sampled events. We find that people sample more from lotteries with rarer events. The history table proved influential; in its absence search is more responsive to cues such as a lottery’s variance while in its presence the cue that stands out is the table’s maximum capacity. Our analysis of risky choices captures a significant DE gap which is mitigated by the presence of the history table. We elicit probability weighting functions at the individual level and report that subjects overweight rare events in experience but less so than in description. Finally, we report a measure that allows us to compare the type of DE gap found in studies using choice patterns with that inferred through valuation and find that the phenomenon is similar but not identical across the two methods

Intimate partner violence against women in western Ethiopia: prevalence, patterns, and associated factors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Intimate partner violence against women is the psychological, physical, and sexual abuse directed to spouses. Globally it is the most pervasive yet underestimated human rights violation. This study was aimed at investigating the prevalence, patterns and associated factors of intimate partner violence against women in Western Ethiopia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional, population based household survey was conducted from January to April, 2011 using standard WHO multi-country study questionnaire. A sample of 1540 ever married/cohabited women aged 15-49 years was randomly selected from urban and rural settings of East Wollega Zone, Western Ethiopia. Data were principally analyzed using logistic regression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Lifetime and past 12 months prevalence of intimate partner violence against women showed 76.5% (95% CI: 74.4-78.6%) and 72.5% (95% CI: 70.3-74.7%), respectively. The overlap of psychological, physical, and sexual violence was 56.9%. The patterns of the three forms of violence are similar across the time periods. Rural residents (AOR 0.58, 95% CI 0.34-0.98), literates (AOR 0.65, 95% CI 0.48-0.88), female headed households <b>(</b>AOR 0.46, 95% CI 0.27-0.76) were at decreased likelihood to have lifetime intimate partner violence. Yet, older women were nearly four times (AOR 3.36, 95% CI 1.27-8.89) more likely to report the incident. On the other hand, abduction (AOR 3.71, 95% CI 1.01-13.63), polygamy (AOR 3.79, 95% CI 1.64-0.73), spousal alcoholic consumption (AOR 1.98, 95% CI 1.21-3.22), spousal hostility (AOR 3.96, 95% CI 2.52-6.20), and previous witnesses of parental violence (AOR 2.00, 95% CI 1.54-2.56) were factors associated with an increased likelihood of lifetime intimate partner violence against women.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In their lifetime, three out of four women experienced at least one incident of intimate partner violence. This needs an urgent attention at all levels of societal hierarchy including policymakers, stakeholders and professionals to alleviate the situation.</p

Guessing imagined and live chance events: adults behave like children with live events

An established finding is that adults prefer to guess before rather than after a chance event has happened. This is interpreted in terms of aversion to guessing when relatively incompetent: After throwing, the fall could be known. Adults (N=71, mean age 18;11, N=28, mean age 48;0) showed this preference with imagined die-throwing as in the published studies. With live die-throwing, children (N=64, aged 6 and 8 years; N=50, aged 5 and 6 years) and 15-year-olds (N=93, 46) showed the opposite preference, as did 17 adults. Seventeen-year-olds (N=82) were more likely to prefer to guess after throwing with live rather than imagined die-throwing. Reliance on imagined situations in the literature on decision-making under uncertainty ignores the possibility that adults imagine inaccurately how they would really feel: After a real die has been thrown, adults, like children, may feel there is less ambiguity about the outcome