Do Men's Attitudes About Domestic Violence Affect the Perpetration of Physical Abuse Toward their Intimate Partners?

Domestic violence is a serious public health concern that affects millions of women worldwide. According to the Center of Disease Control, each year approximately 5.3 million U.S. women at least eighteen years old experience domestic violence and 1.5 million women are raped or physically assaulted by an intimate partner. From these assaults, domestic violence causes two million injuries and thirteen hundred deaths every year nationwide. Internationally, The World Health Organization reports that between 10% and 60% of women who have been in a relationship have experienced at least one incident of physical abuse from a partner. In Africa the percentage of women who reported ever having experienced physical abuse reached as high as 49% in Ethiopia and Zambia. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 33% of women reported ever experiencing physical abuse, while 15% of women reported experiencing abuse within the past year. Male to female domestic violence remains a significant public health issue for women everywhere and effective interventions must be developed that address the issue. The goal of this Master's Paper is to describe the significance of studying the relationship between attitudes and behavior of male perpetrators of physical abuse, review of the literature available that discusses the relationship, and to examine in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania men's attitudes condoning domestic violence in intimate relationships and their perpetration of physical abuse towards their partners as another measure to examine this issue better.Master of Public Healt