Women Face Greatest Threat of Violence at Home, Study Finds

Women Face Greatest Threat of Violence at Home, Study Finds

> By ELIZABETH ROSENTHAL, International Herald Tribune
>
> Violence against women by their live-in spouses or partners is a
> widespread phenomenon, both in the developed and developing world, as
> well as in rural and urban areas, the most comprehensive and
> scientific international study on the topic has confirmed.
>
> In interviews with nearly 25,000 women at 15 sites in 10 countries,
> researchers from the World Health Organization found that rates of
> partner violence ranged from a low of 15 percent in Yokohama, Japan,
> to a high of 71 percent in rural Ethiopia.
>
> At six of the sites, at least 50 percent of women said that they had
> been subjected to moderate or severe violence in the home at some
> point. At 13 sites, more than a quarter of all women said they had
> suffered such violence in the past year.
>
> “Violence by an intimate partner is a common experience worldwide,”
> the authors wrote of the findings, which are being published today in
> The Lancet, a medical journal in London. “In all but one setting,
> women were at far greater risk of physical or sexual violence by a
> partner than from violence by other people.”
>
> The report says that rural areas tend to have higher rates of abuse
> than cities. But no area was immune.
>
> While researchers and women’s groups have long known that domestic
> violence was widespread — and other, smaller surveys have supported
> that notion — the W.H.O. study adds an important dimension to the
> topic because it provides an unusual amount of quantitative,
> scientific data on the subject.
>
> Previous studies had focused mostly on developed countries, indeed
> mostly on the United States, said Claudia García-Moreno, a researcher
> with the W.H.O. in Geneva who coordinated the study.
>
> Because of a lack of scientific data on the magnitude of such
> violence, particularly in poorer countries, “there had been a lot of
> skepticism about whether it was a serious problem” or just a pet peeve
> of the women’s groups, Dr. García-Moreno said.
>
> Most partner abuse is hidden, and only a tiny fraction is reported to
> the authorities.
>
> “We have always known that violence is part of women’s lives,” said
> Adrienne Germain, director of the International Women’s Health
> Coalition in New York, “but when we’ve talked about it before we were
> mostly dismissed. In the past we’ve often heard: ‘Prove it. Prove that
> it’s happening in our country.’ ”
>
> The researchers used meticulously designed surveys and statistical
> techniques. Their work took root more than a decade ago, after
> organizers of the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing
> rued the lack of hard data on the issue and asked the W.H.O. for help.
>
> For the study, 1,500 interviews were conducted in each country at
> sites in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Namibia, Peru, Samoa,
> Serbia, Thailand and Tanzania. In a few countries, researchers
> selected urban and rural sites for comparison.
>
> The rate of abuse by partners is estimated to be around 20 percent to
> 25 percent in the European Union, smaller studies have found, although
> the problem is reported to the police in only a tiny fraction of
> cases.
>
> In the United States, national surveys by the federal Centers for
> Disease Control and Prevention have found that about 25 percent of
> women said that they had been physically or sexually assaulted by a
> spouse, partner or date.
>
> In the World Health Organization survey, one-fifth to two-thirds of
> women interviewed said that it was the first time they had ever spoken
> of the abuse to anyone, Dr. García-Moreno said.
>
> The next step is to determine what puts women at risk for violence,
> the researchers said.