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. 2024 May 28;4(5):e0003261.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0003261. eCollection 2024.

Spatial clustering of domestic violence attitudes toward women in Ghana

Affiliations

Spatial clustering of domestic violence attitudes toward women in Ghana

Cecilia Richardsen et al. PLOS Glob Public Health. .

Abstract

Violence against women is a global public health issue associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life". There is paucity of data on the spatial distribution and predictors of violence against women in sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this study was to investigate the geographical distribution of attitudes toward wife beating in Ghana, a sub-Saharan African country, utilizing data from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Participants from over eleven thousand households were surveyed on topics of demographics and justification of wife beating in at least one of five different scenarios. The identification of geographic clusters of men and women who endorsed wife beating was performed using Ripley K functions. The comparison of the spatial distributions of women and men justifying wife beating were performed using spatial relative risk surfaces. The spatial analysis indicated the presence of clusters in women and men's approval for wife beating compared to those who do not approve of wife beating, with a statistical significance level set at p < 0.01. Major spatial clusters of approval of wife beating were in the Northern region, for both men and women, and in the Upper West region of Ghana for the men participants. This is the first study to explore the geographical distribution of attitudes toward wife beating in Ghana, and revealed evidence of several regional heterogeneous clusters where wife beating was more commonly justified by both men and women. Targeted intervention for reducing the justification of wife beating in Ghana should be focused in these regions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Geographic distribution of study participants who justified violence against wives (red dot) and those who did not justify violence (blue circles) in regions of Ghana.
Panel (A) displays male participants and (B) female participants. Ripley’s K function for the difference in individuals who endorse and those who do not endorse wife violence (black line) shows a spatial aggregation of individuals who justify violence against wives at a 0.5 to 6 km scale, defined by the 95% confidence bounds from Monte Carlo simulations (grey) for men study participants who endorse violence against intimate partners compared to those who do not (C) and spatial aggregation at 1 to 4 km for the women who endorses violence against intimate partners compared to those who do not (D). Maps were created in R statistical language using the rgeoboundaries package [11].
Fig 2
Fig 2. Spatial clustering of wife beating attitudes.
Spatial clustering of men approving of wife beating (A) and women justifying being beaten by husband (B) in one of the five scenarios described. Maps were created in R statistical language using the rgeoboundaries package [11].

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References

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Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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