The Prevalence of Violence Against Iranian Women and Its Related Factors

BACKGROUND Domestic violence against women is a public health problem with negative consequences, and it is an intractable and widespread problem. This type of violence affects the stability of the family. AIM The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of any violence against women referring to health centers and explore the associated risk factors with violence in Ahvaz, Iran. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted on randomly chosen samples of 368 married women aged between 15-55 years in 2013. The samples were divided to two groups, with abused experience and without abused experience. The data were amassed by questionnaire form. RESULTS The prevalence of violence against women was found to be around 63.8%, among them 58.8% were emotional abuse. The majority of women (84%) had never gone to a counseling center. Findings show 47%  of women were silent, 27% got in a fight, 7% screamed, 6% abused their children, and 5% threw things when occurred violence against them. Experience of violence in women correlated with the marriage age of woman, numbers of children, and difference of marriage age between couple, marriage age of men, employed women, uneducated women and the rate of drugs use in their husbands. CONCLUSIONS Nurses and other health care providers can and should play a major role in empowering women living with violence and promote education, social policies and attitudes that proactively prevent violence.