Recorded presentation

Corrine M. Williams, ScM¹, Ulla M. Larsen, PhD², and Laura A McCloskey, PhD¹. (1) Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard University, School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115, 617-432-3690, williams@hsph.harvard.edu, (2) Department of Population and International Health, Harvard University, School of Public Health, 667 Huntington Avenue, Building 1, Room 1109, Boston, MA 02115

Violence against women poses a worldwide threat to women’s health, but relatively little cross-national research has been done to illuminate how culture, political economy and gender might intersect differently to create this widespread risk. This paper first presents results from a cross-sectional study with 2,019 women in Moshi, northern Tanzania. Women were asked about: socio-demographic characteristics; sexual violence at first intercourse; partner violence; and variables including age at first intercourse, marital history and partner status, pregnancy history, sexually transmitted infections. This paper examines risk factors for sexual violence at first intercourse, and whether sexual violence at first intercourse is a risk factor for subsequent reproductive health problems. Approximately 10.9% of women reported that their first intercourse was forced and an additional 15.3% reported that it was unwanted. Preliminary analyses indicate that sexual violence at first intercourse is associated with later HIV infection, with an HIV infection rate of 14.4% among those reporting sexual violence and only 9.7% among those with no violence (p=0.02). These initial findings are being followed-up to get women’s perspectives on how they define partner violence and sexual assaults, to understand the above findings. Implications of this research include impacting how researchers ask about violence in cross-cultural settings in order to obtain accurate estimates of the problem and determining what interventions may be successful.

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