Differentials in Men and Women's Perception and Justification of Gender-Based Violence in West African States.

Many acts of domestic violence are gender-based, with significant ramifications for both children and adults in the household or family. Domestic violence can be defined as intentional, interpersonal violence, whether actual or threatened, which involves any one of a combination of acts such as: verbal abuse, physical assault/abuse, forced sex/sexual abuse, economic deprivation, psychological/emotional abuse (torture), or even spiritual abuse. Such violence is typically directed toward women and girls (and less often against men and boys) and very often results in harm or injuries, or even death of the victim. Prevalence of gender-based violence can be influenced by wider social contexts such as race, nation, ethnicity, religion, education, socioeconomic class and age factors. The form and extent of justification of gender-based violence among men and women can vary within and between these sub-groupings. Using the DHS data from 2007 to 2008 for four West African countries, we performed a comparative analysis to determine differences between men and women’s perception of gender based violence, and the relative contributions of social contextual factors such at family, as well as wider regional factors, to such attitudes. Multiple logistic regression analysis that was performed (using SAS 9.4 software) on a sample of 69,761 observations. Preliminary results indicate significant differences in the effects of social context on how men and women perceived and justified gender based violence. Some larger regional factors were also shown to have strong predictive values for perceptions of gender-based violence.