Attitudes to domestic violence in low- and middle income countriues: A multi-level approach to primary prevention

Attitudes towards intimate partner violence against women (IPV) have are widely evidenced as one of the strongest predictors of perpetration and victimisation. Whilst these attitudes may be even more strongly predictive of IPV incidence at the country-level research into the societal acceptance of IPV is very limited and largely focuses on high-income countries especially North America. This is the first study of its kind to examine the structural determinants of attitudes towards IPV in low- and middle-income countries, and will make a much needed contribution to research and policy aimed at the primary prevention of IPV.

The three main aims of this study are to examine the prevalence and distribution of women’s and men’s acceptance of IPV in 49 low- and middle-income countries spanning all geographic regions; to identify systemic country-level social, political and economic empowerment factors alongside individual-/household-level factors associated with the acceptance of domestic violence and; to examine the influence of IPV legislation on societal acceptance of IPV.

The project brings together microdata from the nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), and meta-data from high quality UN statistical databases including the UNDP, OECD, World Bank, UNESCO as well as topic-specific databases such as WomenStats, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) and Quality of Governance measures to examine between-country variations in IPV attitudes.

This project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Future Research Leaders Awards.