Exploring intimate partner violence among pregnant Eswatini women seeking antenatal care: How agency and food security impact violence-related outcomes

ABSTRACT

Women with agency (i.e. the ability to make choices and act on them) may experience reduced food insecurity (FI) and intimate partner violence (IPV). Reducing FI and IPV among women are global goals; however, research focused on agency among Eswatini women has been overlooked, though they experience high rates of FI and IPV. We analysed cross-sectional data from 406 Swazi women who sought care at one rural and one urban–public antenatal clinic in 2013–2014 to understand how FI and agency, our independent variables, are associated with IPV. We assessed the incidence rate ratio (IRR) of number of violent events (including emotional, physical and sexual IPV) in the previous 12 months using Poisson regressions. We found significant relationships between FI and IPV, where higher levels of FI were associated with IPV risk (weekly: IRR = 2.18, 95% CI = 1.82–2.61; Daily: IRR = 3.53, 95% CI = 2.89–4.32) and constrained agency increased women's risk of IPV (IRR = 1.44; 95% CI = 1.22–1.70). Our findings suggest that FI and agency independently impact women's experience(s) of IPV. Interventions focused on women simultaneously experiencing severe FI and constrained agency may have the highest impact; however, providing focused and moderate FI relief (e.g. reducing FI daily to monthly) could potentially reduce women's risk of experiencing violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Food insecurity
• intimate partner violence
• agency
• empowerment
• Eswatini

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by United States Fulbright Program; Center for AIDS Research at Emory University: [Grant Number P30AI050409]; Eswatini National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS; United States National Institutes of Mental Health: [Grant Number K01MH112436]; Health Community Capacity Collaborative, Swaziland.