GBV is a global problem which highly occurs in the developing nations (13%), and Malawi is one
of them with an estimate of about 28% of its women being abused in one way or the other. 5% of
pregnant women in the country are also affected by GBV, hence putting them at higher risk of having
pregnancy complications. The Malawi Government, after the 2004 MDHS report on GBV put in
place a lot of efforts to control the problem. However there is still limited knowledge concerning the
determinants of the problem (especially amongst pregnant women), which might be due to luck of
published data on the subject and awareness to bridge the knowledge gap.
As such this study assessed the determinants triggering GBV amongst pregnant women in the country.
This was done using the 2010 MDHS data, which collected information from 2,3020 women in
the reproductive age group (15-49 years). The analysis of the study was done in three levels, univariate,
bi-variate and multivariate analysis. The uni-variate was used to examine the frequency
of occurrence of GBV, the bi-variate to measure the association of each factor against GBV, this
was done using Chi-square tests of associations and Cram´er’s V which measures the strength of
association. Thirdly predictors of GBV were found using a logistic regression model. Data entry,
analysis and model fitting was done using STATA (version 12) and all tests were compared at a 5%
significant level.
The results showed that 3.26% of pregnant women in Malawi are hurt either by their husband or
partner. The factors found to be associated with GBV were as follows; jealousy, hurt before pregnancy,
alcohol consumption, ethnicity, has radio, number of wives, social support, and occupation.
The logistic regression model showed that women who had a jealousy husband were 16 times more
likely to be abused than those without one (p − value < 0.001), women who had a radio in their
homes were 62% less likely to be abused than those who did not (p − value = 0.011) and women
who had a partner who at oftentimes drinks alcohol were 7 times more likely to be abused than those
whose husband don’t drink (p − value = 0.036).