Spousal Violence and Spousal Education Difference in Zambia a Cross Sectional Comparative Analysis of Three Demographic Health Survey Cycles

The study aimed to establish the association between spousal education difference and spousal violence among married women in Zambia. The article invokes individual women’s datasets from the 2007, 2013-14 and 2018 Zambia Demographic and Health Surveys (ZDHSs). Currently married women 15-49 years of age who had responded to the domestic violence module formed the core of the sample (2007: 3,216; 2013-14: 7.069; 2018:5,338). Multivariate binary logistic regression was performed to establish the association between spousal violence and spousal education differences and other factors. Adjusting for if a woman’s father “ever beat her mother” and for the notion that “wife beating is justifiable”, in survey years 2013-14 and 2018, women who had equally high education level as their husbands were less likely to have experienced spousal violence (aOR=0.81, p<0.05 and aOR=0.75, p<0.01 respectively) compared with those equally low educated. Other factors that associated with experience of spousal violence include if a woman is/was working, living in urban area, witnessing father beat mother, and acceptance of wife beating for any reason. Increasing education level attained by men and women is not a sufficient intervention to reducing spousal violence. Thus, addressing acceptance of beliefs that wife beating is justified under certain circumstances and parental physical violence which often are subtle and silent in perpetuating spousal violence in Zambia is critical.