Rape disclosure: the interplay of gender, culture and kinship in contemporary Vietnam

Honor, violence, and children: A systematic scoping review of global evidence

BACKGROUND

Although the harmful effects of honor-based violence (HBV) against women have been well documented, less is known about how HBV affects children and adolescents.

AIMS

1) To describe the contexts, research methods and populations included in research on HBV and children; 2) to outline conceptual and methodological approaches, including definitions of honor; 3) to describe how honor-based practices affect children's experiences of violence.

METHODS

We searched seven electronic databases using search terms for honor, violence and children which resulted in 7122 unique records. 468 records were selected for full-text review. Articles reporting findings on the effects of honor-based harm or violence against children were included in the final sample for data extraction. We conducted bibliometric and thematic analyses of extracted data.

RESULTS

In total, 101 articles were included. Most studies were published after 2007, conducted in Europe (n = 46) or in North America (n = 21), and most used qualitative methods (n = 58) followed by quantitative methods (n = 32). In most studies (n = 74) children, especially girls, were included as experiencing HBV or being a victim of homicide related to HBV. A smaller sample of studies (n = 24) included children, especially boys, as perpetrators of HBV. Studies documented the following effects of HBV on children: violence; family rejection and control; homicide or honor killing; forced/early marriage; female genital cutting; gang membership/violence; hymen exam or reconstruction; sex work, or suicide.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Further research on HBV should be child and youth centered, situated in the Global South, engage with and interview young people directly, and offer recommendations for action.

Economic Coercion and Partner Violence Against Wives in Vietnam: A Unified Framework?

Economic coercion refers to behaviors that control an intimate partner's ability to acquire, use, and maintain economic resources. Little is known about economic coercion in Vietnam. Using survey responses from 533 married women ages 18 to 50 years, we estimated multinomial logistic regression models to compare the determinants of exposure to economic coercion only, co-occurring economic coercion, and any psychological, physical, or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV), and any IPV only, relative to no exposure. Women who, in their childhood, witnessed physical IPV against their mother had higher odds of exposure to co-occurring economic coercion and any IPV as an adult (adjusted Odds Ratio = 3.54, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.84, 6.83]) and any IPV only (adjust Odds Ratio = 1.75, 95% CI = [1.00, 3.06]), but not economic coercion only. Women who experienced violence as a child had higher odds of exposure to any IPV only (adjusted Odds Ratio = 1.63, 95% CI = [1.04, 2.56]) but not economic coercion only. Women with more schooling had higher odds of exposure to economic coercion only (adjusted Odds Ratio = 1.17, 95% CI = [1.03, 1.33]) but not other forms of violence. Overall, the estimates from the three models differed significantly. Thus, the determinants of economic coercion and common forms of IPV may differ. More research should focus on men's perpetration of economic coercion.

Measuring attitudes about intimate partner violence against women: the ATT-IPV scale

In lower-income settings, women more often than men justify intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet, the role of measurement invariance across gender is unstudied. We developed the ATT-IPV scale to measure attitudes about physical violence against wives in 1,055 married men and women ages 18-50 in My Hao district, Vietnam. Across 10 items about transgressions of the wife, women more often than men agreed that a man had good reason to hit his wife (3 % to 92 %; 0 % to 67 %). In random split-half samples, one-factor exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (N 1 = 527) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (N 2 = 528) models for nine items with sufficient variability had significant loadings (0.575-0.883; 0.502-0.897) and good fit (RMSEA = 0.068, 0.048; CFI = 0.951, 0.978, TLI = 0.935, 0.970). Three items had significant uniform differential item functioning (DIF) by gender, and adjustment for DIF revealed that measurement noninvariance was partially masking men's lower propensity than women to justify IPV. A CFA model for the six items without DIF had excellent fit (RMSEA = 0.019, CFI = 0.994, TLI = 0.991) and an attitudinal gender gap similar to the DIF-adjusted nine-item model, suggesting that the six-item scale reliably measures attitudes about IPV across gender. Researchers should validate the scale in urban Vietnam and elsewhere and decompose DIF-adjusted gender attitudinal gaps.