Intimate Partner Violence in Cambodia: Is Women’s Empowerment a Protective Factor?

Abstract

One of the key agendas of the Sustainable Development Goals is to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a human rights violation that has severe health, social, and economic consequences. While there is a sizable body of literature on IPV in South Asia, research on this topic in Southeast Asia is lacking. This study examines whether women’s empowerment is protective against physical, sexual, and emotional IPV in Cambodia, the least developed country in Southeast Asia, and where IPV is higher than in its regional peers. Despite the Cambodian government’s commendable efforts to uplift women’s status, there was an increase in all forms of IPV among married women between 2005 and 2014: from 17.5% to 23.9% for emotional abuse, 11.9% to 14.9% for physical violence, and 2.5% to 4.8% for sexual violence. There was also evidence of the intergenerational transmission of physical violence against women. The data for this study were obtained from the 2014 Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey. A total of 3,223 married women aged 15–49 years were interviewed for the domestic violence module. Cross-tabulations, the Chi-square/Fisher’s exact test, and binary logistic regression were used to examine the association between women’s empowerment and the three different forms of IPV. Household decision-making power, attitude against wife beating, higher education (of both women and husbands), women’s earnings, delayed marriage, and having fewer children were associated with less IPV. Men’s controlling and drinking behaviors are risk factors for IPV in Cambodia. More efforts must be made to raise the educational level of the population, provide more job and earnings opportunities, and promote gender equality in the family and society to eradicate IPV.