Do ethnicity and polygyny contribute to justification of men beating women in Ghana?

ABSTRACT

Violence against intimate partners threatens public health and social cohesion, and its prevalence could increase with an attitude of justification of such violence. The objective of this article was to use religion and ethnicity as proxies for culture to examine Ghanaian women’s acceptance of being beaten. We employed descriptive and binary logistic regression statistics applied to Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey data collected in 2011 in Ghana. With a weighted sample of 10,627 women, the findings revealed that more than half (59.83%, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 57.41%, 62.2%) of the respondents justified at least one form of intimate partner violence (IPV) or another and being a Mole-Dagbani (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.41; 95%; CI = 1.05, 1.90) and/or in a polygamous marriage/union (AOR = 1.22; 95% CI = 1.04, 1.420) were significant risk factors for justifying IPV. Activism in promoting IPV-free communities has to be group-specific to reach those in need of interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnicity
• Ghana
• intimate partner violence
• justification
• polygyny

Notes

^1. The relatively strong position of women in the Akan areas can be seen in the chieftaincy institution. Whereas women (Queen Mothers) nominate eligible men for election and installation as chiefs, among the Mole-Dagbani, women virtually play no explicit role in such socio-cultural establishments. Also in Akan areas, women hold land in trust for an entire clan (Aidoo 1977; Awusabo-Asare 1990).