What Women Think Should Be Done to Stop Intimate Partner Violence in Ghana.

This aricle expands scholarship on intimate partner violence in Ghana by discussing what should be done to stop it, using data from the Northern region. The data came from 53 survey participants who provided useful responses to an open question: "what should we do to stop intimate partner violence"? The 53 respondents were part of 443 women non-randomly sampled at public health centers across the region to participate in a survey on intimate partner violence. Although the survey used a questionnaire, responses to the open question constituted qualitative data for this article. All 53 written responses were typed out verbatim into a Microsoft word document to generate a transcript for analysis. Responses entered in the transcript were numbered to distinguish one from another. Each numbered unit of text represented the complete response of a participant. Data were content-analyzed and reduced to five meaning categories for interpretation and conclusion-drawing. These are: provide behavior change support to couples; institute and enforce legal sanctions against perpetrators; empower women; provide public education for social change; and pray and preach against violence. Discussion of the findings is situated within discourse analysis and the article concludes with a note on implications for policy and practice.

Health implications of partner violence against women in Ghana.

This article explores the health implications of partner violence against women in Ghana using data from northern Ghana. Face-to-face structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 443 women contacted at health facilities in the northern region. Results indicate that 7 out of 10 women have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) within the past 12 months; 62% had experienced psychological violence, 29% had experienced physical violence, and 34% had experienced sexual violence. Participants reported health problems associated with violence, including injury, thoughts of suicide, sleep disruption, and fear of partner (FP). Logistic regression analyses showed that women who reported physical, psychological, and sexual violence, respectively, had 3.94 times, 10.50 times, and 2.21 times the odds of reporting thoughts of suicide, whereas the odds that women who reported physical, psychological, and sexual violence would report sleep disruption were 4.82 times higher, 4.44 times higher, and 2.50 times higher, respectively. However, only physical and psychological violence predicted the odds of FP. This study shows that IPV is a health risk factor among women in Ghana. Measures that should be designed to improve the health of women experiencing marital violence are suggested.