Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Zambia: An Examination of Risk Factors and Gender Perceptions

Abuse of women has reached epidemic proportions in Africa and the literature has that, internationally, between 10% and 52% of women experience this phenomenon. This study examines some social risk factors associated with wife abuse, as well as gender perceptions of wife beating in Zambia, East Africa. Using the 2001/02 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey data, married women, age 15-49, were selected for analysis (N = 473 1). The dependent variable in the study is wife abuse and explanatory variables are age, education, employment status, place of residence, beliefs about wife beating, and religion. The data show that more wives than husbands are likely to justify wife-beating under various circumstances with "going out without telling him" being the predominant belief for justifying beating. The data also revealed that in a multivariate context, wives with younger husbands, duration of marriage, place of residence, cultural beliefs about wife-beating, and membership in non-Orthodox religions are some of the risk factors that relate to intimate partner violence in Zambia. Implications of the study relate to strategies for dealing with this social problem, some of which are suggested in the paper.