Physical Violence and Some Reproductive Health Variables among Currently Married Egyptian Women

This study investigates the relationship between women exposure to marital physical violence and some reproductive health variables including the number of ANC visits during the last pregnancy, intended pregnancy, reporting of STDs symptoms and visiting governmental health facility in the past 6 months prior to the survey. The study was conducted on the EDHS, 2005 data. A sub-sample of 5249 currently- married women were investigated for both ever and the 12 months prior to survey exposure to physical violence by their current husbands, and its association with the aforementioned variables adjusting for the effect of respondents ’ age, education, work, residence, wealth index, number of children ever borne, and empowerment in household decisions. Around 29.4 % of the studied women have been ever exposed to physical violence by their current husbands; of them 60 % have been subjected to it in the 12 months prior to the survey. Logistic regression models showed that exposure to physical violence predicted lower number of ANC visits, unintended pregnancy, reporting of STDs symptoms, and utilization of governmental health facility in the past 6 months prior to the survey. The relationship between exposure to physical violence and poor reproductive health outcomes was strong to hold, adjusting for other covariates. The increased likelihood of visiting governmental health facilities by physically abused wives supports the recommendation to use public health services as entry point for management of violence against women (VAW), and to develop a comprehensive health sector response to various impacts of VAW