Women’s Exposure to HIV in Africa: the Role of Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa’s female population is strongly affected both by HIV and intimate partner violence (IPV). The literature has paid great attention to the association between these two phenomena. This work aims at evaluating the relationship between IPV and HIV using survey data from countries in this region – specifically, data from the Demographic and Health Survey of currently partnered women who were tested for HIV during the survey and were administered the special module on domestic violence. We present the estimates of a logistic regression model with Firth’s adjustment, to account for the rarity of being HIV-positive. Among the explanatory variables, a composite indicator of IPV is significantly associated with HIV. This result can be interpreted in the framework of the theory of polyvictimisation.